[Noseda] delivers it afresh as a scintillating achievement...Sabina Cvilak's soprano has the focus, though not always the required gravitas, while tenor Ian Bostridge brings a piercing sincerity to all his solos...Keenlyside takes a different approach: sonorous, commanding, but sometimes lacking the necessary bitter edge...Nevertheless, this is an important issue: Noseda's judgement of pace is unerring, and the orchestra and chorus simply superb.

The LSO and its Chorus are on cracking form, and the soloists are as good as you will get…No one should be without the composer’s recording, also with the LSO, but half a century later, Noseda’s Dramatic, pulsating account represents another landmark.

Noseda's live performance seeks to take the audience on a journey from the edge of consciousness to the blazing fires of the battlefield...Bostridge spins a beautiful line in the tenor's lyrical passages...Keenlyside is excellent throughout...Decisive and confident, the soprano Sabina Cvilak has the Slavic edge to her voice that has seemed hard-wired into the part since the incomparable Vishnevskaya

Noseda offers an account rich in drama...forging a sense of momentum and cohesion..Few singers deliver text with as much conviction and engagement as Bostridge, who finds the right tone for the bitterness of war...[Keenlyside] sounds every inch the soldier, conveying the pain of war and a bleak sense of loss...Cvilak is very good, particularly fine in floating her high notes in the 'Lacrimosa'..this performance is incredibly moving

the LSO Live account has great clarity and tonal sophistication. The Eltham choir is crisp and well balanced...The LSO certainly play well and the brass in the Dies irae are especially thrilling...All else pales next to Bostridge’s deeply moving, extraordinarily nuanced singing in Futility...The LSO chorus deserve a mention in dispatches. Their quiet singing in Pie Jesu is ineffably beautiful.

Noseda gives no indication of being a mere stand-by, and I particularly like the way that he brings an Italianate sense of theatricality to this work, heightening the inherent drama of the piece in a way that reminded me in several places of the Requiem setting by Giuseppe Verdi...a deeply moving account of this thought-provoking piece.

Noseda proves a more than worthy substitute [for Colin Davis], easily encompassing the dramatic scale of the work...Sabina Cvilak has a bright, silvery penetrating timbre. Ian Bostridge’s tenor is as individual and idiosyncractic as Pears’s in its own way. Simon Keenlyside, too, is magnificent, while the two choirs relish their grateful, inspiring music.

[Noseda] brings a strong sense of Italianate lyricism to bear on the score, reminding us of Britten's conscious debt to Verdi's Requiem. The choral singing is fervent and intense, the playing fierce and sensitive by turns. Sabina Cvilak is the thrilling, hieratic soprano, though her male counterparts

the two-CD set certainly captures the thrill of the moment in a reading notable both for its hushed intensity and dramatic sweep. Noseda’s an Italian, after all, and the clamorous Dies irae and supercharged choral prayers wouldn’t disgrace a Verdi opera...The LSO and the London Symphony Chorus are the performance’s rock: they start on top form and stay that way. Another essential recording, with or without the Britten centenary.

Noseda conducts the most blazing War Requiem I have heard in any circumstances...The LSO’s brass section rips into the score’s martial elements with full-blooded ferocity...This is a searing recording, a match for the very best and more powerful than any other version I know in communicating Britten’s anti-war agenda. Fifty years on, here is a War Requiem for our own troubled times.

In some ways this is the most affecting and emotionally draining reading the work has ever received — and that includes the premiere recording by Britten itself, which established a high benchmark for many years. This is a considerable achievement.