Pene Pati and La Néréide End the Year on a High as Critics’ Choice
11/12/2025
Gramophone’s writers have selected their favourite releases from the many impressive albums of the past year, with Pene Pati and La Néréide making the list.
Serenata a Napoli
Pene Pati / Il Pomo d’Oro / Antonello Paliotti
Adrian Edwards writes:
Neapolitan song, long out of fashion, makes a welcome comeback in this pairing of Samoan tenor Pene Pati with Il Pomo d’Oro, an eight-piece ensemble, in a collection of songs and original compositions spearheaded and elegantly arranged by their leader Antonello Paliotti. Pati’s agreeable light tenor complements these warm-hearted and historically informed performances that vibrate with the colours of guitars, mandolin and strings. Summer and sunshine.
Le cœur et la raison
La Néréide
Alexandra Coghlan writes:
As imaginative as it is lovely, La Néréide’s ‘Le cœur et la raison’ stands head and shoulders above the rest this year. Adding a fictional frame to an unusual selection of sacred and secular repertoire illuminates little-heard music in fresh and emotive ways. Sopranos Camille Allérat, Julie Roset and Ana Vieira Leite have created something utterly original and beautiful.
Pene Pati also features in the New York Times’ Best Classical Performances of 2025
Joshua Barone writes:
The Samoan-born tenor Pene Pati is a rising star on opera stages, with a stadium-size voice and charisma to match. But his New York recital debut, in the intimate Board of Officers Room at the Park Avenue Armory, offered an opportunity to hear him up close. With an attentive Ronny Michael Greenberg at the piano, Pati delivered pliant lyricism, dramatic acuity and forensic attention to language in French and English songs, revealing a chamber musician worth watching.
Read the New York Times’ review of the recital.