CD, Blow (composer)

Can be recommended without reservation … the wonderful By beauteous softness, from Queen Mary’s Birthday Ode of 1689, given this performance, I could quite easily listen to for ever … there’s... — BBC Music Magazine More…

Such complementary voices, Chance fine-drawn, Bowman a touch richer, more coloured, are ideal in this selection of inventive duets. Blow's Ode on Purcell's death is particularly fine, intensely... — BBC Music Magazine, May 2014, 5 out of 5 stars More…

Davies is the headline artist on the cover; but in fact he duets with James Hall on notably equal terms, the two voices subtly differing in timbre but compatible in articulation and expressivity.... — BBC Music Magazine, December 2019, 5 out of 5 stars (Performance ) / 4 out of 5 stars (Recording) More…

…it's often in the modest-looking pieces that she's at her most compelling. Robert Johnson's Full Fathom Five is 109 seconds of breathtaking stillness and beauty, Böddecker's Natus est Jesu... — Gramophone Magazine, July 2009 More…

The instrumental playing under Bertrand Cuiller is supple and vivid, but the real star of the show here is soprano Rachel Redmond: she sings an Akeyrode drinking song with bright swagger and... — The Guardian, 28th September 2017, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Mead’s theatrical experience comes through most clearly in his dramatic rendering of some of the songs from the odes…The stage songs are often presented with an affecting fluidity, as in William... — BBC Music Magazine, May 2023, 3 out of 5 stars More…

This is not quite a complete lexicon (there are no ‘mad songs’ for example) but it offers a worthy platform for the acclaimed musical and dramatic skills of Randall Scotting and Stephen Stubbs. — BBC Music Magazine, March 2023, 4 out of 5 stars More…

here's a disc disc to remember come all those end-of-year round-ups... There's a directness to Phan's delivery, a clarity to his diction that has previously found its home in Britten's text-driven... — Gramophone Magazine, April 2015 More…