Lydia Mordkovitch …responds with unflagging conviction and her customary no-holds-barred passion receives alert, warm-hearted support… an attractive and valuable coupling.
Gramophone
The orchestra provides characterful emphatic support… the recording captures everything with great vividness and warmth.
‘Classical CD of the Week’ in The Daily Telegraph
I won’t spoil any surprises here, suffice to say that Richard Hickox conducts a stunning performance of this still hugely underrated score, captured in resplendent, luxurious, yet detailed, sound by Brian and Ralph Couzens. Lydia Mordkovitch also makes a superb case for the Violin Concerto, reminding us that its true heritage life not with the English pastoral tradition, but with the Russian Prokofiev.
Classic FM Magazine
Bliss’s A Colour Symphony needs a full Technicolour acoustic to do justice to its heraldic splendour. The Chandos sound certainly gives us that. Hickox, on superior form, adds his own bite with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales: it’s a sterling interpretation of a key British work. The violin concerto from the 1950s presents the later, less combative Bliss. Lydia Mordkovitch offers a fiery almost gypsy, interpretation; very fetching, and not at all wrong. A rewarding release.
The Times
Bliss’s Violin Concerto dates from more than 30 years later, but the idiom is just as personable and approachable, its emotional range wide and its ideas potent. The ardour and tonal lustre of Lydia Mordkovitch’s playing of the solo part – along with the orchestra’s suave rhythmically crisp accompaniment – make a case for it occupying a place in the repertoire among such other late-romantic string concertos as those by Walton, Prokofiev and Korngold.
The Telegraph
So Lydia Mordkovich’s new performance is more than doubly welcome. It has all the virtues you would expect from this source: a strong and forthright interpretation of the solo part, and expertly judged accompaniment from Richard Hickox and his Welsh forces, and a sound quality superior in every respect… Hickox, though, yields to nobody in his commitment to this piece [A Colour Symphony]: significantly, he chose it for his final Prom at the head of this same orchestra. The driving rhythms and energy of the Scherzo in particular makes a terrific impact. Hickox’s energy and drive as well as sensitivity, as captured here, makes this another Chandos winner.
International Record Review
It’s well worth hearing [the Violin Concerto], at least once in a while – and Lydia Mordkovitch, a violinist rarely accused of indifference, throws it at us with undeniable conviction…but she’s so courageous as she slashes her way through the thorniest moments, so luminous in the more lyrical moments (say, the opening of the Finale), and so technically assured that you hardly mind the overkill. Hickox supports her well, especially in those soaring passages that may remind you of Korngold’s heady scores for Errol Flynn swashbucklers.
Fanfare
But I feel that Hickox just comes out in front, projecting Bliss’s invention in full splendour. Chandos’s recording efficiently disentangles and differentiates the various lines in the sometimes congested tutti’s, confirming the composer’s contrapuntal powers.
BBC Music Magazine
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