CD of the Month Choral and Song (July 2016) - “Joseph Middleton’s neat and purposeful accompaniments are major assests, and just as Hughes’s singing offers and object lesson in how to bring words and notes together, she and her pianist collaborate as a duo of equals…Each of the performers observes the details of Schubert’s writing…In Mahler…Middleton makes a good deal of the accompaniments that feel orchestrally rather than pianistically conceived…A dream debut.” ★★★★★
Recording of the Month - “The four voices blend beautifully in quartets by Brahms … Best of all, though, is Bevan singing Elisabeth Machony’s ‘Sun Moon and Stars’, a mystic, high-lying setting of Thomas Traherne, her voice ascending into the stratosphere with rapturous ease … Middleton is outstanding, his reputation as a rising star among accompanists richly deserved.”
“Hughes has an ace up her sleeve in pianist Joseph Middleton. In Middleton’s version of Mahler’s “Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen” he somehow acknowledges what Mahler’s orchestration does without playing it as a “transcription,” while remaining unconstructed by the piano’s more limited palette. His Mahler “Um Mitternacht” is detailed and magisterially played, and in Schubert’s “Nachtstück” his rendering of an old man’s final harp peroration is lush and comforting. Middleton’s achievement…makes the whole program a far greater musical experience than it might otherwise have been.”
“a moody, exquisitely realised programme of familiar Schubert and Mahler alongside comparative rarities by Berg and Britten…Hughes’s voice is ravishing, her interpretations wonderfully fresh, and there’s a real sense of give and take between herself and Middleton…there’s an exceptional performance of ‘Um Mitternacht’…Middleton is outstanding, his reputation as a rising star among accompanists richly deserved.”