‘Hewitt’s is, unlike a number of other versions of Ravel’s œuvre, a highly worthwhile venture, full of stylish, intelligent playing’ (International Record Review)
‘Angela Hewitt plumbs Ravel's paradoxical qualities to perfection in this superb set. This magnificent survey … a treasure trove! Angela Hewitt joins Gieseking, Rogé, Thibaudet and Lortie among the most distinguished if entirely different Ravel cycles on record, and easily withstands comparison in such exalted company’ (Gramophone)
‘While an easy majority of pianists would run for cover when faced with such sheerly physical demands, Hamelin relishes every challenge, clarifying and refining Reger's potential for opacity at every point. His first entry, like a thunderclap, makes you leap to attention but so too does his expressive beauty in the subsequent molto tranquillo’ (Gramophone)
‘Both performances are formidable. Marc-André Hamelin does powerhouse things with the Reger, and is notably harrowing in the great central largo. The skittish charm with which he plays the Burleske, meanwhile, belies its often atrocious difficulty. Ilan Volkov and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra are first rate’ (The Guardian)
‘Reger's Piano Concerto is a work of immense power that is nevertheless prone, in the wrong hands, to sound like a heavy Brahmsian homage … Marc-André Hamelin's hands, however, are definitely the right ones, and this is one of the most lucid, as well as passionate, readings of the piece I have heard … if the Reger is usually in danger of ponderosity, Richard Strauss's youthful Burleske can easily sound meretriciously clever. But Hamelin gives one of the most stylish and elegant accounts of it I've heard, pointing up the warm lyricism of the waltz-episode and setting the sparkling wit of Strauss in scintillating contrast to the earthly humour of his fellow-Bavarian, Reger’ (BBC Music Magazine)
