The March 2020 Gramophone issue reviews the Dante Quartet’s Stanford: String Quartets, Volume Three recording with a rave for the whole set: “Hats off, folks: the completion of the first full recorded cycle of Stanford’s string quartets deserves a moment of acknowledgment. … the more you listen to this music, the more distinctively Stanford’s own […]

Gramophone Magazine’s October 2019 issue profiles the Charles Villiers Stanford Musical Revival and features SOMM’s recent and upcoming recordings of his string quartets with the Dante Quartet and the upcoming release of Stanford’s opera “The Travelling Companion”. “The recording of The Travelling Companion gives us a unique opportunity to hear a side of Stanford’s musical […]

“It’s an attractive idea: a programme of chamber music by four mutual friends, Robert and Clara Schumann and Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn. Two D minor piano trios anchor the programme – by Fanny and Robert – while salon pieces by Felix and Clara fill out the running time very appealingly, as well as providing brief […]

Gramophone‘s Richard Bratby features his top recordings of Beethoven’s Chamber Music in the September 2019 “Gramophone Collector” column and Krysia Osostowicz and Daniel Tong‘s Beethoven Plus, Vol. 2 is part of his collection: “In their ‘Beethoven Plus’ series on SOMM, violinist Krysia Osostowicz and pianist Daniel Tong have found another [way of renewing Beethoven] — […]

“The eclecticism and stylistic contrasts characterising the works on Nathan Williamson’s newest release reveal this pianist’s knack for conceiving intelligent and freshly minted playlists of relatively unfamiliar yet worthy repertoire. Indeed, the contents and running order would make for a most satisfying and stimulating recital programme, with or without intermission. … In all, a stimulating […]

“[Peter Donohoe] and SOMM’s recording team return to the Birmingham Conservatoire and to a Bechstein piano that sounds ideal in this music — beatuifully sonorous… Donohoe takes each work at face value, keeping shifts of tempo and impromptu ornamentation to a minimum but still playing with the sensitivity that was palpable in Vol. 1. … […]

In 2014, Krysia Osostowicz and I were working on the cycle of 10 Beethoven Sonatas for Violin and Piano, on that kind of musical high that comes from immersion in the depths of fathomless art. We began talking about what we could do to mark out our cycle from the many that have come before; […]

“this recording reappears on Somm 20 years later, tying in with José Serebrier’s 80th birthday. Its main points of interest concern the conductor’s splendid orchestrations of the three piano Preludes. The first stands out for Serebrier’s witty and unpredictable use of brass instruments and his ingenuously varied cymbal fills when the main theme recapitulates. … […]

“Plenty of charismatic playing here, in a programme clearly planned to entertain. … This sequence was taken live from a concert in 2017 and the audience’s delight in it is audible… [a] splendid time…is clearly being had by all. … Johnson’s reimaginings of the two closing Strauss numbers are as frothy as a glass of […]

“As a chorister in the 1960s I can still remember the lines of the British Legion who would parade up to the village church and the war memorial to hear the names of the dead read out. My memories of those chilly, solemn November Sunday mornings are still vivid. They were occasions charged with deep […]