Victor Hely-Hutchinson

“Bejun Mehta certainly can't be faulted on his eclecticism in his whistle-stop tour of English song...Mehta's singing is so heart-stoppingly beautiful and musically perceptive that you wish he had recorded whole cycles rather than just representative songs.” The Guardian, 1st September 2011 ****

“Mehta's gift for mood and atmosphere is heard in the light beauty of Quilter's "It was a lover and his lass", the sweet melancholy of Gurney's "Down by the Salley Gardens" or the veiled mystery of Lennox Berkeley's "The Horseman". Pianist Julius Drake provides customary alert, expressive accompaniment.” The Observer, 11th September 2011

“Mehta is a technically excellent singer; with a firm well-supported line; an unusually resonant lower range; and fine expressive diction, well equal to Julius Drake's sturdy accompaniment. And he's hardly more bloodless than genteel English tenors of the era...he exploits his thinner tone deftly for unusual, even eerie effects, especially in Stanford's chilling La belle dame snas merci” BBC Music Magazine, November 2011 *****

“Any suspicion that these songs might sound lukewarm or tentative in the hands of a countertenor is soon dispelled by Mehta's invigorating singing of Quilter's 'Blow, blow, thou winter wind' and the keen way he dramatises Stanford's 'La Belle Dame sans merci'. The verbal point he brings to a handful of Purcell songs in arrangements by Britten and Tippett is also appreciated.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2011

“Mehta may not possess the most extensive of vocal paintboxes but he does gradate the shades at his disposal to good effect: pastels rather than oils. In Drake he has a partner who draws suitable sounds from the piano.” International Record Review, November 2011

“A bewildering hotch-potch of Yuletide sweetmeats including a welcome rarity in Quilter's A Children's Overture. Decent playing and singing.” BBC Music Magazine, Christmas 2009 ***

“Purely for sound quality, this disc is a winner. It is a sumptuous, full-blooded recording with a richly resonant bass matched by the soloist's powerful Fazioli. Both concertos are real finds.
The F sharp minor First Concerto (1907) has not been played for more than 95 years; the E major (1919) especially, once a favourite of conductor Vilem Tausky, is tremendously effective. It would bring the house down were it played at the Proms again (it received its premiere there in 1920) if only for the last movement's big tune which simultaneously combines Celtic lament, Elgarian nobilmente and a (prescient) celluloid weepie. True, the orchestra has the best of this, but the soloist, by the time of its final full statement, has earned a few bars' rest. Talking of whom, Norris gives the performance of his life in these two works, handling the bravura writing with aplomb and total conviction. He also has a marvellous repose at the keyboard – in the slow movement of the First Concerto, for example, before it builds to its shattering climax. Less, he knows, is more.
The final (eight-minute) work, aptly subtitled 'Cum Grano Salis' is, as the composer noted only three years after its publication in 1931, 'hopelessly out of date' and a somewhat bathetic appendage to the grand romance of Phillips's concertos.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Both concertos are real finds. Norris gives the performance of his life in these two works, handling the bravura writing… with aplomb and total conviction.” Gramophone Magazine, August 2008