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Infinite Refrain: Music of Love’s Refuge
RecommendedRandall Scotting (counter-tenor), Jorge Navarro Colorado (tenor), Academy of Ancient Music, Laurence Cummings
Scotting borrows your heart in Monteverdi’s ‘Con che soavità’ when a lover asks how can one speak and kiss at the same time, while conductor Laurence Cummings and the Academy of Ancient Music... —
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Presto Recordings of the Year, Finalist 2023
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An Elizabethan Christmas
RecommendedByrd, Holborne, Gibbons, Peerson, Weelkes
Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano), Emma Walshe (soprano), Lucy Cox (soprano), Amy Lyddon (vocalist), Guy Cutting (tenor), Malachy Frame (baritone), Edmund Saddington (bass-baritone), Fretwork, Richard Boothby
The songs are interspersed with short instrumental pieces, including two genial fantasies ‘for ye great dooble bass’ by Gibbons. All are played with Fretwork’s typical attunement to the sensibilities... —
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Presto Recording of the Week, 3rd December 2021
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Close Harmony
Patrick Dunachie (countertenor), Edward Button (countertenor), Julian Gregory (tenor), Christopher Bruerton (baritone), Nick Ashby (baritone), Jonathan Howard (bass-baritone), Misha Mullov-Abbado (double bass), Liam Dunachie, King's Singers
It’s certainly a generous helping and there is no denying the artistry of both the singers and arrangers. It’s a heady mix from ‘Crocodile Rock’ to The Barber of Seville, though the highlight... —
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Presto Editor's Choice, October 2024
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Labyrinths
Victoria Brawn, Guy Schalom, Trish Clowes (saxophone), Nicky Spence (tenor), Francesca Moore-Bridger, Jim Moray, David Gordon (piano), Mark Ashford, Diane Clarke, Eleanor Turner (harp), Sally Harrop, Orchestra of the Swan, Daniele Rosina, David Le Page
A wildly eclectic programme, which makes for an exciting listen. While some of the ensemble playing could be tighter, the solos are ethereal and thoughtful. —
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Gramophone Awards, 2022, Shortlisted - Spatial Audio
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It's when the pedal goes down (literally and metaphorically) that this disc really soars, startling the ear into ecstasy with the sudden release of Rachmaninov's Cherubic Hymn, the 'bright Seraphim'... —
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Gramophone Magazine, July 2019, Editor's Choice
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On Buying a Horse
The songs of Judith Weir
Ailish Tynan (soprano), Susan Bickley (mezzo), Andrew Kennedy (tenor) & Iain Burnside (piano)
Andrew Kennedy's light tenor sails pleasingly through the dark deeds of Scotch Minstrelsy —
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Record Review, December 2006, Critics Disc of the Year
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Schoenberg: Gurrelieder
RecommendedStig Andersen (Waldemar), Andreas Conrad (Klaus-Narr), Soile Isokoski (Tove), Monica Groop (Waldtaube), Ralf Lukas (Bauer) & Barbara Sukowa (Sprecher)
Philharmonia Voices, City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus & The Philharmonia Orchestra, Esa-Pekka Salonen
…exciting, lucid, wonderfully well-proportioned, and recorded in stunning sound the final hymn to the rising sun would lift the most morbidly lethargist out of their chair. —
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Building a Library, March 2017, Also Recommended
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Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 3 & 4
Elizabeth Sombart (piano), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Pierre Vallet
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The Calidores issue a friendly invitation, made the more enticing by a level of technical finesse up there with the best versions old and new, and studio engineering that places the listener... —
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Gramophone Magazine, February 2025, Editor's Choice
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Chaconnes by Purcell and Brescianello frame a programme where the strings of La Serenissima are responsive to nuance and congruent in sound. —
