Gramophone Awards, 2008

If Saint-Saëns's idiom once answered – and maybe still does – to qualities fundamental to the French musical character, it must be said straight away that Hough sounds the complete insider.... — Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010More…

As on his 2005 Ives collection, the Canadian baritone Gerald Finley is golden in tone, persuasive in phrasing, and unfailingly responsive to the sound and sense of the words. Julius Drake once... — BBC Music Magazine, December 2007, 5 out of 5 starsMore…

Susanne Heinrich rises ably to the challenge of understanding this 18th-century Jekyll-and-Hyde figure, heightening to fine effect the music's light and shade, energy and indolence. Her readings... — BBC Music Magazine, February 2008, 4 out of 5 starsMore…

Like Pinnock's earlier set with the English Concert, the newcomer… displays Pinnock's seemingly unassailable ability to choose an effective, just tempo for each movement, and his infectious... — BBC Music Magazine, February 2008, 5 out of 5 starsMore…

…the fervour, radiant warmth and sense of the symphony as a great journey - a 'passionate pilgrimage' - make this a uniquely compelling experience. …Dona Nobis Pacem ('Grant us peace'), It's... — BBC Music Magazine, January 2008, 5 out of 5 starsMore…

James Ehnes has a lovely ripe vibrato and an expressive openness that touches the heart from his first entry. It's when it comes to the balancing of confessional intimacy with symphonic purposefulness... — BBC Music Magazine, January 2008, 3 out of 5 starsMore…

With an almost ideal balance between piano and strings, the variety of articulation in their playing brings a marvellous textural variety to the full-blooded writing in the outer movements of... — BBC Music Magazine, November 2007, 5 out of 5 starsMore…

Emanuela Galli (Euridice/La Musica) is splendid in voice and emotion and Mirko Guadagnini (Orfeo) is arresting in the low-lying lamenting sections of Act V but rather dry in the upper range. — BBC Music Magazine, October 2007, 3 out of 5 starsMore…

…appropriately enough this final volume ends with the last sonata triptych of Opp. 109-111. Lewis plays all three works with characteristic warmth and beauty of tone, and you're not likely... — BBC Music Magazine, June 2008, 4 out of 5 starsMore…

The sheer magnificence of the choruses that provide the oratorio's structural pillars has rarely been so effectively realised on disc. McCreesh also has an exceptional set of soloists. The... — BBC Music Magazine, May 2008, 5 out of 5 starsMore…