Penguin Guide Rosette Winners

“However many times he has performed the Grieg, Andsnes retains a freshness and expressiveness that never sounds contrived, always spontaneous..., Andsnes is firmly supported by Jansons and the Berlin Philharmonic, with playing not just refined but dramatic too” Gramophone Magazine, November 2003

“faster, fiercer, yet more freely expressive than his 1990 version.” Classic FM Magazine, February 2012

“What a joy to welcome on CD, a major British ballet score (comparable in appeal to Walton's Façade with which, happily, it's coupled). Constant Lambert's Horoscope is a highly individual score that's somehow very English. It's played here with striking freshness and expansiveness.
Lloyd-Jones responds to Bliss's lyricism very warmly. What makes this disc particularly enticing is the inclusion of the two Façade suites, welcome away from the spoken poems.
This is music that in a witty performance can make you smile and even chuckle. So it is here, especially the 'Tango Pasodoble' with a delicious lilt for 'I do like to be beside the seaside' contrasting with its Offenbachian gusto, the 'Swiss Yodelling Song' with its droll Rossini quotation and refined mock-melancholy, and the irresistibly humorous 'Polka' that just manages not to be vulgar. All are ideally paced and the solo wind playing a delight. The recording is near perfect.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“The suite from Horoscope is Lambert at his very finest. David Lloyd-Jones is very sympathetic to its specifically English atmosphere.” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition

“It's the Myaskovsky that really makes this disc a 'must-have'. His Violin Concerto was premiered by David Oistrakh in Leningrad in 1939. As with Tchaikovsky's Concerto, the opening tutti plays for less than a minute and the slow movement is touchingly lyrical. The rather melancholy first movement is built on a grand scale and includes an expansive cadenza where Repin's mastery is virtually the equal of Oistrakh's. It's forceful music, epic in scale and earnestly argued, the sort of piece that Gergiev thrives on.
Listening to Repin's Tchaikovsky Concerto (his second recording of the work) confirms just how far he's journeyed in a few years.
Tone projection is stronger, attack more aggressive and his solo demeanour seems better focused than before, far more confident and spontaneous. Mixed in with these improvements are one or two affectations, but it's a cracking performance, one of the best from the younger generation. The recording sounds like a digital update of the sort of blowsy inyour- face sonics typical of the first stereo recordings of the late 1950s. Nevertheless, a fabulous disc.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“David Lloyd-Jones's Bax series goes from strength to strength with this clear-headed interpretation of the exhilarating Sixth Symphony (arguably the last work to show the composer at creative white heat).
Lloyd-Jones rides the tempest of the opening movement with particular success, while still allowing himself plenty of expressive leeway for the ravishing secondary material. In the central Lento he paints a bleakly beautiful, snow-flecked landscape. As for the ambitious finale (a tour deforce of structural innovation and thematic integration), the conductor steers a superbly confident course, and the RSNO respond with unflagging spirit and no mean skill.
Both Lloyd-Jones's fill-ups are sensitively done, although Into the Twilight doesn't equal the fragrant beauty and haunting allure of Thomson's intoxicating Ulster version. Unfortunately, the sound, while enormously vivid and wide ranging, is neither quite as natural in timbre nor judiciously blended as on previous instalments (bigger tuttis tend towards an aggressive blur). None the less, a firm recommendation.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Over the night of 13-14 April 1959 in St Gabriel's Church, Cricklewood, a recording session took place, historic in every way, when the young Charles Mackerras conducted a band of 62 wind players plus nine percussionists in Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks. With no fewer than 26 oboists topping the ensemble, it was only possible to assemble such a band after all concerts and operas had finished for the day.
They began at 11pm and finished at 2.30 in the morning, yet so far from sounding tired or jaded, the players responded to the unique occasion with a fizzing account of Handel's six movements.
The success of this extraordinary project fully justified Mackerras's determination to restore the astonishing array of instruments that Handel himself had assembled for the original performance in Green Park in April 1749.
It's thrilling to hear that 1959 recording, at last transferred to CD, with sound that's still of demonstration quality, full and spacious, with a wide stereo spread. It's true that Mackerras takes the introduction to the overture and the 'Siciliana' at speeds far slower than he would choose today, but this was a recording which marked a breakthrough in what later developed as the period performance movement.
As a coupling for the Fireworks Music, Mackerras devised a composite Concerto a due cori which draws on two works written with that title around 1747. It makes a splendid piece, in which the massed horns bray gloriously.
Whatever the degree of authenticity, this is an electrifying collection, superbly transferred.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“[El amor brujo] enjoys exceptionally vivid sound, yet with plenty of light and shade, and the control of atmosphere in the quieter passages is masterful...de Larrocha's later, digital version of Nights in the Gardens of Spain is unsurpassed among modern recordings” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition

“RCA's two-disc collection includes the premiere recording of the Cello Concerto with Piatigorsky – who commissioned the work – and the Boston Symphony under Charles Munch. Here is a highpowered reading, given an upfront recording, commendably full and open for 1959. Similarly Heifetz, who commissioned the Violin Concerto, remains supreme as an interpreter of that work, urgent beyond any rival as well as passionate.
Here he plays with the composer conducting the Philharmonia. The 1950 mono recording has been nicely opened up, putting more air around the sound, making the absence of stereo a minimal drawback. The other two concertante works come in digital versions: Kathryn Stott, originally for Conifer, adventurously going back to the original more elaborate version of the Sinfoniaconcertante, and Yuri Bashmet bringing his yearningly Slavonic temperament and masterly virtuosity to the Viola Concerto.
Bashmet's partners are the ideal combination of Previn and the LSO, and it's Previn's vintage version of the First Symphony with the LSO of an earlier generation that sets the seal on the whole package. Previn has never been matched, let alone surpassed. Also remarkable is the clarity, definition and sense of presence of the 1966 recording, with the stereo spectrum more sharply focused than in the digital recordings.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010