there is a marvellous flamboyance to these youthful works...Crowe is fully equal to their demands, showing an imaginative sensitivity to Handel's melodic shapes, even if a few low notes take her beyond her best range. She's alert, too, to the music's harmonic implications...Bicket proves an astute accompaniment [sic], allowing Crowe all the time she needs to turn corners...The English Concert make a fine showing, their trumpets resplendent

With this recital, Crowe cements her star status in the Baroque world. Her technique is dazzling (hearing her diminuendo and crescendo on a high A in a trumpet-and-drums aria from La Resurrezione is a joy in itself), her voice is pure and fresh, and she's a natural communicator...this is a fascinating and beautifully performed portrait of a genius composer flexing his wings.

With her vernal light lyric soprano, grace of line and vivid response to mood, Lucy Crowe proves well-nigh ideal in this conspectus of music from Handel's Italian years...Crowe's delectable singing is complemented by fresh, rhythmically buoyant and, where needed, virtuoso playing from the English Concert, who on their own give sparkling performances of three instrumental numbers from [Handel's] astonishingly fertile Italian sojourn.

She has added luscious chest tones to her bright soprano in recent seasons, and consistently delights in Handel’s gloriously youthful music, which includes an early variant of the famous aria from Rinaldo, Lascia ch’io pianga. Bicket’s English Concert supplies luxury, stylish accompaniments.

Crowe follows the young composer’s flights with musical and emotional fidelity, in tones from tender to sharply penetrating. She uses her voice with quasi-instrumental freedom, but also with the kind of micro-inflection that the voice can make so much more potent and heart-piercing than any instrument. Harry Bicket and the players of the English Concert are hand-in-glove partners to the vocal wizardry.