Browse: CD, Brian (composer)

My expectations of high performance quality were fully met by these gripping accounts. Walker achieves extraordinarily intense playing that illuminates this music to its best advantage. — MusicWeb International, May 2015 More…

Their gusto in tackling Brian’s complex, often cryptic but rewarding scores is very winning. All the music here shows the old maverick forging ahead from epic breadth to extreme compression,... — BBC Music Magazine, August 2019, 3 out of 5 stars (Performance) / 4 out of 5 stars (Recording) More…

Brabbins and his Scottish forces pounce on every glinting detail and quirk…Roderick Williams squeezes every lyrical drop from the sometimes arid vocal line, though it's the orchestral details... — BBC Music Magazine, June 2015, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Brian fanatics, while no doubt queueing up for more, will savour the consistently strong performances by these three fine musicians — BBC Music Magazine, August 2012, 3 out of 5 stars More…

Brabbins's direct approach suits the couplings, producing splendid accounts of the Third English Suite (coeval with the Gothic Symphony and surprisingly pastoral in places) and the orchestral... — Gramophone Magazine, August 2011 More…

Walker secures fine playing by this unfamiliar orchestra whose brass section, pleasingly, avoid, the excessive vibrato of previous Russian generations. — BBC Music Magazine, November 2013, 4 out of 5 stars More…

These extracts from Brian's comic-satirical opera offer subtle invention besides his compulsive prolixity, and appeal much more strongly than Foulds's fluent but characterless Pasquinade. Clear,... — BBC Music Magazine, Christmas 2014, 4 out of 5 stars More…