The London Handel Players received a Five Star Performance AND Five Star Recording rating for their Total Eclipse: Handel at Home, Vol. 2 release in the December 2023 issue of BBC Music Magazine! “turning period arrangements of Handel opera hits into searingly gorgeous instrumental music.… Making such creations fizz is no easy task, requiring as […]
The Eusebius Quartet and Alasdair Beatson’s recording of Korngold Chamber Music is a BBC Music Magazine Choice and January 2022 Recording of the Month! “The Eusebius Quartet and Beatson bring this heady score all the intensity it deserves, their lavish tone conjuring quasi-orchestral colours, sensitive to every twist of the rubato-laden canvas (and there are […]
George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra — The Forgotten Recordings receives a five-star review and the Historical Critic’s Choice distinction in the June 2021 BBC Music Magazine: “…it’s fascinating to hear the partnership when their much-vaunted precision was well in progress, if not immaculate. … The stereo recordings… show how far the orchestra had come… […]
BBC Music Magazine gives Simon Callaghan’s George Dyson: The Open Window recording a four-star review: “even with the fingering is simple and the length very brief, Dyson usually packs in plenty of substance, with tricky rhythms, surprising harmonies that belie his conservative image and considerable authentic charm. …in the Open Window set of 1920, Dyson […]
BBC Music Magazine gives a four-star performance and recording review for Paul Spicer and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir’s Rosa Mystica: “The programme concept here is a familiar choral conductor’s standby, music in honour of the Virgin Mary: but the selection is anything but hackneyed. … The experienced choral director Paul Spicer is an […]
BBC Music Magazine gives a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Performance and ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Recording rating to our new Penelope Thwaites: From Five Continents recording in the July 2020 issue: “All except one of these choral compositions and songs receive their first recordings in this set and to say they are lively, catchy and imaginative is probably not saying enough. […]
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ BBC Magazine Review “Janet Sung shines in the lyrical episodes of Vaughan Williams’s Violin Concerto, most especially in the beautiful Adagio – Tranquillo central movement. … Kenneth Hesketh’s richly colourful and evocative orchestral soundscapes… complement Sung’s by turns gleaming harmonics, bird-like song and yearning lyricism. … Sung and the Britten Sinfonia play Ravel’s lush […]
“a well-balanced selection of six sonatas… recorded with appropriate crispness and cantabile in Turner Sims hall. The sparkle of McCawley’s touch is instantly apparent… as is his evenness of fingering in the passagework… Most impressive throughout the disc is McCawley’s command of subtle nuance and rubato without ever sounding self-conscious or mannered. The impression, so […]
BBC Music Magazine‘s November 2019 issue features a five-star review for Alexander Karpeyev’s Composers at the Savile Club recording: “What do Elgar, Walton, Parry, Virgil Thomson, and Arnold have in common? Answer: they were all members of the Savile Club… Stylistically it ranges widely, from the sweepingly Brahmsian Prelude of Parry’s Hands Across the Centuries […]
“It’s an elegant idea, and it has paid off. … aside from being very winning in its own right, Kurt Schwertsik’s Unterwegs nach Heiligenstadt prepared the way for Op. 30 No. 1 so effectively that I genuinely found myself listening to the Beethoven with new ears. Matthew Taylor’s Tarantella Furiosa emerges compellingly… David Matthews’s Sonatina… […]