Peter Grimes

"Recording of the month: It's brilliant. This is the best Peter Grimes we've had since Chandos' other recording, conducted by Richard Hickox ... This performance captures the best of Gardner ... with the warmth and intimacy that comes from working with his own Bergen Orchestra. He understands Britten's score as well as any conductor alive today, and there is a thrilling directness to his performance that brings the piece to vivid life ... The orchestra play out of their skins for him ... The singing is uniformly excellent, too ... And at the apex of the pyramid is Stuart Skelton's Grimes".

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"Editor's choices - September 2020: You can practically smell the sea air (and the spit-and-sawdust fug of The Boar) on this wonderfully engineered Grimes, surely one of the most atmospheric accounts on record ... Grimes's descent into insanity is interestingly calculated - he's unusually calm and collected in the opening court-room scene, his composure gradually unravelling with each subsequent micro-aggression from the denizens of the Borough".

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"Ein ganz besonderer Platz im Museum der Schallplatte gebührt einer Aufnahme von Brittens "Peter Grimes", steht doch der Komponist selbst seinem Ensemble vor ... Faszinosum, das Werk quasi aus erster Hand zu erleben".

"The youthful Britten-Pears Orchestra consistently achieves a quality of sound as magnificent as that in any complete Grimes on CD ... The title role is something of a disappointment ... The stand-out among the principals by some distance is Giselle Alln's Ellen Orford".

"This is an expertly paced performance, as one might expect with Steuart Bedford as conductor, building the tension incrementally ... [Alan Oke] is heard to best effect when Grimes is peering deep into his soul ... Giselle Allen's urgent Ellen Orford is well in the picture, though she does not always sound ingratiating, and David Kempster is a stalwart Balstrode".

"An impressive American Grimes leads the cast in a reading with an edge".

"Recording of the month - Editor's choice: The net joy of this new recording is that Skelton, now a Grimes of considerable experience and range, has found in his vocalisation of the role a well-judged mixture of obsessive professional (sometimes rough) fisherman and troubled, confused and persecuted outsider ... All this is precisely framed by Gardner's conducting and his choice of cast ... An exciting, committed, necessary and brilliantly recorded version for our times".

"Edward Gardner och Bergenfilharmonikerna ger här Peter Grimes en närläsning som lyfter dramat till en ny nivå. Tolkningen skapar utrymme åt texten på ett sätt som man ibland går miste om vid stora operaproduktioner. Stuart Skelton sjunger titelrollen självklart och naket vilket får grymheten från det omgivande fiskarsamhället att framstå som än mer obegriplig och brutal. Ensemblen är lyxigt besatt ned till minsta roll, bland annat svenska Hannah Husáhr skymtar förbi".