“… a vividly enjoyable presentation.”

Editor’s Choice – Orchestral Section

“… for a performance that combines chamber-musical intimacy, transparency of detail and urgent human expressiveness, you won’t do better than this.”

“… All their [BBC National Orchestra of Wales] accounts here are wonderfully sensitive, the solo playing beautifully articulated, the structures perfectly bought out by Rumon Gamba…”

“… not only does Paul Watkins evince his customary purity of intonation, unruffled technical address and selfless dedication, he forges a healthy, infectiously tangible rapport with Andrew Davis, who obtains playing of commendable discipline and eager application from the BBC SO… Louis Lortie seems wholly attuned to the idiom, his playing full of grace and fire … The beautiful balanced sound has the satisfying richness and glow we have come to expect from Chandos. As should be abundantly clear by now, this is something of a treat.”

“… All of this is worth hearing …”

“… Järvi’s love for his art was apparent on virtually every one of his Chandos CD’s … the Chandos set leaves us filled with admiration for a conductor whose enormous appetite for music and music-making has benefited us all”

“… This conducting is specially (and unpredictably) illuminating.”

“… Ian Page and his crack team – singers and players – are clearly having a lot of fun, which comes across in this excellent recording…”

“… Singing throughout is secure and committed, as has long been associated with Ex Cathedra, directed with his customary skill be Jeffrey Skidmore and spaciously recorded … a pleasurable disc.”

“… David Temple secures splendidly alert results from his Hertfordshire Chorus and London Orchestra da Camera… a most rewarding release.”

“… An extremely fine performance, then, and one that rightly reaches its apogee in the final triptych of songs reflecting on Mary’s death. Once you’ve heard Banse and Helchen in the ecstatic final bars of ‘Vom Tode Maria III’, you’ll want, like me, to go back to the beginning and start all over again.”

“Following live festival performances last year, the talented young Scottish guitarist Sean Shibe brings this bracingly original concert programme featuring music for acoustic and electric guitars into the recording studio. The results, like the performances themselves, are spectacular”

“… this release is a wonderful accomplishment.”

“…This is a wholly new vision of a masterpiece.”

“… a wholly admirable interpretation, serious, hard-hitting and provocative …”

Editor’s Choice – Chamber Section

“… As for the performances, these have been prepared with Paganini’s original manuscripts and are played with an effortlessly singing mellifluousness and nonchalant virtuosity…  Add engineering that revels in the sonorous beauty of the 19^th-century hall in Valencia’s Centre Cultural La Beneficència and the whole is an indisputable cracker.”