‘The Piano Quintet comes off marvellously and compares favourably with any performance on record, past or present … delightful performances on which it would be difficult to improve, and excellent recordings too’ (The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs)

‘The Gaudier Ensemble is flawless, unfailingly persuasive and play with both vigour and polish which makes this issue irresistible … it is difficult to conceive of better performances than these; each of the players … combines to the highest degree a virtuoso command of his or her instrument, a complete involvement in the score at hand, and perfect blending in ensemble. Hyperion's recording is as pure and natural as one could wish. Even the booklet is a model of what such things should be … any serious collector who has not yet encountered this music should search for this disc ASAP’ (Fanfare, USA)

‘Maestro Layton is a master of shading and dynamic control, so there's always a sense of ebb and flow to the glowing harmonies that animate this music’ (American Record Guide)

‘In the fourth year of Stephen Layton's directorship the Trinity choir's sense of corporate ease and confidence is such that nothing fazes them. The singing is beautifully blended, the parts sensitively balanced, the absence of spurious vibrato a constant pleasure. Typically outstanding Hyperion sound caps this warmly recommendable issue’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘First, a health warning: it is impossible to do anything else but listen once the opening track of this glorious album begins … here is music making of the highest quality. I don’t have the space to mention all of the choral wonders on this disc but I can say with certainty that it is an album that will repay repeated listening for years to come’ (Classic FM Magazine)

‘Fascinating and appealing, up to the usual standard of this label’ (Hi-Fi News)

‘Certainly worthy of reissue; midprice doesn't indicate second-best’ (Early Music Review)

‘Choral music is a sphere that welcomes the new. The Anglican (mainly) church is a leading source of new commissions for countless composers, among them Judith Bingham (b1952), who stands out not least because she spent her early career as a professional singer and knows the idiom. She favours rich, multilayered radiance, as heard in the two Wells service canticles—written for the excellent choir who perform here. Jonathan Vaughn provides spirited organ accompaniment and interludes. The lullaby setting of God be in my head, the abundant interpretation of Gerard Manley Hopkins's Harvest and the unexpectedness of the Bromley Missa brevis, written for an enlightened south London parish church, all play to Bingham's creative strengths’ (The Observer)

‘This excellent disc from Wells Cathedral Choir looks back over 15 years of Bingham's choral works … there's a frankness to the Wells choral sound that suits music that has nothing precious or twee about it. It creates an underlying muscularity, even in the glowing cluster-chords of Cantate Domino and foregrounds the texts that Bingham sets with Britten-like care … this collection is the most representative yet of the composer's functional, liturgical works’ (Gramophone)

‘The setting of Cantate Domino memorably commingles an anxious, questing quality with glimpses of certitude and placidity, a balance sensitively struck in this assured Wells Cathedral Choir performance … Our faith is a light is a luminescent setting highlighting the bright, gleaming quality of tone the Wells top line is currently producing. The Hyperion recording is atmospheric and expertly balanced. Recommended’ (BBC Music Magazine)

'The BBC Singers do their erstwhile colleague proud, David Hill securing performances as flexible and multi-contoured as they are expressive and spatially-aware. The recorded sound is warm and natural jus like the music itself' (BBC Music Magazine)» More

'I doubt whether anything the year brings for Birtwistle’s 80th birthday is going to dim the lustre of this excellent recording of his choral music. Nor surpass it in importance, perhaps—it seems to me we may have failed to realise how close these pieces are to the core of him, in no way apart from the thrust of what he does on other stages, orchestral and instrumental, lyrical and theatrical' (Gramophone)