20% off Naxos

“Meredith Hall has the widest range to encompass and is excellent....absolutely enchanting particularly when played with such elan as they are here under the lively and stylish direction of Niquet... How can they come up with something like this at budget price? ... a splendid disc that brings to the catalog much the finest work of this composer I've so far encountered.” Fanfare

“Stefano Ranzani upholds the energy in the swift-moving sections...He contributes well to the tension and responds to the different speeds, from rapid chorus to inward-looking aria. Everything benefits from an extremely fine recording. I find it one of the best versions on disc.” International Record Review, July/August 2011

“Vivid as Hickox's traversal of the score for Chandos may be, Bedford's is just that much more alert, crisper. With his long experience of Britten in the theatre, dating back to Death in Venice under the composer's aegis, his timing carries unique authority and, in better sound than the old Decca set can now offer, he even has the edge over the composer's obviously definitive reading. Bedford's players are at least as accomplished as Hickox's, and are caught in a more immediate, less reverberant acoustic.
As for the singers, in almost every case Bedford's are the equal of, or superior to, Hickox's and several surpass Britten's. For instance, Albert was never one of Peter Pears's happiest assumptions; Christopher Gillett makes a more credible mother's boy and does well when he decides to break loose. Where the crucial role of Lady Billows is concerned, Josephine Barstow's commanding performance may not quite be on a par with Sylvia Fisher for Britten, but the difference is small. Susan Gritton gives us a dotty and cleanly sung Miss Wordsworth (Margaret Ritchie, the role's creator, must have sounded like this), Robert Lloyd is a simpleton of a Budd (as well sung as any), and Felicity Palmer makes a wonderfully fussy Florence Pike.
It only remains to laud once again the score's many delights as regards technical mastery and subtle characterisation, and to suggest you hurry off to enjoy a real bargain.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Gillett in the title-tole has a clear, youthful-sounding tenor...What secures the set's success is the way that in the ensembles Bedford secures such crispness, wittily lifting rhythms, making the music swagger. At the Naxos reissue price this is a phenomenal bargain” Penguin Guide, 2010 ***