Haydn: The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross, Hob XX/2 (Choral version)

"Jurowski, with the LPO and its fabulous choir, offers the best of both worlds, juxtaposing the original instrumental movements with the later choral versions. The result is unexpectedly satisfying: we are never made to feel that the music is "doubling up" in any way...this is a full-bodied performance which nevertheless behaves itself with admirable restraint"
(Financial Times)

" it's nicely done, with some finely detailed playing and choral singing of great warmth and beauty. The quartet of soloists are led by Lisa Milne, suitably ecstatic, and by Christopher Maltman, intense and expressive as always."
(Guardian)

"[Jurowski shows] a vital sense of motion in presenting this music - an essential challenge, given its predominant slowness - as well as pointing up the work's intensity and revealing its inner parts. A strange and solemn extra movement Haydn added for the choral version is particularly potent in his hands."
(BBC Music)

"Jurowski takes several movements provocatively fast...[his] urgency is vindicated in the despairing fourth Word, with its grinding suspensions, and the violence of No. 5 "I thirst". Here and elsewhere the orchestral palette is aptly lean and astringent, with pared-down string tone and louring natural horns. A word, too, for the superb LPO wind, including a wonderfully pungent contrabassoon."
(Gramophone April 2011)

Gramophone Awards 2011 - shortlisted