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“The centenary of Sir Michael Tippett's birth saw a fair amount of critical agonising about whether he was, any longer, a composer for our time, or whether his time had passed. It's difficult to find much substance in that viewpoint when confronted with a work, first performed in 1944, which seems to have more in common with John Adams's much-admired ElNiño of 2000 than with Belshazzar's Feast, or even the War Requiem. The starkness of the confrontations in A Child of our Time between politics and psychology, between a high-art style rooted in Bach and a more popular, folktinged manner (the tango, Negro Spirituals), remains vivid, as does the sense of a composer doggedly carving out a viably personal idiom while not shirking matters of burning social and spiritual relevance. Maybe the focus wavers in places but the accumulated dramatic power, and its double release, first in a magical vision of spring, then in a more anxious, uncertain cry for peace and reconciliation, isn't something a bumbling amateur could have brought off.
Tippett was 87 when this recording was made, and neither its rhythmic momentum nor its textural clarity are ideal. But the composer's own lovingly crafted reading has a special place in the discography of this still-modern masterpiece.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Peter Donohoe presents dynamically muscular yet thoughtful and affectionate readings of the first three of Tippett's four piano sonatas, in first-rate recorded sound…” BBC Music Magazine, December 2005 *****

“It's a pity that, at 35 minutes-plus, Tippett's Fourth and last piano sonata is too long to join the others on a single CD. Be that as it may, it's good Naxos is opening up this repertoire, and Peter Donohoe is recorded with pleasing immediacy.
The First Sonata is especially successful – imaginatively characterised, the music's tendency to sprawl in the outer movements kept firmly in check. Despite the derivative aspects of its style, the piece has many distinctive qualities and – at least in Donohoe's performance – it stands up rather better than its successors.
No 2, a single-movement mosaic closely linked to King Priam and the Concerto for Orchestra, is in most respects the absolute antithesis of No 1, and the sheer number of repetitions of small thematic units creates a degree of stasis at odds with the free-flowing aspirations of the overall design.
Donohoe is acutely responsive to the broad contrasts and insistent rhythmic patterns of the Third Sonata but his tempo for the first movement is distinctly slower than Paul Crossley's (the Third Sonata's commissioner and first performer).” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Crossley (the Third Sonata's commissioner and first performer) remains the safest recommendation for all four of Tippett's sonatas, with Donohoe a strong rival in No 1.” Gramophone Magazine, December 2005

“This is a highly desirable budget-priced Naxos release of two of the late Sir Michael Tippett's most well-loved works. The Ritual Dances adds up to a sizeable chunk of his first opera, the Midsummer Marriage, full of resonances of the countryside and the seasons, with darker overtones of birth, life and death (yes, almost a Rite of Spring, and almost as long). Their performance here from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under George Hurst is thrusting and colourful, with some wonderful woodwind solos. Breathing the same luminous, magical soundworld is Tippett's Piano Concerto of a few years later. Soloist in this finely-detailed, gently glowing account is Benjamin Frith.” Birmingham Post