Jean Françaix: Orchestral Music

“An hour of pure joy...This album covers 50 years of Jean Françaix's droll, deadpan and meltingly lyrical work.” --BBC Music Magazine, December 2008

“What happy work [the Symphony] is!...The whole programme is played with warmth, polish and vitality in equal measure; the recording is first class and this is very highly recommended.” --Penguin Guide, 2011 edition

'Again and again while listening to Thierry Fischer's ebullient performances I smile and wish that I had met Jean Françaix' (Gramophone)

'The Ulster Orchestra sound captivated by this music, as well they might … pure pleasure from beginning to end' (International Record Review)

'This collection serves to remind us what 20th-century joys can be found away from the fashionable modernists. The Ulster players may not actually be French, but they fooled me. An utter delight' (The Times)

'The Ulster Orchestra has acquired a deserved reputation for the strength of its sectional work and the quality of its soloists, both aspects of performance that come to the fore in Françaix … Highly recommended' (Fanfare, USA) 'thoroughly entertaining and immensely intelligent' ( The Evening Standard)

'Très bien composé, ce nouveau disque témoigne parfaitement des influences et des particularismes de l’art clair et spirituel de Françaix' (Répertoire, France)

'Thierry Fischer secures some authentically Gallic character from the Ulster Orchestra … Wonderful' (Yorkshire Post)

Jean Françaix: Ballet Music

'The playing here is absolutely first class: rhythmically taut, clear and bright in texture, with a wide range in dynamics, spaciously but not echoingly recorded' --Gramophone

'It would be hard to imagine more persuasive perfomances than these nimble accounts by Fischer and his alert Ulster players. Good clean sound, too. Warmly recommended' --Fanfare, USA

'The immediacy and brilliance of Hyperion's recording of music by Jean Françaix brings to the three works a wonderful panoply of colour' --Essex Chronicle

'Crisp, stylish performances' --Classic FM Magazine

'Music so agreeably appealing needs no further comment from me, and when the performances are as idiomatic and perky as these, captured in such fine sound, the disc becomes self-recommending. Good, clean fun!' --www.classicstoday.com