Naxos: 8553591

"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 (Christopher Morley), April 29, 2000