19 January 2024
colinscolumn.com, Colin Anderson
Hamelin: New Piano Works‘Marc-André Hamelin’s imagination feeds engaging invention in nine compositions for piano—and he can play them, too … eminently recommendable and revealing’ (colinscolumn.com)
» More15 January 2024
Limelight, Australia, Steve Moffatt
Debussy: Études & Pour le piano‘Osborne is in magnificent form, offering his characteristic clarity and intelligence, as well as an abundance of artistry. The 'Sarabande' from
Pour le piano is beautifully shaped, while the 'Toccata' that follows demonstrates his control and sparkling technique’ (Limelight, Australia)
» More23 December 2023
BBC Record Review, Andrew McGregor
Morning star‘One of my favourite new Christmas albums, from The Gesualdo Six directed by Owain Park. Wonderfully evocative singing describing Pärt’s almost instrumental sounds … if you want the finest possible celebration of hope and joy, renewal and rebirth, it’s hard to beat this. Cornelius’s The Three Kings at the start, music by Byrd, Howells and Lassus, traditional chant, newer music by Judith Bingham and Joanna Marsh, sung with enviable precision and radiance’ (BBC Record Review)
21 December 2023
colinscolumn.com, Colin Anderson
Debussy: Études & Pour le piano‘Steven Osborne gives vibrant, dynamic and searching readings of Debussy’s
Études in technically immaculate performances that also yield maximum musical potential … beautifully recorded’ (colinscolumn.com)
» More9 December 2023
The Telegraph, Simon Heffer
Howells: Hymnus Paradisi & An English Mass‘A conductor who never received the honours he merited was Vernon Handley, who was responsible for three of the finest recordings of British music ever made. One is his 1992 account of Herbert Howells’s masterpiece Hymnus Paradisi (Hyperion). Not only does he take the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic at an ideal pace, but his two soloists elevate something in any case overwhelming to perfection: the tenor John Mark Ainsley is immaculate, but the soprano soloist, Julie Kennard, is better still—exactly what Howells must have envisaged when he wrote the piece’ (The Telegraph)