FANFARE
The Magazine for Serious Record Collectors (USA)

«British oboist Nicholas Daniel is, as the head notes clearly show, an enterprising musician. Given his range of repertoire and technical security, comparison with Heinz Holliger is not inappropriate; given the fluency and often poignancy of his phrasing and his sheer musicality, he conjures up Leon Goossens...

The Wagner excerpt is telling. In it, Daniel evokes the unnamed English horn player on Furtwängler's old EMI Tristan. Other oboists are well advised to incorporate this solopassage into their repertoires. Henri Tomasi... is an undersung French composer. His Evocations are just that ‹ evocative of the musical languages of Peru, Nigeria, Cambodia, Scotland. These are delicious miniatures ‹ full of pungent national flavors distilled and encapsulated in tiny time frames. The last movement is a virtuoso romp. The Telemann fantasies are full of grace, wit, and, in the end (as all worthy performances of Telemann should be), are hauntingly beautiful. Daniel has interspersed these five Telemann fantasies throughout his recital to act as a musical and musicological 'touchstone' to orient the listener before and after the more esoteric and musically daring pieces. It's a fine strategy and it pays off by showing that the modern pieces and the Telemann are not exclusive of each other, but are, on the contrary, mutually illuminating... Daniel's performance of Berio's Sequenza VII is a technically secure and inventive reading that provides more than its share of insights into Berio's knotty language ‹ mining its experimentalism, its celebration of instrumental sonority, and its whimsy... This is a well-recorded and stunningly performed program of quite magical material, and deserves the Want List status.»