The [Goldberg] Aria sings without affectation as if to emphasise that what follows isn't about the theme but what happens to it...Unstarchy too is Levit's approach to Beethoven's Diabelli Variations...As... — BBC Music Magazine, January 2016, More…

listening to these wonderful performances side by side is cathartic...The journey is vividly delineated from the outset of the Berg. With Abbado drawing sonorities from his first-rate orchestra,... — BBC Music Magazine, April 2012, More…

Melnikov works wonders with his 1828 Graff piano, managing to make it less clattery and more piano-like than in most other fortepiano recordings. — BBC Music Magazine, April 2014, More…

This set contains of the finest Beethoven performances you are likely to hear. Steven Isserlis is on blazing form: every note lives, every movement is characterised with infectious relish; his... — BBC Music Magazine, January 2014, More…

The pulse of the Scherzo is rigorously even, but it has explosive energy; the sheer precisions of the articulation in the finale is a pleasure, as he takes us boldly through its labyrinth of... — BBC Music Magazine, May 2018, More…

The real star of this performance...is the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, in whose hands the music seems to glow from within. The playing is thrilling throughout, with Claudio Abbado caressing every... — BBC Music Magazine, September 2011, More…

…the most stimulating and fascinating accounts of the Beethoven violin sonatas I have heard in many years. Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov bring out the full quirkiness of the earlier... — BBC Music Magazine, October 2009, More…

Interpreters of the late quartets have to convey what at times sounds like a stream of musical consciousness while respecting the many written markings. The Takács do better than most. For openers,... — Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 More…

A disc that revealed Gardiner's Beethoven credentials but which also showed off his magnificent Monterverdi Choir as it edged into the 19th century. Another Record of the Year. — Gramophone Magazine, October 2008 More…

The Takács do a fine job here: controlled, well paced and impeccably balanced.
They manage to balance the music's vertical and horizontal aspects beautifully, long-breathed contrapuntal lines... — Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 More…