There is very little to praise in this unfortunate issue. Safiulin, a name new to me, has a grey, opaque bass voice that doesn’t take too kindly to the microphone, which seems to emphasize a near-wobble. Its owner uses it in a manner that alternates between the lugubrious and the melo-dramatic, and in mezza voce loses focus. The Sunless cycle becomes even more sombre than it already is, and the singer has little or none of the ability of his rivals to fine down his tone to the needs of the child’s utterance in The nursery. He is best in the gruff humour of The peepshow and Song of the flea, but even here there is little of the verbal and tonal definition offered by either Leiferkus or Christoff.
To make matters worse, I find Demidenko’s piano, as recorded, somewhat hard and, surprisingly, he yields place to Skigin (for Leiferkus) in imagination. As the recording (made in The Maltings, Snape) is a throwback to Hyperion’s old distanced, over-reverberant manner this disc cannot begin to compete with the sets listed above. If you want a bass in this music go for Christoff; if you want the best in modern interpretation choose Leiferkus and his partner.'