BBC Music Magazine
March 2023
Instrumental Choice

Gramophone Magazine
April 2023
Editor's Choice

Rosalind Ventris (viola)

Bacewicz: Kaprys polski No. 1
Fuchs, L: Sonata Pastorale for Unaccompanied Viola
Feery: Boreal
Beamish: Penillion
Lutyens: Echo of the Wind
Maconchy: Sketches (5) for Solo Viola
Holst, I: Suite for Unaccompanied Viola
Musgrave: In the Still of the Night
Musgrave: Light at the End of the Tunnel

Rosalind Ventris’s debut solo album features a selection of music for unacccompanied viola composed between 1930 (Imogen Holst’s impressive Suite for Viola) and the present day (a 2020 lockdown miniature by Thea Musgrave). The largely British and Irish programme allows Ventris to revive substantial works by important yet still often overlooked twentieth-century composers – not only Holst but also Lillian Fuchs, Elizabeth Maconchy, Elisabeth Lutyens and Gra_yna Bacewicz – alongside more recent additions to the repertoire from Musgrave, Sally Beamish and Amanda Feery. With several of the composers themselves professional string players, this is, in Ventris’s words, ‘wonderful music – that just happens to be by women composers’.

"Ventris brings absolute technical assurance and a vivid sense of line...Among the many excellent more contemporary works, Amanda Feery’s Boreal s especially powerful...In all, beautifully performed and recorded." - BBC Music Magazine, March 2023.