'Every number here has something particularly arresting within it, all supported by persuasive and committed singing, and playing of intense charm. Recorded sound, though stereo only, envelops the performers in the spacious warming acoustic of a French church' (BBC Music Magazine)» More

‘This is as close as you'll ever get to musical champagne; I've a feeling Saint-Saëns would have approved … Saint-Saëns's Second Concerto is fiendishly difficult, with much of its virtuosity reserved for the soloist's long accompanying episodes. The composer himself confessed it was 'too difficult' to achieve popularity. Yet Clein has the measure of it, delivering the dizzying double-stops with airborne grace and tight precision … she revels in the spacious cadenza of its curious, short fast movement, combining limpid vocalise with insouciant runs’ (BBC Music Magazine)» More

‘This is Tchaikovsky at his best, in music of relatively short duration and of very wide-ranging character … the young Siberian-born Pavel Kolesnikov … shows an extra degree of poetry and is … recorded, under the watchful eye (and ear) of possibly the greatest living classical record producer’ (International Record Review)» More

‘Byrd's double life, in public a member of Queen Elizabeth I's Chapel Royal in a newly Protestant England, in private a covert Catholic, directly shaped his music. Grand works such as the Great Service are among the glories of the English choral tradition. In contrast, the three Latin masses set here, long neglected, were for amateur, chamber performance in hidden Catholic communities. Westminster Cathedral Choir may sing them with more splendour and finesse than Byrd himself would have expected, yet the results are uplifting and moving. It's no slight to these musicians to say the disc is worth buying for the Byrd scholar John Milsom's incomparable notes: a masterly encapsulation of Tudor church music history in a few dense pages’ (The Observer)» More

'The culmination of three years as Associate Composer for the BBC Singers, Airplane Cantata features the choir's performances of five pieces, culminating in the lengthy Choral Symphony, a celebration of London through six centuries of texts, from courtly fifteenth century verse to latterday urban poetry. Three pieces set poems by William Blake, George Meredith and Robin Bell, of which the latter's Ruchill Linn is the standout, with a haunting soprano evocation of a curlew's call, and a wonderful tumbling cascade of overlapping lines conveying a waterfall's 'white arc of foam'. The cantata is the latest work reflecting Jackson's fascination with flying, its nine sections using contemporary accounts of achievements by the Wright Brothers, Bleriot and others' (The Independent)

'Combining a Greek background with an Australian upbringing, Elena Xanthoudakis pays tribute in her personal introduction to this wide-ranging bel canto selection to two illustrious predecessors Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland. She also highlights her collaboration on this disc with Richard Bonynge, whose stylistically apposite conducting is one of its most notable features. Under his baton the Royal Northern Sinfonia offers first-rate accompaniments, while the recorded sound is close to ideal, allowing the characteristic scoring of individual pieces to register with clarity … It's a programme that has been thoughtfully put together, and Xanthoudakis demonstrates considerable mettle in delivering it so skilfully' (Opera Magazine)» More

‘The dark moods of the F minor Sonata … are relished to the full by both musicians: the range of colours and the precision of the rhythmic articulation are two notable features of a performance that grips the listener from start to finish, thanks to its unflinching conviction as well as its consummate skill. It’s a magnificent performance. The D major Sonata (originally written for flute and piano and transcribed at Oistrakh’s request) is even better. The attention to detail, to subtle nuances, is breathtaking, and the overall drive and momentum of the performance results in a reading as fine as any I’ve heard, in sound that is better than most. It’s interesting to compare Ibragimova and Osborne with Kremer and Argerich (DG). While the latter is a magnificent partnership by any standards … I get a feeling of even greater involvement and excitement from the new Hyperion disc … this Prokofiev disc is a triumphant achievement, recommended without reservation’ (International Record Review)» More

‘From the austere opening bars of the First Violin Sonata, one of Prokofiev’s towering masterpieces, it’s clear that this violin-and-piano duo is capable of the subtlest interplay. Steven Osborne is the lion, or the demon, that needs taming by Alina Ibragimova’s fiddler, dancing—sometimes ever so frailly—on the volcano. There are revelations in the outer movements: never have I heard the violin’s tentative B minor melodising as so much the heart of the preludial Andante assai—it's equal in effect to what Prokofiev described as the 'wind in the graveyard’ rushings which appear at the end of that movement and return so strikingly at the end of the work—and the way the scherzo's abrasive insistence returns in the piano bass of the finale is truly hair-raising’ (BBC Music Magazine)» More

‘These charming, inventive works—the pensive 'June', the waltzing 'December'—are not heard often in the concert hall. That the impressive young Siberian-born pianist Pavel Kolesnikov, a 2012 laureate of the Honens Prize, loves this suite comes through in his elegant playing on this welcome recording, which includes Tchaikovsky’s lovely Six Morceaux’ (The New York Times)» More

‘Benjamin Godard is nowadays known solely for the Berceuse from his 1888 opera Jocelyn, regularly performed by classical and popular musicians alike. There was more to him than that, however, as this enterprising disc—Volume 63 of Hyperion's Romantic Piano Concerto series—admirably proves. Godard distrusted Wagnerism, and his two piano concertos constrain Romantic sensibilities within the classical form in ways that often resemble Brahms, though Godard's thematic and orchestral elegance remain quintessentially French … the disc is a tour de force for Howard Shelley, who, in addition to coping with Godard's often vertiginous piano writing, directs all three performances from the keyboard, which is no mean feat’ (The Guardian)» More

‘Marie Fel was the diva of her day and the darling of the French baroque. In this exquisite release from soprano Carolyn Sampson and Ex Cathedra, Sampson steps into Fel's dainty silk slippers and guides us through a life in music … Sampson’s rounded tone and poised musicality find a natural fit in this repertoire, showcased beautifully in ‘Un tendre intérêt vous appelle’ from Rameau’s Castor et Pollux and Lalande’s sacrilegiously lovely Tu Rex gloriae’ (Sinfini.com)» More

‘Prokofiev's two violin sonatas make a stark juxtaposition. The F minor is a big-boned, dark-hued expression of feeling that can be taken as mourning for the depredations of Soviet terror; the D major is one of those seraphically contented neoclassical excursions that adorn mid-20th-century music. They are played here with an intense-feeling virtuosity, Ibragimova equally magnificent in restraint—as when executing those 'graveyard' scales slipping in during the F minor—and when belting out, say, the second movement of that work, as strongly contrasted with its predecessor as the whole sonata is with its successor’ (The Sunday Times)» More