Stravinsky: Pastorale

“When not aiming at ferocity, Dizdari's tone is notably rich and expressive - especially in the Part, played with a very modest degree of slowish vibrato. The Hungarian Dances are given with great panache but the highlight of the programme, for me, is the Enescu...Dizdiri and Blach seem to get both the spirit and the letter just right.” Gramophone Magazine, October 2011

“The fruits of Stravinsky's rewarding partnership with violinist Samuel Dushkin are celebrated here. Van Keulen and Mustonen negotiate the music's awkward technical hurdles with cool precision.” BBC Music Magazine, July 2011 ****

“Van Keulen and Mustonen are right on top of the Duo concertant’s frequently extravagant technical demands, and as in all the music here recorded they convey an infectious sense of enjoyment.” Gramophone Magazine

“absolutely sparkling playing...The playing and recording are excellent throughout” Records and Recording

“These Boston players give immaculately polished accounts of all five [chamber] works … The recording is excellent – clear without dryness, warm without over-resonance” Gramophone Magazine

“John Gielgud is a most beguiling narrator … Ron Moody makes a suitably sinister-sounding devil … A really outstanding issue” EMG Newsletter

“Pulcinella, The Nightingale, The Firebird and Petrushka take on fresher, lighter, more subtle colours and timbres, all exquisitely revealed in this masterly recording.” The Observer, 17th January 2010

“Athletic, sparky, rhythmically alert: nothing could be more invigorating than Stravinsky’s music for violin and piano...Anthony Marwood’s violin finds infinite subtleties in the music’s dance, while at the piano Thomas Adès is forceful without being domineering.” The Times, 30th January 2010 ****

“Marwood and Adès do the music every justice, bringing to their playing a sharp sense of rhythm and attack.” Sunday Times, 31st January 2010 ***

“This fabulous two-CD set offers so many pleasures it’s hard to know where to begin…the performances have a wonderful lived-in quality...[Ades] has exactly the right incisive, luminous and chaste sound. Marwood, too, has that springy balletic quality always needed in Stravinsky...In all, it’s a marvel.” The Telegraph, 5th February 2010 *****

“There are old friends. Three numbers from The Firebird, with a mesmeric Berceuse; the exhilarating Danse Russe from Petrushka stunningly delivered; and a reworked aria from the chamber opera Mavra. The only original work here is the Duo concertant, vintage neo-classical Stravinsky with styles ranging from coolly lyrical to busy. All these demands are superbly met by Marwood and Adès with immaculate rhythmic precision.” Gramophone Magazine, March 2010

“Adès's touch with the piano parts is at once live-wire and beautifully stylish, with Marwood matching this flair for deftly characterised light and shade. The Pulcinella suite and Divertimento from The Fairy's Kiss both scintillate from start to finish. The recorded sound, too, has marvellous presence.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2010 ****

“Marwood and Adès are a great fit: the intensely musical fiddle player at home in new concertos or classical chamber music, and Adès the uncompromising composer-pianist...The Duo concertant is a highlight; Marwood immaculately in tune whatever double stops, twists and turns Stravinsky throws at him, while Adès’s care with the separate strands of the piano part pay dividends” Andrew McGregor, bbc.co.uk, 25th March 2010

“When Victoria de los Angeles appeared at the Edinburgh Festival in 1957, she was in her prime, the voice as supple and sensitive as it was beautiful. Everything she tackled seemed to be touched by the magic of her attractive presence and glorious singing.
Good as her account of Schumann's Widmung may be, it's when she gets to Brahms, perhaps her favourite composer in this genre, that she's wholly at home, the wistful sense of pain in Nachtigall caught to perfection. In the wordless pieces by Stravinsky and Ravel she floats that warm yet ethereal tone of hers with consummate ease, and the long–breathed phrasing and excellent French in Duparc's mélodie are enhanced by this artist's innate skill in word–painting. For all that, audiences were always impatient for her to get to the Spanish part of her programme, for in this field she was unsurpassed as a singer and interpreter.
Many of these songs were also recorded by her in the studio, but the live occasion gives these performances an extra frisson. The encores are even better. An account of Clavelitos is a superior reading even to those famous ones available elsewhere.
That's complemented by a delightfully insouciant account of the Delibes song that she didn't attempt on any other recorded occasion.
Gerald Moore, as was his wont, manages to change idioms with his familiar virtuosity. As a whole, this is an invaluable addition to the singer's extensive discography.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010