“A heady mix, rooted in European polyphony but influenced, often almost beyond recognition, by local rhythm and colour.” BBC Music Magazine, September 2005
“choral music of the most vibrant quality imaginable, performed by Ex Cathedra with equally vigorous zeal…unmissable” Birmingham Post
“This is one of the most eye-opening CDs - or should I say ear-opening - that I have heard this year. What a magical concoction of sounds - and what brilliant playing!'” Classic FM Magazine
“Ex Cathedra has unearthed some magnificent music here; there are plenty of fascinating discoveries performed with great feeling and panache, and with potent seasong from the period instruments. The disc has the makings of a bestseller, and certainly deserves to be” The Telegraph
“This young Finnish prize-winning pianist makes his recorded début with a challenging and enterprising a programme of Schubert transcriptions by Liszt, Godowsky, Prokofiev and Busoni. Schubert takes less kindly to arrangement than most; his profound simplicity is easily compromised. True Schubertians might well have winced at what Godowsky does to 'Morgengruss' from Die schöne Müllerin, where innocence is turned into experience and a tropical efflorescence. Yet if to some this is sacriligeous, others, will celebrate an act of engaging decadence. Liszt, for all his theatricality, is much more an ardent devotee than mischief-maker, often memorably true to both his own and Schubert's sharply opposed natures, whereas Prokofiev and Busoni's offerings are disappointingly more deferential than genuinely re-creative. Siirala's performances are masterly and warmly sympathetic throughout, and never more so than in Godowsky's horrendously demanding Passacaglia on Schubert's Unfinished Symphony. Even Horowitz balked before this challenge, complaining that you needed six hands to encompass such fearsome difficulties.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010
“The Australian Chamber Orchestra has consistently championed the music of its countryman Peter Sculthorpe. Cello Dreaming, premiered by Steven Isserlis and the BBC Philharmonic during the 1998 Manchester Cello Festival, is inspired by the sights, sounds and diverse cultural mix of Australia's northern coastline. It's a beguiling evocation, boasting nature music of imagination and local colour; Emma-Jane Murphy is an impressive soloist. The Aboriginal melody known as 'Djilile' was first used by Sculthorpe as far back as 1950 in his Fourth String Quartet. This transcription for strings is one in a series of reworkings of a tune that has haunted the composer for over 50 years. No less appealing is the substantial Second String Sonata (1988), an arrangement of the Ninth Quartet of 1975. Shrewd programming frames the threnodic Irkanda IV for solo violin, strings and percussion (Sculthorpe's first real breakthrough from 1961, named after the Aboriginal word for a remote and lonely place) between Irkanda I for solo violin from 1955 (a beautifully proportioned essay which provides the first glimpse of the mature composer in its rapt identification with Australia's landscape and wildlife) and the moving 1976 Lament for strings. It isn't hard to detect a kinship, so naturally does each piece emerge from its predecessor. Three tracks here (Irkanda IV, Lament and the Second Sonata) overlap with a rival ABC Classics release featuring these same artists. There's little to choose between the two in terms of performance (those earlier accounts are a degree more restrained), but Chandos's sound has the edge, possessing breathtaking definition and range. A very fine issue.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010
I. Allegro
