Browse: Presto Recordings of the Year, Contemporary (era)

the Philadelphians under Yannick Nézet-Séguin provide sterling support for Trifonov's stunning pyrotechnics. There are also moments of magical repose, Trifonov achieving astonishing beauty of... — BBC Music Magazine, December 2015 More…

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…

Some may find the extensive spoken liturgy excessive but such is Simon Russell Beale’s compelling delivery that the sheer beauty of the words offers a musical diversion of a different kind. Most... — Gramophone Magazine, June 2019 More…

There’s no doubting that [Shibe] is an artist blessed with grace to spare, and a roar that is fearsome – witness the opening section of Julia Wolfe’s LAD which screams into anguished life before... — BBC Music Magazine, November 2018, More…

Finley ‘owns’ the characterisation of J Robert Oppenheimer…and Julia Bullock’s Kitty [is] the most ardent possible. All else is compelling on every level, with superb British support from Brindley... — BBC Music Magazine, August 2018, More…

The playing here, disarmingly gentle yet tonally seductive, has a songful use of vibrato that recalls the expressive manners of Pierre Fournier and du Pré herself…A most rewarding CD then, sure... — Gramophone Magazine, March 2018 More…

His vivid, trenchant string writing is realised with striking clarity by the Britten Sinfonia in this recording, made just a fortnight after the same performers gave the world premiere last October... — BBC Music Magazine, June 2017, More…

The persistent ‘Baroque specialist’ label hardly sums up this distinguished French soprano. With her distinctively radiant, secure tone and cut-crystal upper range, her repertoire has always... — BBC Music Magazine, September 2018, More…

Abrahamsen expresses both the fragility and force of Griffiths's imagined Ophelia through glinting, gauze-like textures and moments of clattering tumult…Barbara Hannigan's agile, luminous voice... — BBC Music Magazine, May 2016, More…

How can one resist the combination of Marianne Crebassa’s attractive voice and a selection of French song, especially Debussy’s Chansons de Bilitis and three Veraline songs? As for Ravel’s Shéhérazade,... — BBC Music Magazine, January 2018, More…