'Faced with a commission to pay tribute to his friend's son whose life was cut tragically short, Jonathan Dove could all too easily have turned to composing a Requiem. Instead, he has fashioned an oratorio celebrating childhood and young life from birth. A Walt Whitman poem gives the work its title and finale, in which innocence and experience are grafted on to an ecstatic sense of eternal continuity. Texts are adroitly assembled from authors such as Thomas Traherne and Emily Dickinson, and there's a penultimate triptych involving Chidiock Tichborne, Shakespeare and Tennyson in musings on loss and grief. It all plays to Dove's trademark strengths: the young choirs draw on his community music prowess and his approachable idiom shows his willingness to refract a multiplicity of influences, ranging from Walton to Britten to John Adams. The setting of Keats's A Song about Myself is an impish Brittenesque scherzo, revelling in the freshness of the children's choir. In this live recording of its premiere, conductor Simon Halsey's CBSO forces savour the music's immediacy' (BBC Music Magazine)

'The combination of Ralph Allwood and the Rodolfus Choir usually means quality. It does again here in this excellently sung recital of Elgar choral pieces. It's hard, in fact, to imagine Go, song of mine, the opening item, done better … The sound is ideally balanced. A fine introduction to a still under-appreciated area of Elgar's output' (BBC Music Magazine)» More

'Many an aspiring composer today would relish the lucrative market for sheet music afforded by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries' passion for choral festivals, glee clubs and suchlike. Elgar certainly knew their worth, as this selection of splendid part-songs—composed over a 40-year period—testifies … the delicacy (and occasional fragility) of the Rodolfus's young voices make the effect even more poignant … the whole choir blooms in Elgar's greatest part-song, the unbridled Go, song of mine' (Gramophone)

'Even by Max Reger's standards, the works that fill the first of this pair of discs are massive: at 35 and 31 minutes respectively, they are his two most substantial organ works. The Introduction, Variations and Fugue on an Original Theme Op 73, composed in 1903, is couched in the dense, chromatic style typical of Reger's maturity and dominated by the huge central set of variations, which is followed by a relatively modest concluding fugue. In the Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue in E minor Op 127, from 10 years later, the weight is again the central section, a passacaglia with 26 variations. In this case it is balanced by a hefty double fugue, while the textures have a clarity and, in David Goode's performance on the organ of Symphony Hall, Birmingham, a greater crispness, that really do suggest more transparency in Reger's later style. By contrast, the Five Easy Preludes and Fugues on the second disc seem much more straightforward and lighter in tone; Goode certainly makes them sparkle in a way that belies the composer's dour image' (The Guardian)

'Josquin Des Prez, the most influential composer in the Flemish school of the early sixteenth century, died in 1521. Over the following decade, a whole generation of composers, many of them former pupils, wrote memorial works, often quoting material and techniques from Josquin's own music. The King's Singers' disc of those tributes centres on perhaps the most substantial of them: the Requiem in Memoriam Josquin Desprez composed by Jean Richafort (c1480-1550). Richafort, who worked at both the French court and in Bruges, may well have been a Josquin pupil, too, and his requiem, which borrows themes and devices from the older man's chansons, was one of the most successful of its time' (The Guardian)» More

'An unexplored, if slightly morbid Renaissance treasure trove, this CD presents memorials composed by Josquin's colleagues after the Flemish master's death in 1521. The centrepiece is Jean Richaford's Requiem, with flowing counterpoint spiced by rich dissonances. But the most astonishing work is Jacquet de Mantua's Dum vastos, weaving together five Josquin 'hits'' (The Times)

'Fool's Paradise, for string orchestra, evolved from a piano trio by Joby Talbot about which we are told relatively little in the booklet. It is a hauntingly effective score in four parts, in many ways even finer than Alice' (Gramophone)

'Supported by Isabelle Trub's accompaniments, often rather more assertive and colourful than reticent Brits expect … David John Pike … is a rising young baritone with a powerfully operatic voice' (BBC Music Magazine)» More

'There's nothing precious or pained about Ben Johnson's tenor in his admirable recording of the five Canticles. The tone is sturdy, open and direct' (The Times)

'The St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Yuri Temirkanov, presents sterling performances of excerpts from Rimsky-Korsakov's The Invisible City of Kitezh and Sheherazade' (The Northern Echo)

'Walton's interpretation of Silent Woods is sublime, its songful rapture sustained in a seamless stream of subtly inflected melody, with a gentle uplift to the spirits in the central, more animated section. The two concertos on either side of this lovely miniature, ably supported by the Philharmonia, confirm Walton as an artist with secure intuition in terms of style and with a manner of performing that speaks with natural fluency, eloquence and strength of purpose. The contrasting elements of fragility and resolve in the Schumann concerto are held in fine balance, and in the Dvořák there is the sense that Walton, while consistently true to the composer's own voice, has a fresh, personal and thoroughly captivating way of expressing it' (The Daily Telegraph)» More

'Joby Talbot is composer perhaps best known far his film and television work, especially A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the hit BBC comedies The League of Gentleman and Psychoville. He has also, however, worked with some of Europe's leading choreographers, including with Christopher Wheeldon on a production for The Royal Ballet of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. A highlights disk of this score has just been released on Signum Classics. The music is quirkily tonal, unabashedly melodic, imaginatively orchestrated and virtuously (because it is well written) accessible. Some might argue that this delightful music isn't properly 'contemporary classical', to which I would blow a very large raspberry. If you like any of the standard classical ballet repertoire—Tchaikovsky et al—you will love this' (Composition Today)