Michael McHale

With peerless clarinet tone from Michael Collins, volatile viola phrasing from Isabelle van Keulen and brightfingered pianism from Michael McHale – three founding members of the recently formed... — BBC Music Magazine, February 2023, 4 out of 5 stars More…

The strongest music on the programme turns out to be the first, where Collins's huge reserves of gorgeous-toned musicianship are rewarded in...Malcolm Arnold's sharp-focus, irreverently brilliant... — BBC Music Magazine, May 2013, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Collins and McHale make a convincing case for these attractive scores. One senses that Collins is a sensitive musician. He certainly has impressive breath control and produces an attractive... — MusicWeb International, June 2012 More…

The mellifluous way Reger interweaves the dialogue between clarinet and piano is typically Brahmsian…Throughout all the performances, Collins shapes Reger’s long-breathed melodic lines with... — BBC Music Magazine, November 2017, 5 out of 5 stars More…

The sequence concludes with by far the largest item, Michael Collins’s own version of Franck’s Violin Sonata. Delivered by both artists with much panache, this handsome masterwork has an innately... — BBC Music Magazine, April 2020, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Brahms called Muhlfeld 'a master of his beautiful instrument', an epithet that could be extended to Collins who, with McHale, offers joyous performances of these lyrical but unsurprisingly cogent... — Gramophone Magazine, March 2015 More…

It's hard to imagine this varied programme better played than by Collins and Michael McHale. They're technically impeccable and stylistically flexible, and, aided by an unobtrusively excellent... — BBC Music Magazine, April 2011, 5 out of 5 stars More…

Cellist O’Kane is the star of this disc, sensitive and introspective in The Swan, then animated and robust Saint-Saens Sonata No. 1, in which he and McHale have a more even partnership. — BBC Music Magazine, May 2017, 4 out of 5 stars More…

In an age of anxiety and conflict, this music looks to higher levels of consciousness to provide assurance. Regardless of whether you share such faith, there is no doubting the beauty of the... — BBC Music Magazine, September 2009, 4 out of 5 stars More…