Andrew Litton and his cast deliver this high-class froth with verve and lightness of touch.

With remarkably instinctive deftness, the Philharmonia Orchestra under the baton of Andrew Litton provides a welcome gift for all opera lovers who have an interest in unexplored, completely forgotten finds. The recording has fire, drive and brilliance.

Opera Rara's cast is uniformly strong. The Geoffrey Mitchell Choir's stylish singing and the virtuosity of the Philharmonia under the highly-motivated Andrew Litton make this an unreserved recommendation.

Classic FM's May 2008 Disc of the Month. Litton's Bergen Philharmonic is exquisitely detailed from the opening bars; While Litton keeps things opaque and tight when required, at the right moments he pulls irresistibly at the concerto's tempi and unleashes considerable tutti power, never foregoing detail.

Violinist Vadim Gluzman plays magnificently throughout; Andrew Litton and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra provide superb support. This is a reference-quality recording, with near-definitive performances. Very highly recommended!

The performances, with Piers Lane as soloist and the Bergen Philharmonic conducted by Andrew Litton, are jaw-droppingly good - so much so that any qualms you may have about the works themselves are swept aside by the sheer excitement of it all.

These are excellent performances in every respect: magnificently played, beautifully recorded, and conducted with unfailing intelligence. For all intents and purposes, Litton stands in a class of his own.

The performance of the Fourth is rightly the pinnacle of Andrew Litton's superb Ives cycle... Litton has the work's measure perfectly, balancing the visionary with the prosaic, and teasing out the most complex textures of a huge orchestra and a chorus with an exemplary clarity that is flawlessly captured by the recording.

Litton wrings the full range of Ives' no-holds-barred approach in these works.

Andrew Litton's set of the four Ives symphonies is notable for its physicality. The First gains from Litton's swift baton. Cherish the endearing Third for its alert phrasing; cherish the Fourth for the transcendental finale.

Litton and his Dallas players don't condescend to the First Symphony. Earlier recordings made a good case for it, but this one is lighter on its feet and just as idiomatic as the Ormandy, with vastly better recorded sound. Litton's performance [of Ives' Symphony No. 3] is the best stereo version that I have heard.

As good, as individual, as deep, and in far better sound... I forgot what it felt like to be proud to be an American until I heard Andrew Litton's hair-tearingly wonderful new live recordings of the Charles Ives Symphonies...

A top European orchestra, the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, comes together with Andrew Litton, an American conductor well versed in the Russian repertoire, and the result is brilliant, colorful, spirited, striking, dynamically layered and of impressive, detailed precision...

Of particular merit is the rich, singing tone that Maestro Litton gets from the Dallas Symphony string section, and some nice playing as well from the horns, whose prominent part is played to perfection. This is very satisfying music making all round, and it is particularly rewarding to hear this piece played at just the right tempo...

Both Hamelin and Litton bring the music to life in a remarkably complete and refreshing way. Hamelin attacks...with plenty of passion. Litton responds in kind with some of the most sharply rhythmic (but always unaffected) phrasing that the music has received on disc. The result has exactly the right kind of tension, a fierce energy that never turns hysterical or loses focus.

The Brahms is a happy surprise. Andrew Litton . . . brings plenty of ardor to the performance, and he turns some lovely phrases of his own. A-.

Bravo to the conductor and the orchestra as well for this exceptionally beautiful rendition of Dvorak's cello concerto...What superb chemistry. How refreshing to have new recording of this, a work, that surely has been taken for granted as being only playable by the great old masters of the instrument.

Andrew Litton conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra in a vivacious coupling of Dvorak's Cello Concerto and the D minor Serenade for Winds. The orchestral quality is sumptuous and warmly defined, matched in the concerto by the heated impetuosity of the Russian cellist Nina Kotova.

It's no bad thing to live dangerously in the recording studio, and there are places in the Cello Concerto where Russian-born Nina Kotova does just that. Andrew Litton and the Philharmonia rise to the challenge of speedier climaxes, and conclude with a mellifluous wind serenade.

Winner of the 2005 BBC Critics Award

2005 Editor's Choice

2004 Record of the Year

Five Star Choice

2004 Recordings of the Year Selection

2005 Classical Internet Award

The best set of Rachmaninov Piano Concertos ever recorded.

A brisk and rigorous performance, where Andrew Litton's forthright conducting stresses the music's symphonic orientation, and admirably anchors Hough's frisky fingerwork. These live concert recordings stand out in a field jam-packed with first-rate Rachmaninov cycles.

"Exhilarating performances, freshly conceived and textually pristine."

"Stephen Hough and Andrew Litton cut a swathe through the decades-long undergrowth of bad tradition, revealing leaner, more potent works in the process...A terrific achievement."

"A must have. A revelation. Get it."

Hough and Litton have cleaned half a century of Hollywood patina off these works to show them how Rachmaninov surely intended: fresh, ardent and passionate, full of a youthful, heart-on-sleeve innocence.

Hough and Litton have not slavishly recreated Rachmaninov's recordings; they make the works live and breathe with their own impetus. That they work extremely well on their own terms can immediately be evinced by the ecstatic reaction of the Dallas audiences' cheering at the end of the four concertos.

One of the Top 10 Classical Records of 2004

I am now of the firm belief that Hough and Litton have recorded the definitive set of the Rachmaninov Concertos. This is the 2004 classical recording of the year.

[Hough and Litton] make living, flaming music from the ebbing and flowing speeds, the soloist's improvisatory airs, or the strings' willingness to revive the old portamento slide. The waves of energy at the finale's end are very exciting; no wonder the Dallas audience breaks out in cheers.

I can't think of any other cycles of these works, even the composer's own, that draws quite so much musical interest from the scores. It's not that the performances are excessively busy, much less ornate; for all the stunning range of their articulation, for all their attention to secondary voices, Hough and Litton never let the details interefere with the flow of the music....simply breathtaking.

These are live recordings, and they crackle with life...Legions of great pianists and orchestras have recorded these concertos, but Hough and the Dallas musicians may have outdone them all.

Andrew Litton's excellent Dallas Symphony Orchestra does full justice to all the works, and the three soloists for whom the later pieces were written could hardly be bettered.

All four works are brought together under Litton's solid direction, and the Dallas Symphony, showing why it's one of our nation's greatest orchestras, particularly when it comes to performing the music of our native soil and of our times.

Andrew Litton and the Dallas Symphony are strong advocates of this new and enterprising music full of stimulating sounds. A wonderful surprise well worth investigating.

Closer listening reveals the subtler differences in character, and the playing throughout of Andrew Litton's Dallas Symphony Orchestra is vivid and energetic.

Hyperion has followed up with a DSO CD devoted to music by contemporary American composer Joseph Schwantner, and it's another winner. Mr. Litton, the DSO and three superb soloists serve up top-notch performances. Even if you think you hate contemporary music, these enchanting works may change your mind.

Conductor Andrew Litton elicits articulate and frequently virtuosic playing from the Dallas Symphony. He brings out the nuances in the scores, and the performances are radiantly vibrant and vivid.