The soul of this beautifully constructed recital is the luminous variety Hélène Clément extracts from the 1843 Giussani viola owned by Frank Bridge and passed on to his favourite pupil, Benjamin Britten...the anguished overlapping of mezzo and viola at the climax of ‘Where is it that our soul doth go?’ is one of many revelations on the disc.

…The work of Clément and her pianist, Alasdair Beatson, is absolutely wonderful. Both musicians are expressively in tune with each other and with the requirements of the music. The result raises this recital far above the level of a mere collection of bits and pieces, proving beyond doubt that the Bridge Sonata and Britten’s Lachrymae are two of the most significant chamber works of the 20th century.

This is a highly sensitive performance [of There is a Willow Grows Aslant a Brook], full of probing, haunting vistas on Ophelia’s drowning in Hamlet, which compares more than favourably with the four extant recordings presently available; the clarity of Chandos’s sound (appropriate to a piece of such stillness) gives it the edge, in my view.

This is a clean-cut and impressive survey of the music of teacher and pupil, and it has been finely recorded in Potton Hall.

Connolly brings acute verbal insight to a trio of Bridge’s songs...and the melancholy continues in the tonally elusive Elegy...and his mature masterpiece for the instrument, Lachrymae, both captivatingly played in this excellent Potton Hall recording.