Press

"In the middle of “De Stijl” is a short declaimed recitation in English of a letter by a Dutch writer remembering Mondrian on the dance floor.  Soprano Susan Narucki, who is on the classic recording of “Materie,” recited the text from memory to the accompaniment of an upright piano - and was riveting."  

Editor's Choice  - BBC Music Magazine - Highest rating: five stars

"...the disc represents a fertile meeting of minds belonging to two eloquent champions of
20th century American music...So often Ives demands an unselfconscious simplicity not all
singers can muster.  Susan Narucki knows how not to over-gild - never rending maudlin the rich
thread of nocturne and remembrance which runs through the artfully-plotted programme.  The oppressed fragility of "Like a Sick Eagle" is something special on a very special disc indeed."

"There's probably no finer introduction to Ives' songs or to his output as a whole."

"The collaboration of the splendid  Susan Narucki, a soprano of  round and luminous timbre and her conscientious accompanist Donald Berman, shows limitless musicality." 

"...the sylph-like sounds of the soprano Susan Narucki, ably accompanied by Donald Berman in “The Light That Is Felt” (New World Records), give a touching equanimity to a group of Charles Ives songs that includes such temperamental opposites as “Songs My Mother Taught Me” and “Like a Sick Eagle."

"Ne possiamo ascoltare una scelta non cosi minima nella magnifica interpretazione della soprano
Susan Narucki, accompangnata da Donald Berman."

"The four brief Barber settings receive such sterling advocacy by Susan Narucki and Chris Pedro Trakas that one wishes for more."

"The melodic writing is tart yet lyrically generous both here and also in his "Roethke Songs," which received an eloquent performance by soprano Susan Narucki and pianist Christopher Oldfather."

"Susan Narucki is a composer's best friend - a new music interpreter of such intelligence, committment and technical prowess that anything she sings takes on a radiant life.  No matter what the repertoire, a performance by Narucki is always an important event."

"Narucki's singing displays an extraordinary precision - she negotiates the wide leaps and arcane intervals so beloved of contemporary composers without batting an eye, and she gets them right every time.  But she combines this with an understated lyricism that lets even the most jagged and forbidding melodic line sound improbably beautiful."

"Stravinsky's humorous and compassionate take on nuptials  abounds in tricky rhythms and surprising colors, which Boulez and company - especially the deeply expressive Narucki - projected as if totally immersed."

"She sang the erotically charged 'seventh vision' of this medieval mystic very, very beautifully."

"Narucki's velvet soprano caressed the seductively erotic text of the 13th century mystic, Hadewych....  A night for South Bank to remember."

"Sung beautifully and with characteristic dedication by Narucki, who created an extended instant of joy, a marriage of sensuousness and calm"

"...one name we will never forget: Susan Narucki, the American soprano, who gave us all goosebumps and moved us to tears."

"The musicians...Susan Narucki and Daniel Phillips on the second half - all worked with Mr. Kurtag and experienced his insistence on the expressive force in the tiniest gesture. Here, that experience showed.
Ms. Narucki and Mr. Phillips worked with the same exact command of musical and expresive resources in Mr. Kurtag's longest work so far, "Kafka Fragments," setting aphorisms, images, parables and anecdotes from Kafka's diaries and letters. Each was different - in tone, angle, color - though they all came from the same world of shards.

Standing stock still, but with the waiting intensity of someone in shock, Ms. Narucki did almost everything with her voice alone. Only one fragment did she, most effectively, dramatize, turning on Mr. Phillips to yell, "Ruhelos!" ("No peace!") And then to repeat the word, drained. Here was a whole Beckett play in about thirty seconds.

For examples of Ms. Narucki's range of voice and expression, there were the yelps of "Nichts Dergleichen" ("Never the Same"), terrifying but musical, the pure white tone matching Mr. Phillips' toward the close and right at the end the slithering scuffle in which one heard Kafka's two snakes in the dust. Mr. Phillips with similar ranging virtuosity, was similarly right on target all night."

"This searing performance of Kurtág's Messages of the Late Miss R.V. Troussova only reaffirmed that it should be considered one of the masterpieces of the late 1970s, and as tossed off with astonishing ease by the great Susan Narucki, will certainly be cited by many as one of the performances of the year. This is stunning material for the right performer, and Ms. Narucki sang these with the kind accuracy, intensity and confidence as if they had been written for her. This performance might be the most eloquent I've heard to date"

"The vocal part makes staggering demands. It was written for the astonishing Phylis
Bryn-Julson, but Susan Narucki was more than equal to it."

"But one name we will never forget: Susan Narucki, the soprano from America, who gave everyone goosebumps and made us cry with "Lonely Child" a song drawn from the youth of the murdered composer."

"Among the soloists, hommage must be paid....to the dazzling soprano Susan Narucki..."

"Few singers of any stripe can fuse such fine-tuned attention to verbal nuance with such blooming, unforced, dramatically apt tone. The aching beauty of her traversal of the cycle attained a molten heat in the scorced musico-poetic landscape of 'Insomnia'.

"The soprano Susan Narucki navigated these straits with an assurance that gave the illusion of ease"

"Susan Narucki, the soprano, gave supple, evocative readings of the first two Mallarmé Improvisations, two early explorations of vocal angularity and seductively changeable ensemble scoring."

"There is high drama here which soprano Susan Narucki captured compellingly. The music perfectly captures denial and acceptance, the amused emotional distance and shocking emotional directness that is the contradictory heart of Beckett, and so did the performance by Narucki."

"There is high drama here which soprano Susan Narucki captured compellingly. The music perfectly captures denial and acceptance, the amused emotional distance and shocking emotional directness that is the contradictory heart of Beckett, and so did the performance by Narucki."

"Berman had an extraordinary partner in Narucki. She found the perfect center of every pitch in the Schoenberg and produced a dancing rhythmic vitality to support a complex and aching text."

"Narucki, a Grammy-winning singer and champion of new music, was in top form, exhibiting a glorious middle range and deftly portraying a character, who by the end of the song cycle, is hopelessly unhinged."

"Grisey's work depends so much on ensemble textures. But it depends, too, on a pure, calm and irrefutable human voice at the center, and this Susan Narucki provided [ in ''Four Songs to Cross the Threshold.'' ], with magical control and refusal to overdramatize. She was excellent earlier -- and again selfless in placing herself within the total sound -- in ''Bouchara'' by Claude Vivier, another composer who spent his last years in quest of death."

"as sung by the extraordinary Susan Narucki with spot-on intonation, superb control, and vocal beauty…the songs resonated on both conscious and subconscious levels".

"Reigning new-music diva Susan Narucki has intelligence, wit, presence, drop-dead musicianship, and....a voice you want to hear."

"Susan Narucki, one of the most glowing advocates of contemporary music, made [the Birtwistle] sound easy… astonishingly clear and accurate in her intonation… I particularly enjoyed the second poem in the cycle in which Narucki reached a thrilling fortissimo on the final word."

"The impressive soprano handled the part with technical command and no loss of tonal richness."

"Susan Narucki who took on the Sprechstimme role in Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, was dressed merely as a chanteuse- black dress, vast ruffled collar, bright lipstick- and why not? That's what Pierrot was for; and God knows Narucki did it brilliantly.

She crept round the stage, sometimes draping herself over one player's chair or another - as over Jenny Robison's chair for "Der kranke Mond" (The sick Moon) where the flute was her only accompaniment. At other times she knelt in front of the whole ensemble. She hit the precise balance between speech and song and the performance was frighteningly good."

"Susan Narucki, a newcomer to the role of Pat, staked out an unchallengable claim"

"Susan Narucki made a bright and sympathetic Pat."