'In an interview ten years ago, Jane Glover confessed she'd done Messiah some 50 times, but liked to address it always to the audience member who'd never heard it before. She does that here, delivering an unfussy and unadorned reading that gives Handel a vernacular immediacy that is profoundly appealing. It's a crowded market, inevitably, but Glover's emphasis on firm tempi and natural articulation pushes this version to the head of the queue, for newcomers and adepts alike. In that same interview, she claimed to prefer listening to playbacks on cassette in her car, to hear the performance as a whole, rather than focus on any chinks a clean album might throw up. There are flaws here, arguably, but they aren't structural: this is a rugged and utterly musical Messiah' (Choir & Organ)

'Glover's sense of drama, attention to detail and tempo relationships, and feeling for ritual nourish a persuasive interpretation, one backed by the Northern Sinfonia's stylish playing. Elizabeth Watts and Catherine Wyn-Rogers add deep emotional impact to the performance' (Classic FM)» More

'George Bernard Shaw said it should be a capital offence to perform Messiah with more than 80 musicians, and protested against the Victorians' 'attempts to make the brute force of a thousand throats do what can only be done with artistic insight and skill'. His dream has been fulfilled. Yet the old tradition lives on, though, judging by this splendid account, recorded in Huddersfield last December, it has been refined by the influence of the early-music movement. The buoyant chorus, under Glover's incisive direction, goes from strength to strength. Four vigorous soloists play their part, especially the tenor Mark Le Brocq and the soprano Elizabeth Watts, particularly fine in If God Be for Us' (The Times)