Bridge: Love went a-riding

“It is her ability to reduce her sound that enables her to avoid bringing too much power to 'The Last Rose' and to put across Bernstein's 'Some other time' in a relaxed and intimate manner...Brewer's own [encore], 'Review', has the final word...It's fun and provides a final encore for which it was well worth staying till the end.” International Record Review, April 2011

“unlike many dramatic sopranos, Brewer here demonstrates a clarity of enunciation and a variety of tone that suits this lighter material...Irresistable.” BBC Music Magazine, April 2011 *****

“Brewer, in tremendous voice, carves out a niche as [Flagstad, Farrell, Traubel and Steber's] successor, partly because the majestic quality of her delivery equals theirs, but more importantly because she, like they, has the ability to make this repertoire live and breathe without sounding mawkish...And Brewer's pianist, Roger Vignoles, sounds as if he's thoroughly enjoying himself.” The Guardian, 14th April 2011 ****

“Brewer hosts her party with flair, unselfconscious enjoyment and unerring style. Never do we sense the opera singer trying to appropriate an alien domain...Vignoles is indeed unfailingly sympathetic, but so much more: an animator and colourist whose rhythmic energy and legerdemain contribute crucially to the success of the whole delightful, offbeat recital.” Gramophone Magazine, June 2011

“Kate Royal's beautifully sung new album, with finely characterised piano-playing from Malcolm Martineau, ranges imaginatively across a spectrum of composers who have captured the first pangs, the heartaches and the dashed hopes that can make life such a maelstrom of emotion.” Gramophone Magazine, March 2011

“Royal, with Malcolm Martineau at the piano, finds a character and colour for each of her 28 songs...William Bolcom’s gentle “Wait in” at the start and finish is well justified, and her Bridge and Britten are heartfelt, but the gem is Amy Beach’s winsome “Ah, Love but a day!”.” Financial Times, 11th February 2011 ****

“Royal's idea of combining songs of disparate eras and styles to tell a single love story works beautifully...[She] sings with radiant beauty and powerful emotional immediacy. If the golden warmth of her voice shows a hint of tightening when pushed on her high notes, it doesn't detract from the overall impact.” Classic FM Magazine, April 2011 ****

“An intriguingly fresh and unhackneyed programme...Kate Royal proves herself a compelling recitalist, colouring words with feeling and creating vivid atmosphere and character.” The Telegraph, 6th March 2011 ****

“Royal is generally in fine voice...luscious warmth is much in evidence. Royal is an exception among the majority of lyric sopranos these days in boasting an especially substantial middle range, which really glows throughout this disc.” International Record Review, March 2011

“Royal is on fine form in the Schumann and Schubert Lieder, with Malcolm Martineau at the piano stage-managing the show admirably, as indeed he does throughout.” BBC Music Magazine, April 2011 ****

“Sarah Connolly sings Bridge's orchestral songs beautifully” BBC Music Magazine, Proms Issue 2005

“No fewer than 10 first recordings adorn this, the last instalment in Hickox's valuable Bridge series. Philip Langridge is in ardent voice for the first five tracks, the fourth of which, Love wenta-riding, remains the composer's best-known song. It sounds exhilaratingly new-minted in its sumptuous orchestral garb and is framed here by two companion settings of words by Mary Coleridge, Where she lies asleep and Thy hand in mine.
Particularly striking is the big-scale treatment afforded to Rupert Brooke's Blow out, you bugles, written in 1918 for the tenor Gervase Elwes and whose incorporation of the Last Post movingly anticipates Bridge's own towering Oration for cello and orchestra of a dozen years later.
Sarah Connolly is wonderfully eloquent in the haunting and often inspired 1922-24 Tagore diptych for mezzo and orchestra and also excels in the very early Berceuse (a remarkably assured setting of Dorothy Wordsworth from 1901) and affecting Mantle of blue (1918, and orchestrated 16 years later, to words by the Irish poet Padraic Colum). The programme concludes with five purely instrumental items, the most extended of which is the 1911 suite for wind band, The Pageantof London. Expertly fashioned, it makes for a diverting enough quarter of an hour (the 'Pavane' in the middle movement was destined to reappear 15 years later in Warlock's Capriol Suite). The tuneful Serenade exudes plenty of sepia-tinted charm, as does the wistful little Berceuse (1901).
Throw in some spick and span orchestral playing from the BBC NOW and Chandos's commendably natural engineering, not to mention Paul Hindmarsh's scholarly notes, and you have a job well done.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Gracefully patrician in tone but always perceptive, Pears, with Britten's acute accompaniment, explores a wide range of British song from Butterworth to Tippett.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2011 ****

“To Daffodils is exquisitely sung, and The merry month of May is a tour de force spectacularly brought off by Viola Tunnard” … “The record is completed by a splendid scena by Richard Rodney Bennett, the accompaniment for cello alone, and three prose texts by John Donne set by Priaulx Rainier for unaccompanied voice. Peter Pears sings these with marvellous intensity and understanding, and Joan Dickson’s cello playing in Tom O’ Bedlam is very good indeed.” Gramophone Magazine

“Stone has made an estimable career as a lyric baritone at Opera North and English National Opera, but he is less familiar as a recitalist. His light, airy baritone is well suited to the more easy-going English love songs, but takes on a nasal, pinched quality when a sense of drama is required, as in Frank Bridge’s galloping Love went a-riding. This attractive miscellaneous programme might have made a stronger impression if the order of songs were not so haphazard: Vaughan Williams (Silent Noon and Love bade me welcome) segues uncomfortably into Dowland’s Awake, sweet love, and Purcell, Handel and Haydn are interspersed pell-mell between Quilter and Ireland, Butterworth and Warlock, Finzu and Britten. Stone’s theme and sequence are too loose to be compelling and his diction, mostly clear, rarely achieves the eloquence of a born song interpreter.” Sunday Times, 15th February 2009 ***

“..this is not a recital restricted to one vocal hue. Each song is looked at and receives relevant response from both singer and pianist. ….he (Mark Stone) introduces so much by way of nuance and colour to make this a very interesting and fulfilling programme, one which is well recorded.” International Record Review, March 2009