By Martin Bernheimer [Financial Times, 26 April 2006]
It was all ñ until encore time ñ very poetic, very melancholy, very Russian. Olga Borodina, stellar mezzo-soprano from St Petersburg, joined Ildar Abdrazakov, rising basso from Ufa, for a programme spanning nearly everything from Balakirev to Tchaikovsky. Forget borscht and nuts.