VA - British String Concertos (2014)

The release of this four-CD set of works for solo string instruments and orchestra pays tribute, as does the recently issued box-set of British String Concertos , to the imagination and vision of the late Richard Itter and his pioneering Lyrita label. (...)The set makes for fantastic value for money, each CD containing well over 70 minutes of music, and the performances are generally of tremendous vibrancy and quality. Lorraine McAslan s reading of Coleridge-Taylor s 1912 Violin Concerto is surely the best recording we have of this much-neglected work and the two Holst works The Double Concerto for two violins with Emmanuel Hurwitz and Kenneth Sillito and the brooding Lyric Movement for viola and orchestra with Cecil Aronowitz with their immediacy by no means betray the fact that they were recorded over 40 years ago. -- Jeremy Dibble, Gramophone February 2015