Browse: SACD, LSO Live (label)

…much to enjoy here…pinpoint precision of melody-carrying flutes and violins, the sure footed bass and above all a sense that the composer is being taken seriously. — Gramophone Magazine, April 2017 More…

this performance from last year with the London Symphony Orchestra on stupendous form seems to mark a pitch of understanding and communication which it wouldn't be possible to surpass. There... — BBC Music Magazine, April 2014 More…

Gardiner keeps the LSO on its toes both in the C minor work and the Italian symphony, the winds producing crystal-clear articulation the hair-raisingly fast account of the latter’s concluding... — BBC Music Magazine, December 2016, More…

Now in his late 70s, John Eliot Gardiner seems to have embarked on a second spring rather than an Indian summer. The Schumann symphonies  on his second instalment of the cycle are bottled sunshine…you... — BBC Music Magazine, May 2020, (Performance) / (Recording) More…

Gardiner [goes] all out for visceral sensation. The London performances bring the music most readily to life. — Gramophone Magazine, December 2019 More…

Vivid detail and clear choral textures come over quite stunningly on both formats, but the Blu-ray has the edge...Sally Matthews doesn't quite catch the ethereal quality Gardiner's Barbara Bonney... — BBC Music Magazine, January 2016, More…

Few can rival Valery Gergiev's pedigree in Prokofiev's music, and he is palpably aware of how this score works in the theatre. His pacing of events is masterly, with plenty of verve and passion…... — BBC Music Magazine, February 2010, More…

The playing of the London Symphony Orchestra Chamber Ensemble and their leader Gordon Nikolitch and the singing of Tenebrae and the two soloists are all exemplary. The problems here are not mostly... — BBC Music Magazine, February 2013, More…

It’s the symphony that might or might not have recalibrated Shostakovich’s future and it’s still one of the trickiest to pull off in performance. Noseda meets it halfway – which makes for pluses... — Gramophone Magazine, December 2019 More…

Kožená’s Melisande has a firm streak of red-blooded coquettish defiance that is effective, even if it belies the character’s customary blanched fragility. Christian Gerhaher’s Pélleas is similarly... — BBC Music Magazine, Christmas 2017, More…