Reviews

The opening movement, ‘Dialogues’, starts with intense held notes employing the BACH motif… Childs demonstrates his sonorous sound and impeccable intonation on the angular melodies. ‘Dialogues’ features shifting, contrasting styles that highlight Childs’ musical flexibility.  The second movement, ‘Song Without Words’, showcases Childs’ brilliant sound and lyricism….. The third movement, ‘A Celtic Bacchanal’, contains elements of Irish dance music that display Childs’ technical virtuosity, soaring high range, and use of lilt to emphasize the dance style.  

Dr James M Green, Ohio Northern University and Ohio Christian University (2022)

[The Concerto] features a genuinely inspired slow movement (‘Song without Words’), whose lyrical beauty and translucent textures cast quite a spell. I also love the banter between euphonium and timpani during the cadenza at the end of the satisfyingly cogent first movement (which is bound together by a dramatic five-note motif heard at the outset), while the vigorous finale (‘A Celtic Bacchanal’) makes quite a splash.

Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone (2018)

The fulcrum of the disc is Edward Gregson’s newly-minted Euphonium Concerto, a long-awaited essay from a composer celebrating his 75th birthday next year.  It’s a work of dazzling invention and creative brilliance, which brilliantly exploits the soloist’s musicianship within a framework of the highest creative credentials.

Christopher Thomas, Brass Band World (November 2019)

The soloist’s propriety DNA is unquestionably infused throughout the Gregson Concerto.  Beautifully constructed, it provides the broadest canvas for self-expression; the opening Dialogues almost a peroration in reverse – from exclamatory forcefulness to the deftest touch of adroit argument.  The central Song without Words yearns with melancholic, tender longing, the final a Bacchanal of visceral energy.

Iwan Fox, 4barsrest (October 2019)