This is a review of Strauss' "Der Rosenkavalier" at the Cologne Opera, April 2010:

I like Kiri Te Kanawa. .... At 66, her voice no longer has the silkiness that made her famous, but the tone is unmistakably warm and smooth. She took a while to warm - and her middle register is now somewhat recessed - but one can still feel the magic when everything falls into place, such as in the end of act I, crowned by a velvety floating pianissimo. Her Marschallin has never been a complex impersonation such as Régine Crespin's (and the occasion lapse of memory is only an evidence of that) and gravitates around charm, which she still has in plenty. Her figure is graceful as ever and her bearing is majestic yet feminine.
The Gürzenich-Orchester Köln is not exactly a world-class ensemble - the brass section can be messy and the strings lack a distinctive sound - but conductor Patrik Ringborg lead it to produce a very clean and perfectly balanced performance, the structural transparency of it indeed admirable.
(I Hear Voices, 04.04.2010)

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