La Nuova Musica

[Mead] offers articulate readings of the cantatas, his voice (with its faint echoes of the young Andreas Scholl) is beautifully controlled, its reedy, instrumental quality yielding lovely dialogues... — BBC Music Magazine, August 2017, 3 out of 5 stars More…

Mead’s theatrical experience comes through most clearly in his dramatic rendering of some of the songs from the odes…The stage songs are often presented with an affecting fluidity, as in William... — BBC Music Magazine, May 2023, 3 out of 5 stars More…

The soft-edged clarity of this smoothly sonorous recording is a tasteful foil to the high levels of emotion, definitely and effectively conveyed by an excellent cast. — Choir & Organ, Autumn 2014 More…

Crowe here offers an intense and dramatic reading of the first Leçon … Elizabeth Watts takes centre stage in the second setting – her voice plummy and voluptuous … The two join in an impassioned... — BBC Music Magazine, December 2016, 4 out of 5 stars More…

…These are dedicated performances. They sometimes sound as if they could date from the 1950s or '60s, but many listeners will surely welcome that mellower, less athletic approach. — BBC Music Magazine, June 2009, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Bates wisely judges that the pace of the opening chorus [of the Handel] should be dictated by the singers' natural declamation of the line...I particularly appreciated Crowe's gorgeous soft... — Gramophone Magazine, May 2013 More…