Gramophone Magazine,  Andrew Achenbach
Editor’s Choice, September issue

Here’s a marvellously stylish showcase for some eclectic and characteristically communicative repertoire by the seemingly indefatigable Michael Berkeley (76 years young at the time of writing), its title sparked by a suggestion from Neil Tennant, singer and songwriter with Pet Shop Boys. Read on to find out more (turns out they are fans of each other’s work – and I didn’t know about the youthful Berkeley’s former life as the keyboard player in a rock band called Seeds of Dyscord).

Back to the present disc, however, and proceedings are launched by two sets of sharply inventive miniatures, Haiku 1: Birds and Haiku 2: Insects, conceived for pianist Clare Hammond and harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani respectively. These in turn frame a touching elegy for solo violin that Berkeley wrote for Madeleine Mitchell on the news of the death of Nicholas Snowman (arts administrator and co-founder of the London Sinfonietta). Likewise, there’s no denying the consummate artistry shown by mezzo Alice Coote (persuasively partnered by Julius Drake) in the song-cycle Speaking Silence, originally designed for baritone David Wilson-Johnson and containing darkly intense settings of (among others) Christina Rossetti, WB Yeats and the 16th-century French poet Pontus de Tyard. Not to be outdone,

“clarinettist Robert Plane teams up with viola player Rachel Roberts and pianist Chris Hopkins for a superbly compelling rendering of The Magnolia Tree, a strongly appealing, exquisitely crafted and (by the close) memorably serene 13-minute essay”

commissioned for the 2023 Presteigne Festival and inspired in large part by measures from Bach’s The Art of Fugue.

Plaudits, too, to the BBC Singers under Owain Park for their flawless technical control and breathtaking composure in a sequence of four offerings, perhaps the highlight of which comprises Super flumina Babylonis (Psalm 137, ‘By the waters of Babylon’…

Exemplary production values and presentation add further lustre to a conspicuously enterprising and rewarding issue.