Gramophone Magazine Editor's Choice

"The Philadelphia's triumphal return…after ten years in the recording wilderness, America's legendary orchestra is back in formidable form under its music director [Christoph Eschenbach] who brilliantly realises a powerful programme." (BBC Music Magazine, Disc of the Month)

“Eschenbach opens with Martinů's Memorial to Lidice… this performance serves to intensify an overriding feeling of despair, the Philadelphians responding with a chilling incisiveness particularly in the deathly bitonal chords that appear at the beginning and end of the work. Gideon Klein's Partita is a highly effective string orchestral transcription of a Trio written in Terezín some months before this talented composer was deported to Auschwitz. Within this... context Bartók's Concerto... emerges as a much darker and more disturbing work. Once... Eschenbach emphasises these resonances by taking his time in the slow introduction to the first movement and thereby building up a much greater head of steam in the exciting accelerando to the Allegro Vivace.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2006 *****

“Isserlis here achieves a beauty, finesse and attack with the cello less evident from his playing 20 years ago: his technique is phenomenal, his bowing at once wildly abandoned and absolutely precise in terms of his musical intentions. He has the advantage of a brother-in-arms in Hough, who treats the score with the symphonic sweep it deserves.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2005 *****

“In 1984 Steven Isserlis made excellent recordings for Hyperion of the Brahms sonatas with Peter Evans; this time he's added some substantial extra items – the two Suk pieces, wonderfully played, are particularly welcome. The new recording is fuller in sound and more realistic; Stephen Hough's commanding playing of Brahms's 'big' piano parts could, one feels, overpower the cello but, thanks to his sensitivity, this never happens.
In the sonatas, the timings are in nearly every case slightly shorter, due not to any very different tempi but because the music now flows more easily, with less sense of effort. Some listeners may miss the intensity of Evans's involvement with the music but the new versions have a wonderful sense of line, and Hough's more detached approach comes with vivid characterisation – seen in the sinister colours of No 2's Allegro passionato, for example, or the limpid, elegant playing of No 1's Allegrettoquasi menuetto.
Only in one place, the finale of No 2, is there the feeling that Hough's fluency creates a problem: repeating the opening theme, he pushes on in a way that detracts from the sunny, contented atmosphere at the start. These are deeply considered, immensely satisfying accounts. Isserlis and Hough make a formidable team.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Sonically the instruments are equal partners, and musically that's deliciously the case as well, with Isserlis and Hough reacting to every nuance of the other's playing, finishing each others' musical sentences...The timbre of Isserlis's gut-strung cello is another plus” Andrew McGregor, bbc.co.uk, 29th November 2005

“It would be hard to imagine more effective treatment of this highly scented repertoire” BBC Music Magazine, August 2006

“Magnificent accounts of Karlowicz's evocative tone poems by Noseda” BBC Music Magazine, December 2005

“Mieczysław Karłowicz (1876-1909)…produced some of the finest orchestral works by a Polish composer of the early 20th century. All three performances on this very well recorded CD are magnificent. In fact, it would be hard to imagine more effective treatment of this highly scented repertoire.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2005 *****

“With this third disc the BBC Philharmonic complete a fine survey of Karpowicz's orchestral music. Now we can finally enjoy this music in all its rich, velvet-draped luxury.
This instalment is, admittedly, something of a mopping-up exercise, the best of Karpowicz's output being found on the first of the BBC Philharmonic's discs (see above). The Nietzschean pessimism of Returning Waves and A Sorrowful Tale relates strongly to the Richard Strauss of Tod und Verklärung pretensions, albeit without the transfiguration.
Here the music sounds as though it has overdosed on Wagner and turned to César Franck for the antidote, compounding rather than solving its problems in finding an individual voice.
In Episode at a Masquerade – completed by Grzegorz Fitelberg following the composer's tragically early death in a skiing accident – there are attractive, though passing and presumably coincidental, affinities with the Elgar of Cockaigne.
Here, too, the overall atmosphere is far removed from the frivolity that the title (and indeed the opening pages of the score) might suggest.
The BBC Philharmonic's dynamic principal conductor, Gianandrea Noseda, took the reins from Yan Pascal Tortelier after their first Karpowicz disc. He has a sure instinct for the music's indulgent textures and melodramatic effusiveness, and orchestral playing and recording are both of the highest class. Self-recommending, then, to explorers of late-Romantic byways.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“The choir's every bit as good as Bryars says it is, with a focused and clear yet wonderfully rich sound. The recordings, made in two churches in the Latvian capital Riga, are a marvel, capturing all the fine detail despite the vast echoing acoustic.” BBC Music Magazine, April 2006 *****

“Listen to the sheer quality of music-making as tenor John Mark Ainsley is alive to every halting breath of a song.” The Times

“wonderfully performed” Barry Millington, Evening Standard

“John Mark Ainsley brings the full range of his formidable musicianship to these hard-wrought but haunting masterpieces. His ringing high register and almost miraculously expressive pianissimo are on fine display and his enunciation is so clear that for most of this disc you barely need the booklet texts.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2005 *****

“John Mark Ainsley and Iain Burnside make a formidable combination and they are matched here with a formidable programme. Tippett's writing for voice and piano is unremitting in its demands and much less certain in its rewards.
The performers' concentration must be absolute: that is fact. Whether the listener will be proportionately moved is a matter for doubtful speculation.
It goes against the grain to say this, because the Tippett of youthful ecstasy (as in The MidsummerMarriage and the Concerto for Double String Orchestra) exerts a strong allure. But there's no escaping the fact that Boyhood's End and The Heart's Assurance exert a slim hold on the memory – only a few specific phrases, particularly of the singer's music, having stuck.
That is extraordinary, and it is reinforced by the inclusion here of the Canticle by Britten which the mind retains, both in feeling and specific detail.
That work, the setting of Francis Quarles's 'So I my best-beloved's am', presumably has been chosen, as the one item in which Tippett is neither composer nor arranger, because it accords with the line 'Remember your lovers', taken as the title-phrase. I'm not sure it was a good idea, as Britten's mastery suggests just what is so often wanting in Tippett: economy and repose.
The other composer present in force is Purcell and here, curiously, Tippett's self-discipline is impressive, even as against Britten's in his comparable arrangements. Burnside writes in his introductory notes: 'While Britten's dense pianistic approach now jars on ears that have undergone the Early Music revolution, Tippett and [Walter] Bergmann stay light on their feet.' The recording is fine with excellent presence.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

'This is a discerning, often thrilling recital by a singer in his first full bloom.' Daily Telegraph