‘James O’Donnell left Westminster Abbey after 20 years as director of music to take a position at Yale. This, apparently his last recording at the Abbey, sustains the remarkably high standards he and his choir consistently achieved during his tenure … a fine and unmissable farewell by O’Donnell’ (BBC Music Magazine)» More

‘This CD amply demonstrates that James O’Donnell passed on to his successor, Andrew Nethsingha, a choir in peak condition. The singing throughout is highly skilled and strongly committed. It’s a demanding programme which presents the choir with a wide variety of challenges: all these challenges are successfully met. Most of the music is a cappella, meaning that Peter Holder is not often involved. But in A Special Appeal his contribution is nothing less than spectacular. Hyperion have entrusted this project to engineer David Hinitt and producer Adrian Peacock. With such an experienced team dealing with the technical aspects, it’s little surprise that the recordings are excellent. It will be noted that most of the music was recorded not on the choir’s home turf but in the fine acoustic of All Hallows’ Church, Gospel Oak. The choir sounds equally at home in both venues. This disc closes the James O’Donnell era at Westminster Abbey in considerable style’ (MusicWeb International)

‘Mahan Esfahani continues his survey of Bach, digging now into the Notebooks for Anna Magdalena Bach and their fascinating miscellany of insights into the composer’s domestic life … among the delights here are short works by Bach’s sons, including a handful of pieces by CPE that suggest a young composer already well advanced down his own idiosyncratic path. Esfahani has considerable fun with the jaunty little March in G, adding some bumptious ornamentation in the repeats. His rendering of the G minor Polonaise makes considerably more sense than the rather too stately version by Nicholas McGegan in his survey of the Notebooks’ (Gramophone)

‘These six supremely accomplished musicians approach the project seriously, of course, but with a welcome light touch … this is audibly a hugely enjoyable collaborative venture, the mellow warmth of the four saxophones and the contrasted tonal colouring of Jang Eun Bae’s piano providing a surprisingly convincing support for Gerhardt … the Falla suite and the three Shostakovich items [are] superbly played and most appealing’ (Gramophone)

‘The [Loeillet] Suite’s five short movements are quite as beguiling in Lane’s hands as they were in Cherkassky’s. Almost all the 17 titles here have some career connection to the pianist, personal taste dictating which will appeal more than others. Myra Hess’s selection of 13 Schubert dances and waltzes is another highlight (Lane ran the annual Myra Hess Day from 2006 to 2014), as are his exuberant dispatch of ‘Seguidillas’ (Albéniz) and Black and White Rag, and his poised, graceful handling of Godard’s charming Mazurka and the Schubert-Godowsky Rosamunde ballet music. You can easily imagine the audience’s indulgent end-of-recital smiles over Das Butterbrot’ (Gramophone)

‘Interweaving Byrd's Mass for five voices, which dates from the mid-1590s, with a handful of the composer's motets (Ave verum corpus and Circumdederunt me among them), this beautifully sung and recorded disc captures supremely well the stillness at the heart of the Mass, which was written for secret Catholic worship during the reign of Elizabeth I’ (The Sunday Times)

‘Mahan Esfahani and Carolyn Sampson are the perfect exponents of this repertoire with every item given a scrupulously faithful performance that never patronises any of the pieces, but treats each of them as though it were a miniature masterpiece, as indeed many of them are. Both of the keyboard instruments are pungent and characterful and beautifully recorded. It is only comparatively recently that recording technology has been enabled to capture the intimate sound of the clavichord, which was the domestic practice instrument of choice in the eighteenth century and could only be heard to best advantage by the player … Carolyn Sampson’s contributions are a particular pleasure and provide a welcome contrast to the keyboard pieces. The effect of the disc as a whole is to present a portrait of Bach’s second wife through the music that he chose for her, a woman about whom we know so little and of whom there is not even a visual image. As Esfahani says, ‘Whilst the works … are slight and of seemingly little value … they nonetheless manifest the entire spirit of a civilization whose values we would do well to understand with the same energy with which we master Bach’s considerable demands on our technical and expressive abilities.’ This is a recording to which listeners will wish to return repeatedly’ (MusicWeb International)

‘The Gesualdo Six sounds more apt and atmospheric and their reduced number better suits the simpler, more direct means of communication Byrd favours here as opposed to the more florid, 'continental' mode of his European contemporaries … the homogeneity of the group is impeccable and the contrast between those passages in the mass where Byrd reduces or changes the number of voices involved and when the full consort of six sings together in full voice is very apparent’ (MusicWeb International)» More

‘Pure in tone, intonation impeccable, the Gesualdo Six sing with precision and fluency, every line of polyphony audible. The Sixteen, the Tallis Scholars, Winchester Cathedral Choir and others have made top recordings of this repertoire. The chamber scale of the Gesualdo Six creates an authentic intimacy for works that might well have risked the lives of those who performed it’ (The Guardian)

‘The pièce de la résistance is Malzew’s arrangement of Gershwin’s Rhapsody—now Phantasy—in Blue, an inspired instrumental synthesis: raucous, sassy, percussive and truly in the spirit of the jazz age. The cello steals the clarinet’s opening solo, and gradually invades the piano’s position. It works. Malzew hits the jackpot with a chamber version of a classic score to knock out a summer festival audience’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘Martyn Brabbins has the music—and the traditions on which it draws—intuitively under his radar. Impeccably he sculpts the flow and sweep that is so often Stanford’s expressive default position, yet no less impressive is the purposefulness and energy of the fugal ‘Quam olim’ and the ethereal poise of the ‘Sanctus’. With fine singing from chorus and soloists alike the Requiem discloses one of Stanford’s greatest achievements’ (BBC Music Magazine)» More

‘This is a lovely new disc of string quartets … [Coleridge-Taylor’s Fantasiestücke] is really attractive music … the playing is so generous and open-hearted … it’s really great to hear a quartet like the Takács taking it on with such care and beauty’ (BBC Record Review)