Nicholas Cox - Reviews

"Truly lovely playing." 
Stephen Johnson  - The Independent

"Superb playing"
 The Gramophone

"What became increasingly - and ever more enthrallingly apparent as the recital unfolded was that the clarinettist Nicholas Cox and his pianist Vanessa Latarche not only have catholic tastes but also possess the technical accomplishment, stylistic insight and interpretative discernment...both artists bring to their performance an assured and deeply engrained musicality...Their playing was marked by close rapport and an ideal balance of temperaments, each musician as acute as the other in entering instantly and thoroughly into the composer's individual worlds of sound. An exhilarating evening & a duo to watch."
Geoffrey Norris - Daily Telegraph

"The ideal Mozart experience lay in Nicholas Cox's playing of the Clarinet Concerto on the darker-toned basset clarinet. The result was exquisite and as good as anything in the present recording catalogue. Wonderful, mellifluous, apparently effortless playing of the type an audience can dream of, but so rarely gets to such a degree. A combination of perfect intonation and phrasing to make the spine tingle."
Joe Riley - Liverpool Echo

"A fusion of the art of the entertainer with the skill of th deeply serious musician...Nicholas Cox's imaginative musicianship is revealed in unusually close focussed and widely modulated breath control: it can draw from the clarinet a near percussive tension for Debussy's Premiere Rhapsodie, or create a remarkable resilience of line in Weber's Grand Duo Concertante."
Hilary Finch - The Times

"Any woodwind player who can sing through his instrument as though it represents an extension of his musical personality is clearly one of some consequence. Nicholas Cox can and is."
Robert Cockcroft - Yorkshire Post

"Phil Principals Nicholas Cox, who simply produces the most sumptuous clarinet sound imaginable, and Alan Pendlebury(bassoon) combined for an enchanting reading of Strauss's Duet Concertino."
Joe Riley Liverpool Echo

"Quite why the Bliss Quintet should have received only two recordings in recent years is something of a mystery to me, as the quality of this lovely rhapsodic work is extremely high indeed. The intricately spun melodies of the first movement are here beautifully rendered by Nicholas Cox and the Redcliffe Ensemble and the elegiac slow movement is most movingly delivered too. Alan Rawsthorne's most astringent Clarinet Quartet of 1946 strikes me as very fine and a worthwhile discovery also. Although it displays a clear debt to Viennese serialism its lyrical qualities are exceptionally strong and it is by no means an unapproachable piece. Francis Routh's five movement Clarinet Quintet was composed in 1994, but in a stylistic sense could easily be contemporary with or even earlier than, the Rawsthorne. Nevertheless, it is a pleasant and finely crafted work which here receives a spirited reading from its dedicatee, Nicholas Cox. The recorded sound is very natural indeed."
The Gramophone: November 1996

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