‘I was unaware of the music of Ivo Antognini until this disc arrived but I liked what I heard very much. All the music is very well conceived for choral forces; the textures are consistently interesting; the harmonic language and melodies make the music very accessible. In short, this is imaginative choral music by a composer who clearly has something to say and who responds very well indeed to the texts he sets. Antognini is brilliantly served by the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge. These performances are fully up to the standard that has earned them such a strong reputation. I think this music is particularly suited to fresh, young and very well-trained voices, such as we have here. Throughout the programme Stephen Layton’s thorough training ensures that rhythmic precision, blend, tuning and clarity of both words and music are all excellent. The recordings were made by the seasoned team of engineer David Hinitt and producer Adrian Peacock. They have captured the sound of the choir most pleasingly in the sympathetic acoustic of the Church of St Peter and St Paul, Salle; from memory, that was a favoured recording haunt of The Tallis Scholars some years ago. The documentation is excellent; Paul Conway’s notes give us a clear and succinct introduction to the music. I shall be looking out for more music by Ivo Antognini.’ (MusicWeb International)

‘A strong performance [of the Gloria from the Mass in G minor] from the choir of Westminster Abbey conducted by James O’Donnell, and they capture the power and confidence that emerges after the sense of mystery in the opening Kyrie. James MacMillan’s music doesn’t feel out of place between Vaughan Williams and John Tavener, whose Canticles for King’s College Cambridge get the kind of performance that would stay long in the memory if you heard it at evensong. Twentieth- and twenty-first-century additions to this living tradition; excellent sound’ (BBC Record Review)

‘This is a genuinely excellent disc in every respect. Martyn Brabbins has a sure and certain grasp of the scale and sweep of this substantial 74:26 work but in many ways it is the summation of all the individual excellence that combine to make this such a satisfying listening experience. The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra play with all their usual skill and sensitivity. A major plus is the singing of the University of Birmingham Voices with the liner listing around 100 voices trained by Simon Halsey and Julian Wilkins. The two chorus masters have a done tremendous job with the singing alert and responsive, vibrant with exciting attack or melting warmth as required. Add to that a fine quartet of soloists led by soprano Carolyn Sampson fully up to the quasi-operatic drama of her part and you can see that the performing side of this recording is in fine fettle. But another important element is the actual recording and production. Symphony Hall Birmingham is a well-known and admired performing and recording venue but engineer Phil Rowlands and producer Andrew Keener have created an aural space that has the richness and sense of space this type of work requires. Lastly the balances achieved with such large performing groups is likewise excellent right down to the solo quartet being integrated into the choir and orchestra so that their parts are always present but never synthetically dominant … I am not sure when I have enjoyed the actual performance of a work of this type more in recent times … a great deal of the credit for this must go both to the choir trainers but also to Martyn Brabbins who once again proves himself to be especially adept at handling large-scale and complex scores. I would think that even the infamously hard to please Stanford would be grudgingly delighted with such an involving and impressive performance’ (MusicWeb International)

‘Their sound is so intensely beautiful, perfectly tuned and resonanced: the way the vocal lines unfold in Byrd’s Mass for five voices, and the way they control the final flowering of the Agnus Dei, is beautiful to hear, quietly ecstatic. It’s a well-made programme—you get the movements of the Mass interwoven with Byrd’s motets and it makes an excellent four hundredth anniversary for him’ (BBC Record Review)

‘There’s some brilliant playing, and surprises as well—he can’t resist throwing in a ‘blues’ variation before the coda. The tonal range of four saxophones and piano can be startling, the way they imitate orchestral sounds and strings, with silky smoothness’ (BBC Record Review)

‘Esfahani is, of course, best known for his recordings of baroque music but he also has a keen interest in recent and contemporary works for his instrument. It is interesting to know that he has settled in Prague and this project has a personal significance for him, as he was the last pupil of Kalabis’ wife, Zuzana Růžičková. His enthusiasm for these works comes across clearly, and the chamber ensembles, drawn from members of the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, support him well … the sleeve notes, by Esfahani, are helpful and the whole recording is clearly a labour of love and deserves strong support. There are other recordings of all these works but not in this programme. I hope Esfahani will go on to record other modern harpsichord concertos’ (MusicWeb International)

‘Rarely recorded, there’s a sense of the special occasion about this new one from the University of Birmingham Voices and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Martyn Brabbins … Brabbins embraces the Romantic grandeur of Stanford’s vision’ (BBC Record Review)

‘Des canyons aux étoiles contains fabulously imagined, visionary music. It doesn’t perhaps have the immediate sensory appeal of Turangalîla-symphonie and, of course, between the late 1940s when he wrote the symphony and the early 1970s when Des canyons came into being, Messiaen’s musical language had evolved and developed; in so doing, it had become rather more challenging. That said, Des canyons is a hugely rewarding score and one that appeals to the senses. It’s a formidable achievement; another of the composer’s great hymns to Creation and his Creator—though you certainly don’t need to subscribe to Messiaen’s religious ethos to appreciate this score. The present performance is superb in every respect and the musicians’ skills are complemented by an excellent recording which enables all the myriad details of Messiaen’s scoring to shine though. Paul Griffiths’ notes guide the listener through the key points of the work’ (MusicWeb International)

‘Music that you want to sing, want to programme liturgically … O magnum mysterium has a graceful sincerity about it, while Surge amica takes the excuse of its Song of Songs text to get sexy, smearing and smudging chords with reckless, generous depth … Trinity are on fine form: youthful, but firmly muscled and fearless, with Layton encouraging an open, fuller sound than the Oxbridge standard’ (Gramophone)

‘No one who loves this glorious music could have hoped for a better finish … the more I returned to these performances, the more I found myself warming to their fantasy, their disciplined spontaneity and their cumulative insights … as well as the buoyancy and silvery quality of the LHQ’s vibrato-light playing, there’s a real sense of invention—of making the music afresh—with a questioning, almost improvisatory quality to the great ascending violin solo at the climax of Op 77 No 2’s slow movement. Dotted rhythms have a spirited kick. The players spring away from the earthy bagpipe drones in the finale of Op 77 No 1, and at both the start and finish of the finale of Op 77 No 2 it sounds as if they’re inventing the music on the wing. The final bars feel entirely satisfying and anything but valedictory … if you have enjoyed this cycle so far, you will not be disappointed’ (Gramophone)

‘Brabbins, who truly understands the language of this music, judges the tempos and balance of the ensemble with instinctive sensitivity; his handling of the chorus—the University of Birmingham Voices—is outstanding, and he genuinely brings out the luminosity of Stanford’s lustrous orchestration, which is splendidly executed by the CBSO, especially in the lovely solos of the 'Dies irae', the arresting climax of the ‘Lacrimosa’, the swirling Rhinegold-like figurations of the 'Sanctus' and the solemn funeral cortege of the 'Agnus' … the chorus sing throughout with a youthful clarity, beauty of tone and lovely intonation … in 1997 the Requiem was issued by Marco Polo … a most welcome recording at the time, but there is much more to learn about Stanford’s choral masterpiece from the more cohesive architecture, sound and élan of this vibrant new issue from Hyperion. For anyone interested in British choral music of the period, it is a must!’ (Gramophone)

‘The CBSO plays splendidly throughout. The collective response is sonorous and there’s an abundance of expert solo work to enjoy and admire The performance could not be in better hands than those of Martyn Brabbins. His conducting demonstrates evident empathy with the score and it seems clear that he brings out the best in all the performers. Phil Rowlands led the engineering team for this recording and the sound is first rate. The climaxes open up warmly and the listener gets a good sense of the perspectives in the hall. Stanford’s Requiem is a noble work and it’s an important score among his compositions. Like much of the rest of his output, it fell into neglect after his death but, as this fine performance demonstrates, that neglect was wholly unjustified. 2024 will mark the centenary of his death … this recording of the Requiem offers us something to whet our appetite for the centenary year. It was in Birmingham that the work was first performed; 125 years later, the city did Stanford’s memory proud’ (MusicWeb International)