“… Performances and engineering are all first class …” ***½

“… For that [Mary of Magadala] alone this disc would be welcome but in a sympathetic acoustic with fiercely engaged but sensitively shaped readings, Bliss adherents will need to add this to their roster of necessary discs.”

“…this disc is urgently recommended to all Bliss admirers.”

Performance ****      Recording *****

“… It’s a work [23^rd Psalm] that finds Davis in his element, pacing the whole with an impeccable assuredness, coaxing ravishing wind playing in the Introduction, expansively at home in the first variation which elaborates ‘He leadeth me beside the still waters’, and bitingly trenchant in the variation that follows. Throughout, Davis is scrupulously solicitous of Bliss’s carefully calculated play of orchestral colour, and warm surround-sound recording is the icing on the expressive cake…”

“… Sarah Connolly’s thrillingly commanding and excitingly involving portrayal of the spurned Simaetha … demands to be heard, and she enjoys polished and committed backing from the excellent BBC SO under Andrew Davis…. Aficionados will naturally want to investigate this excellent release and can rest assured that both Ralph Couzens’s engineering and Andrew Burn’s annotation leave nothing to be desired.”

“Admirers of the composer Arthur Bliss may find that the most attractive item on this new surround sound disc on the Chandos label is one of his finest pieces, the Meditations on a Theme by John Blow, appearing here in its first incarnation in the SACD medium. Sir Andrew Davis does full justice to the colourful, inventive score… Davis continues his championship of the lesser-known works of Bliss with this coupling of The Enchantress with Mary of Magdala. The always exemplary Dame Sarah Connolly and James Platt are the soloists, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.”

Recording of the Week

“…The album opens with a hair-raising performance of the dramatic scena The Enchantress… Dame Sarah Connolly brings her[Simaetha]  to life with the combination of blazing sensuality and vengeful vehemence that have won her such acclaim as Charpentier’s Medea, Handel’s Agrippina and Britten’s Phaedra…But it’s the final piece here that was the real revelation for me – the 1963 cantata Mary of Magdala, scored for contralto, bass, choir and orchestra and depicting Mary’s encounter with the newly-risen Christ with an immediacy and tenderness that never tips over into sentimentality. Connolly takes centre-stage again, conveying the “fallen woman”’s raw abjection as well as her loyalty and eventual incredulous joy …”