"Michael Dussek negotiates the note splattered [Piano Concerto], Scharwenkian terrain with infectious bravado and sensitivity, and 'Tod' Handley directs with all his customary sympathy andunderstanding."
"It is wonderful to hear Lorraine McAslan [Violin Concerto] ... playing with the kind of dashing swagger, vibrato intensity and quicksilver portamento that distinguished Heifetz's concerto recordings of the 1950s. It is a mesmerising performance captured in opulent sound."
Julian Haylock, BBC Music Magazine, July 2006

"Such lavish extravagance of melody and sentiment"
"This has to be among the 'Recordings of the Year'."
Rob Barnett, Recording of the Month, www.musicweb-international.com, July 2006

"I was extremely pleased with the well balanced sound quality from the Dutton engineers and the booklet notes from Lewis Foreman are as first class as I have come to expect. This well presented Dutton Epoch release is a revealing survey of the charming and colourful sound world of York Bowen.
Music of eloquent beauty that will lift the spirits. A valuable release that will be one of my ‘Records of the Year’."
Michael Cookson, www.musicweb-international.com, June 2006

"Michael Dussek displays scintillating tone and a fine technique."
"Lorraine McAslan's warm patrician tone (which brings to mind that of Heifetz) and caressing manner is all one could ask from an advocate of the Violin Concerto. Handley leads with authority"
"... with excellent sound and zealous liner notes, this ione's a must for the Violin Concerto."
Barry Brenesal, Fanfare, March/April 2007

"Lorraine McAslan is a very accomplished solist who gives a very sympathetic reading with plenty of brilliance and a fine tone drawn from her Andrea Guarneri violin of 1691."
"Michael Dussek ... has a good deal of sympathy for the composer. He has fine, compact tone and a very clean technique."
Joseph A Magil, American Record Guide, March/April 2007

"Here is a major recording with some big names including two of Dutton's regulars: Michael Dussek and Lorraine McAslan. Getting Vernon Handley and the BBC Concert Orchestra is a coup in itself. Watford Town Hall was the recording site, and as expected, Lewis Foreman wrote the excellent notes."
"Do go for this one."
The Delian, October 2006

"York Bowen is certainly getting a lot of play lately, and one listen to these sassy, quasi-jazzy, fluid romantic concertos and you will know why."
"Who else could conduct this music like Vernon Handley? His control of the excellent BBC Concert Orchestra only demonstrates that in English music he has few peers. And almost as peerless is the great sound now becoming a standard with Dutton Records' new recordings."
Steven Ritter, Audiophile Audition, 27 February 2007

A revelation for all lovers of the English symphony: Vernon Handley conducting the BBC Concert Orchestra works his magic on two tremendous but until now unknown scores, in an unexpected coupling. Edgar Bainton’s glorious Third Symphony, his last work, from 1956, was written when he was living in Australia, and Rutland Boughton’s First Symphony, from 1905, a swaggering Edwardian celebration of Oliver Cromwell, is crowned by baritone Roderick Williams’s fervent projection of Cromwell’s prayer at the end. We perhaps do not link the names of Edgar Bainton and Rutland Boughton, yet they were friends and contemporaries when Boughton was trying to launch his opera scheme at Glastonbury at the beginning of WWI, and their music, early and late, makes a uniquely rewarding programme.

"... another substaintial coupling from Dutton, on which Vernon Handley and the BBC Concert Orchestra resuscitate two symphonies by Edgar Bainton and Rutland Boughton. The latter's First (a red-blooded, somewhat Lisztian character portrait of Oliver Cromwell) dates from 1905 and its finale incorporates a sincerely felt setting for baritone (here the eloquent Roderick Williams) of Cromwell's last prayer. Bainton's Third Symphony (1956) ... strikes me as a find: a 42-minute journey of frequently piercing beauty and slumbering power, waymarked by a haunting pentatonic motif. With first rate orchestral playing and Handley in his element, Anglophiles and adventurous collectors alike needn't tarry."
Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone, June 2007

CDLX 7185

"The indefatigable champion of British music, Vernon Handley, here presents a strong case for one of the 20th century's semi-forgotten figures, enhanced by the pianistic panache of Michael Dussek."
"Its [the music on this disc's] combination of succulence, brilliance and strong melodic threads, coupled with the sensitivity and spirit of these performances, ought to win new admirers for two imaginative concertos and a Symphonic Fantasia of Straussian lyricism and verve."
Geoffrey Norris, The Daily Telegraph, 7 August 2007

"This is high-Victorian musical rhetoric, full of good breeding and good taste…the Lisztian piano writing sparkles, the orchestration is transparent…The BBC Concert Orchestra plays as if it believes in this stuff; Michael Dussek plays with energy but also a light touch – a good idea, for heaviness in this self-important music would be fatal."
Sullivan, American Record Review

CDLX 7187

This CD features three different works by three very different 20th century British composers, while two orchestras who have established strong links to the Dutton Epoch label – the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the BBC Concert Orchestra – are on hand to interpret the scores with all their customary panache and virtuosity. The Scottish composer Erik Chisholm was one of those who, because he went to live abroad at a crucial phase in his career, have tended to be forgotten in the country of their birth. His Second Symphony (subtitled Ossian) dates from 1939 but was never performed as such. Instead it was quarried by the composer for his wartime ballet ‘The Earth-Shapers’ (‘a symphonic ballet in a prologue and one act’). It would be easy to relate this music to the times in which it was composed, as a metaphor for the struggle with Nazism. But Chisholm has left us no such allusion. In contrast, Trevor Hold’s song cycle, The Unreturning Spring, though written between 1961 and 1963 very much reflects issues of the war in setting the airman James Farrar’s poems. Eric Fogg, the son of the organist to the Hallé Orchestra, was a child prodigy composer whose youthful output was considerable. Known for his work as an accompanist for the BBC in Manchester during the ’20s/’30s and later as BBC Empire Director of Music in London, much of Fogg’s orchestral output is now lost. His evocative musical picture of the sea at dusk, Sea-Sheen, was published when Fogg was only seventeen. Eric Fogg’s orchestral evocation Merok is dated June 1929, and was published in 1934. Merok is a tiny village in Norway, situated at the head of the Geiranger Fjord, and Fogg’s musical picture takes the form of variations on a Norwegian folk song.

CDLX 7196

Dutton Epoch’s tribute to the late Vernon Handley comes with this reissue of a programme that was one of his triumphs from the 1980s, but has long been unavailable. Kathryn Stott’s ringing performances and Handley’s inspired direction of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra remind us piquantly of Handley’s all too brief association with Dutton Epoch.

RE-ISSUE - CDLX 7223

"Within a few years, the Dutton Epoch label's new release programme has become the first stop for collectors anxious to increase their knowledge of unjustly neglected British music."
Robert Matthew-Walker, International Record Review, January 2008

"This is a series which comprehensively rights a number of artistic wrongs."
Robert Matthew-Walker, International Record Review, June 2007

"The torrent of enterprising offerings from Dutton Epoch shows no sign of abating."
Andrew Achenbach, The Gramophone, June 2007

"... an extraordinarily valuable series."
Rob Cowan, The Gramophone, March 2002

CDSPA 2008