‘A crisply articulated white dwarf of a First Concerto, the controlled hysteria of the outer movements well conveyed … dark corners are certainly well lit in the central Moderato, taken as briskly as I’ve ever heard it; the tempo respects the metronome mark rather than the performance tradition. Gerhardt has never been one for lachrymose vibrato and his cadenza is purposeful. The finale fairly dazzles … in the later work the rethink is sufficiently radical to reset its expressive arc, with a breezier opening Largo, more deliberate central Allegretto and a tendency to seek expressive homogeneity where others have played up the quizzical shifts in mood … a fascinating challenge to existing favourites, captured in bright and immediate sound. The production is credited to Westdeutscher Rundfunk, the brilliant, well-nigh flawless soloist spotlit but not implausibly so’ (Gramophone)

‘The airy attractions of light music, meanwhile, regularly break with benefit into the Stanford-esque flow of the album's other offering, the 1904 Piano Quintet of Thomas Dunhill (1877-1946). The work also offers the additional benefit of a composer completely at ease writing for chamber forces, elegantly balancing and varying textures … as expected, the all-Australian team of Piers Lane and the Goldner String Quartet dig out these rarities with the necessary love and respect, and show that works don't have to be gold-plated masterpieces to offer rewarding listening’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘The Goldner Quartet and Piers Lane give a sonorous reading of Erlanger’s score and are equal to its muscular, sturdy temperament; indeed, Lane’s impressive execution of the piano part reminds us of just how dexterous a pianist the composer was. The ensemble sound throughout is lush and sympathetic, and never ceases to engage. The somewhat less dense sound of Dunhill’s Piano Quintet, which appeared in 1904, three years after Erlanger’s, is no less voluptuous in its scoring, though one is perhaps aware of a greater sense of polyphonic freedom among the strings. There is also something poetically attractive about the flexible nature of the thematic material, in which all four players excel’ (Gramophone)

‘Pious Anthems and Voluntaries aspires, in Finnissy's words, to be a work 'with guts and brains'. It embodies both in spades. And however 'brainy', the sequence maintains a powerfully visceral communicative grip. Nethsingha and his forces do it proud. Indeed one of their greatest achievements is to make the music sound as lived-in as more customary fare such as Byrd or Howells … Bach lures Finnissy into flights of perky playfulness, and the addition of flute and violin adds to the allure’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘Sigismond Thalberg was born in 1812, the year after Liszt. From an early age he revealed incredible pianistic gifts, and inevitably comparisons were made between the two piano tigers … Liszt, Thalberg and others arranged [operatic favourites] for piano, and as there no singers to dazzle, audiences were supplied by ever more elaborate and difficult piano showpieces, with rapid double octaves played fortissimo and unbelievably scintillating scales despatched with abandon … Hamelin thoroughly enjoys himself, surely giving as good as he would have got’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘If I were allowed a two-word review of this disc, it would read as follows: buy it. But then, as a long-term admirer of Marc-André Hamelin, you would expect me to write that. Except that I think this new release is among the very best of all the recordings he has given us, returning, as he does, to the kind of repertoire in which he made his name and in which he is sui generis … Hamelin’s leggiero hemidemisemiquaver arpeggios are of the kind that, even if you had followed your mother’s advice and practised harder, you would never equal. Not in a million years’ (Gramophone)

‘Directed by tenor Luís Toscano, Cupertinos is highly responsive to Lobo’s subtly varied settings which, in turn, reflect the nuances of text and liturgy … throughout, the ensemble’s candid, unwavering sound, chiselled diction and incisive articulation reveal Lobo’s masterly contrapuntal writing’ (BBC Music Magazine)» More

‘Now, award-winning Portuguese ensemble Cupertinos has turned its attention to this neglected composer … without doubt the real joy belongs to the two Masses … well worth investigating’ (Classical Source)» More

‘For aficionados of Golden Age polyphony, this is all self-recommending. That’s all without Cupertinos’ distinctive qualities, which are as evident here as on their debut: a very open sound, with the astringent tones of the female singers very much to the fore thanks to an equally bright acoustic’ (Gramophone)

‘The masterpieces come at the beginning and the end, the motets by Stanford and the songs by Parry, in which whole worlds of pain, belief, hope and tradition are condensed into telling cadences that internalise rather than boast about technique and aspiration … it’s in these more classical designs that O’Donnell’s choir shows its poise: thrillingly bright and straight-backed in Stanford’s ‘Caelos ascendit hodie’ (and judicious in that vibrant final cadence) and going with the flow in the tremendous text-led freedoms of Parry’s Songs of Farewell, the most remarkable meeting of English choral style with sheer instinct … it radiates an optimism of its own, which may well prove even more special in the long run’ (Gramophone)

‘There are many impressive things about these performances, not least the way Alban Gerhardt reinterprets important aspects of these pieces—particularly in the far better-known First Concerto. The slow movement, for instance, is taken at what sounds a lot more Shostakovich’s Moderato than the usual Adagio. It’s less spacious, less likely to drift into reverie, than the classic Rostropovich versions, but the gain in the sense of line is striking. This is less a troubled nocturnal dreamscape than a sustained, anguished ‘song of the night’. The same urgent purposefulness can be felt in the fast outer movements too: not so much barbed humour, rather a sense of someone driven to express as cogently and concisely as possible’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘Hamelin takes us through honey, heroics and heartache, lingering upon a phrase, a cadential turn, a melodic poignancy where once he might have pressed on, voiced tone production at a premium. Roulades glisten. The bass regions (here and there texturally strengthened or re-octaved) glow and caress sensually, the fortissimos thunder with Jovian, unmuddied declamation, all carried by a Ferrari of a Hamburg Steinway with power and more to take on the crowds at Monza, as characterfully equal to the beauties of Don Pasquale or veils and panoplies of Ernani as the cultured artistry and flowers of Moïse, the ‘monster’ stunts and drama of Hexaméron. Produced and engineered by Andrew Keener and Arne Akselberg, this is a ravishing, high octane journey. Réminiscences, dreams, feather every turn—historical, musical, personal. A pianophile’s paradise. Breathtaking’ (Classical Source)» More