"Chiejina’s and Burch’s compelling performance is richly mature and painstakingly coloured [Britten On this Island] ... Chiejina’s luxuriant voice always holds our attention ... William Marsey’s 2022 Removal and other powers flows naturally from Britten, hypnotic and unmoved, were it not for the women’s compassionate voices ... Finzi’s Before and after Summer dates from the years surrounding the Second World War. Barron’s enunciation is pinpoint precise. Her account of ‘Channel Firing’ is heart-breaking, while ‘He Abjures Love’ is turbulent and unsettling ... This perfect counterpart to Marsey [Joanna Ward's Summer Dresses] is unnerving, hallucinatory and exquisitely played, offering sun-drenched shards of memory ... Burch evokes countless, varied pictures and moods while always supporting and balancing the singers, despite many dense textures. She is a gifted sound-painter, breathing life into every detail, such as the random fall of leaves which opens ‘The Too Short Time’.Together with clear texts, fine recorded sound and Lucy Walker’s eloquent liner notes, this album is thought-provoking, beautifully executed and timely"

"There is nothing indifferent about this recording, which takes its title from a poem by Thomas Hardy, Channel Firing ...From the opening of Let the florid music praise! from Benjamin Britten’s On this Island, Op. 11, words by WH Auden, soprano Francesca Chiejina sets the standard for the quality of this disc. Burch’s accompaniments and Chiejina’s strong voice sensitively capture the sentiments in the five songs, and together they perform with a persuasive sophistication. Chiejina’s diction is clear, and whether it be the ‘almost stereotypical word-painting in Seascape’s surging waves of piano figures’, the textures of the Nocturne, or, as Dr Walker notes, the short-lived cabaret style of As it is plenty, the detail is dynamically explored and executed ... Barron continues with the ten songs that make up Finzi’s Before and after Summer. She, too, has excellent diction and articulation and sensitively expresses the feelings in Thomas Hardy’s poetry ... All are performed with empathy, with Burch’s contribution elegantly played; she is able to deftly tap into the consciousness of each of the composer’s intentions"