NMC

Saunders explores the sculptural properties of sound, focusing on contrasting and complementary timbre rather than traditional harmony...Juliet Fraser is the spiralling soloist in Skin; swaggering... — BBC Music Magazine, January 2023, 5 out of 5 stars (Performance) / 4 out of 5 stars (Recording) More…

The English pastoral tradition appears [with] the extended opening soliloquy of her 2007 Cello Concerto rising and hovering like a lark ascending. Snippets of Bachian figuration, Britten-ish... — BBC Music Magazine, July 2016, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Judith Weir's treatment of Ludwig Tieck's story Blond Eckbert creates a compelling world… with its own ingenious methods of narration, and a strong sense of movement towards an inescapable and... — BBC Music Magazine, January 2006, 4 out of 5 stars More…

The performances, under the ever-reliable Martyn Brabbins, are excellent, with Ailish Tynan a personable soloist in Natural History. The recordings are clear and bright, like the music itself. — BBC Music Magazine, March 2008, 5 out of 5 stars More…

Howard Skempton's music sounds deceptively easy. Openness to simplicity is one of the hardest qualities to nurture in music, and it is the heart and soul of Skempton's creativity. Exaudi is... — BBC Music Magazine, December 2007, 4 out of 5 stars More…

These recordings sit on the edge of discomfort, relishing in the stark contrasts of timbres available to an orchestra. Oscillating between these extremes, this is music-making at its most dynamic. — BBC Music Magazine, June 2023, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Contemporary composers sink or swim in a sea of perplexingly diverse memories and stimuli – a condition that has been particularly acute since the 1970s. These chamber works from the 1980s show... — Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 More…

The performances are excellent: Jane Manning and her ensemble plainly had no difficulty here in connecting with the pulse and expressive breadth of the music, and the recording quality serves... — BBC Music Magazine, March 2007, 5 out of 5 stars More…

Both of these works [the Moeran and the Rawsthorne] benefit, as does the recital as a whole, from superbly responsive playing by Harriet Mackenzie and Philippa Mo - who project the music's often... — Gramophone Magazine, April 2013 More…