‘Barry Wordsworth gets committed playing from the Royal Ballet Sinfonia … the best playing they have produced on disc to date. Notes are excellent, as is the recorded sound … a real winner’ (Fanfare, USA)

‘A fine performance and excellent presentation make this an essential issue for anybody interested in McCabe's music’ (Classic CD)

‘Stirringly dramatic, strikingly colourful … it is good to see McCabe's recent 60th birthday being marked by a number of fine new recordings. This could prove the most widely popular of them all’ (International Record Review)

‘A gripping score. This exciting recording of such a rich creation brings the atmosphere of the stage leaping out of the speakers’ (Birmingham Post)

‘A magnificent 60th-birthday offering to a fine composer … music of enormous integrity and genuine staying power from an underrated British master, impeccably realised on this occasion by artists and production crew alike. All in all, a very strong recommendation’ (Gramophone)

‘This is the finest disc yet of the music of John McCabe. Superb performances, vivid recording and ideal notes’ (The Guardian)

‘This disc offers the most satisfying glimpse yet of McCabe the composer. Excellent performances all round of two very rewarding works’ (The Scotsman)

‘It's hard to imagine a better advocate than the flautist Emily Beynon, such is the breathtaking spontaneity and imagination of her playing here’ (Gramophone)

‘There has not been a more accomplished first recording of any British orchestral work in recent years. A glorious performance’ (Tempo)

‘As Milne's forthright, utterly secure performances make clear, much of this is strongly characterised music … Milne is a wonderfully persuasive advocate for this distinctive and underrated music; together with his discs of the Skazki, these performances are a fine complement to his earlier survey of the 14 piano sonatas’ (The Guardian)

‘Medtner had a gift for crystallising images within a concise musical frame. There are delights aplenty, and Milne brings out their beguiling expressive range’ (The Daily Telegraph)

‘The humorous Dithyramb No 2 is surely a masterpiece, and Milne happily strides its Olympian terrain with unforced richness of tone’ (BBC Music Magazine)