Throughout the Ruckert-Lieder the diction is excellent, dramatic emphases are absolutely in place and there is, notably in 'Um Mitternacht', some superb legato singing...Dvorak's Biblical Songs are almost entirely excellent...Kozena projects the sincerity of these settings magnificently

Singing in her native Czech, Kozená transmits a soulfulness that she rarely summons in other repertoire. It’s a question of being “inside the idiom”, and it feeds her performance of Dvorák’s Biblical Songs...The disc is worth buying for these 10 tracks alone, but Kozená also captures the exotic idiom of Ravel’s Shéhérazade

her ease and clarity of language are as impressive as her instinctive feel for the modes of expression voiced by such diverse composers as Dvorak, Ravel and Mahler...Kozena encapsulates and conveys the spectrum of moods with a wealth of understanding and apt vocal inflection...There is never any doubt...that Kozena has these songs in her heart and has the wisdom and finesse with which to convey their very essence.

Kozena revels in [Dvorak's] inexhaustible stream of melody, while Simon Rattle’s Berliners relish his subtle orchestration...though Kozena’s French and German are not as idiomatic as her Czech, she is luminous in expressing the exoticism of Tristan Klingsor’s Shéhérazade poems, and Rückert’s celebration of the natural world.

Dvorak’s rarely recorded “Biblical Songs” are impassioned prayers and voluptuous Psalm settings that show off Ms. Kozena’s burnished mezzo. The orchestra sounds splendid in Ravel’s “Shéhérazade”; Mahler’s “Rückert Lieder” call forth a more austere and concentrated mode of expression.