James Gilchrist - Leighton & Britten - Financial Times

Kenneth Leighton (1929-88) didn't know Britten but was influenced by him, and this CD underlines how great that debt was. Even when musicking a poetic Gerald Manley Hopkins landscape, as in the third song of Earth, Sweet Earth ... (Laudes Terrae), Leighton bathes it in the same tortured beauty that haunts so much of Britten's oeuvre...This 40-minute "solo cantata", full of tonally centred chromaticisms, comes across as alternately visionary and lyrical. Anna Tilbrook captures all the virtuosic subtexts of the instrumental part, which carries equal weight in Leighton's scheme...

Full review at www.ft.com