'Magnifica' (CD Compact, Spain)

‘Deeply committed and intense performances … warmly recommended’ (Classic CD)

‘Every bar of the music springs vividly out of the speakers’ (Gramophone)

‘London Winds are second to none in terms of technical accomplishment, expressive commitment and warmth of timbre’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘Cellist Alban Gerhardt and violist Lawrence Power are both magnificent, and neither distorts the work's shape with excessive ego displays. This is a sublime, idiomatically phrased performance, given by the very orchestra which premiered the work. So you’d expect something special. The moments of quiet rapture are divine—the third variation’s beauty may provoke tears in sensitive listeners. The high points are too numerous to list, and include an awe-inspiring Ride through the air and a death scene painted with wit and tenderness … the recording is rich, warm and detailed. Michael Kennedy’s notes are excellent. Unmissable’ (TheArtsDesk.com)

‘Both Gerhardt and Power are such fine, sensitive and expressive musicians that they encapsulate the varied moods of their protagonists poignantly and purposefully’ (Gramophone)

‘Till Eulenspiegel is played by the Cologne orchestra under Stenz with great directness and vigour’ (The Daily Telegraph)

‘This album combines Strauss's two most brilliant tone poems—works in which his prodigious cleverness and storytelling genuis have full play … the playing here is first rate, and Alban Gerhardt and Lawrence Power are vivid soloists’ (The Sunday Times)

‘This performance of Don Quixote, in particular, is one of the finest on disc … we're conscious throughout of the classical form at the work's heart, though Stenz is also marvellous when it comes to those astonishing moments when the Don's fantasies assume a transcendent reality greater than anything on earth. It's nigh-on perfect’ (The Guardian)

‘This electrifying duo of tone poems … Markus Stenz gets the proportions exactly right. He plunges us into the delirium of the melancholy hero's addled brain with a clarity pointing to Schoenberg's First Chamber Symphony. The recording is supremely natural … [Compared with Karajan / EMI] Stenz is closer to Strauss' intentions. Stenz has a star soloist … adventurous Alban Gerhardt is vivid as Quixote takes several tumbles, piercing in the central night vigil and poignant on the deathbed, dying with the most eerie of downward slides. The peerless viola player Lawrence Power is luxury casting as an equally human Sancho Panza … one of the best Till Eulenspiegels on record … an irrepressible performance’ (BBC Music Magazine)

'A thrilling, often revelatory performance, alive to every intense and modernistic gesture. Valery Gergiev finds both great colour and emotional depth in the music … the London Symphony Orchestra on superb form … first-class sound and presentation' (Time Out)

'Gergiev, with the LSO in fine form … conveys passions and tensions with compelling, sometimes deafening power' (BBC Music Magazine)