Penguin Guide Rosette Winners

“Hickox rightly presents Rossini's Stabat Mater warmly and with gutsy strength...All four soloists here are first rate, not Italianate of tone but full and warm, and the London Symphony Chorus sings with fine attack as well as producing the most refined pianissimos” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition

“The set is a triumph of scholarship, musicianship and managerial enterprise. At the price, it is irresistible.” Gramophone Magazine

“one of the most sparkling and totally successful live opera recordings available...Abbado's brilliance and sympathy draw the musical threads compellingly together with the help of superb, totally committed playing from the Chamber Orchestra of Europe” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition

“The exhilarating (1931) score for Bacchus et Ariane teems with life and is full of rhythmic vitality. What a marvellously inventive and resourceful score it is! Tortelier offers the best version yet and the BBC Philharmonic play with tremendous zest.” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition

“This is an enchanting disc...The performances have an Elysian charm and sophistication of feeling and are beautifully recorded.” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition

“For some years the Third Symphony was a repertory piece, at least on BBC programmes, but it fell out of favour in the late 1950s. Commentators have noticed a certain Sibelian cut to its opening idea (with woodwind in thirds) but everything else strikes you as completely personal.
There's a whiff of Elgarian fantasy in the fourth variation of the finale. It's been called the most genial and relaxed of Rubbra's symphonies but there's a pastoral feel to many of the ideas, bucolic even, in the same way that there is about the Brahms Second Symphony. Brahms springs to mind in the masterly variations and fugue of the finale, for not long before, Rubbra had orchestrated the Brahms Handel Variations.
Hickox and his players give a very persuasive and totally convincing account of the symphony.
Anyone coming to the Seventh for the first time, particularly in this performance, will surely not fail to sense the elevated quality of its musical thought. Its opening paragraphs are among the most beautiful Rubbra ever penned, and it's evident throughout that this is music that speaks of deep and serious things. This performance speaks with great directness and power. The horn playing in the opening is eloquent and the orchestral playing throughout is of a uniformly high standard. These are magnificent and impressive accounts, and the recording is truthful and splendidly balanced.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010