I cannot summon much enthusiasm for this disc. Estes, as we know from his work in Wagner possesses a strong, well-produced bass-baritone, capable of eloquent expression—at least when under careful tutelage at Bayreuth. Here we are left with the voice and little else. In the bass arias at least the tone is flexible and as Philip II, Silva and Fiesco, he shows some understanding of how to phrase with light and shade. Elsewhere the singing is alternately muscular and wooden with little variation in dynamic level or expressive nuance. Great wodges of tone are poured out to not very good purpose. When you add to that difficulties with pitch, tempos that are almost always too slow for the good of the music or the singer, and indifferent Italian one is left wondering at the point of this issue: all these arias, among the finest in all Verdi, have been accomplished much more successfully in the past.
The essays into the baritone repertory are unhappy, for all the faults are compounded by the effort in lifting up the voice a fifth or so. If you add to this the lacklustre conducting and the variable recording (levels changing), the list of negatives becomes unduly dispiriting, and I have no wish to extend it.'