Vermillion has enjoyed a successful career over the past ten years or so, dividing her time judiciously between the opera house and the concert platform, in many respects taking on the mantle of Christa Ludwig. For CPO she has already been heard as an accomplished interpreter in the extensive Loewe Edition (1/97). Here she claims our attention for being the first woman in my experience and, I believe, the first on CD (the Gramophone Database confirms this) to sing these male-orientated works, the song-cycle An die ferne Geliebte and the quasi-aria Adelaide, both paeans to absent loved ones. There’s no reason to object, given the female singers who now tackle Winterreise, although it has to be said that Beethoven’s settings imply specifically male ardour. My reservations are on other grounds. Given that Stephan Genz has just given us such glorious interpretations of both pieces, full of the joys of spring and sung with a fervently youthful timbre, Vermillion by comparison sounds a shade heavy, the voice slow to ‘speak’; nor is she nearly as forward and eager with the text. The same is true in a comparison of their versions of Klage, where Genz and Vignoles evoke more immediate feelings than Vermillion and her partner.
Vermillion is also enterprising in giving us all four of Beethoven’s settings, all unpublished, of Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, of which the fourth is surely the best, though not on a par with Schubert’s various settings or Wolf’s single effort. Nor does the composer rise to the challenge of Kennst du das Land (‘Mignons Lied’) as do his succesors. Vermillion is most suited by the infinite sadness of Wonne der Wehmut and Resignation and by the rarely heard and pleasing Die Laute Klage, in all of which her rich, expressive tone and phrasing are at their most appealing; and she ends with a deeply felt account of An die Hoffnung, one of Beethoven’s most attractive Lieder, its flowing piano part beautifully played by Stamm. The recording is faultless.'