The InfoDad team gives their highest rating to the Richmond Symphony and Richmond Symphony Chorus’s Bates: Children of Adam; Vaughan Williams: Dona Nobis Pacem recording in a new review:
“The elegant orchestration and skillful use of voices make [Vaughan Williams’s Dona Nobis Pacem] a very moving work when it is well performed, as it is on a new Reference Recordings disc featuring the Richmond Symphony Chorus and Richmond Symphony conducted by Steven Smith. Soloists Michelle Areyzaga and Kevin Deas handle their parts with both musical and emotional involvement, and Smith sets them off very well against the choral and orchestral forces. … Bates, like Vaughan Williams, orchestrates his work extensively and uses the instrumentation skillfully. … Bates’ work is…more self-consciously outgoing, more of a proclamation than an exploration – certainly quite effective in its own way, and performed just as well by the Richmond musicians as is Vaughan Williams’ cantata… The very fine interpretations on this very well recorded disc do much to put across the composers’ distinct and distinctive use of the words to the best possible effect.”
—InfoDad
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