Samuel’s musical response is something of a tour de force - at once fiercely dramatic and always coherent…Hughes rises to the challenge with bombproof technical strength and control, plenty of firepower when needed, and a thrilling instinct for capturing the persona of his fearsome anti-heroine. She gets impressive support from Jac van Steen and the orchestra, who have evidently rehearsed their demanding contribution up to the hilt.

Samuel’s musical language is accessible and powerful, with an appropriately craggy granitic strength to it...Jac van Steen gets excellent, vivid playing from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales but it’s Hughes’s performance that carries the whole enterprise: vivid, powerful and superbly committed, bringing a real complexity and vulnerability to the character. She’s impressive in the couplings, too, using her lightish soprano intelligently.

beautifully done, in a very satisfying account of the cycle, one of the best of recent years... this is highly recommended.

Commissioned by the BBC NOW in 1994 but neglected since, it explores – with rare insight, passionately expressed by Hughes – the motives that led Clytemnestra to murder her husband, Agamemnon.

Time and again on this album — usefully filled out with Mahler and Berg, predecessors audibly close to Samuel’s heart — soloist and composer make Clytemnestra’s wrenching drama something tangible...Her eloquence is always unfussy and direct. The instrumental fabric is equally strong, with beautiful playing from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, on the top of its top form, conducted by Jac van Steen.