Author Archive for Reference Recordings – Page 8
Gramophone Reviews Pittsburgh Symphony’s Brahms & MacMillan
The November issue of Gramophone features a great review for the Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck’s Brahms: Symphony No. 4 & MacMillan: Larghetto for Orchestra: “This latest release presents subtly incendiary Brahms alongside an utterance of radically different stripe. … The main work transmits an impression of interpretative renewal. Though capable of cushioned ‘European’ warmth, the Pittsburgh Symphony has a cleaner, brighter edge than traditionally associated with big-band Brahms.… As ever articulation is precisely honed,…
The Absolute Sound on Stylus Phantasticus
Andrew Quint includes Tekla Cunningham and Pacific MusicWorks’ Stylus Phantasticus in his December 2021 reviews roundup in The Absolute Sound magazine giving it a four-star rating for music and sonics: “The performances have a refreshing spontaneity and often a dance-like sensibility. Although all the selections share a common style, Stubbs helps assure that things remain interesting for close to 75 minutes by varying the makeup of the accompanying forces. … the production team, led by…
Culture Spot LA Reviews Brahms & MacMillan
Henry Schlinger reviews Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck’s Brahms: Symphony No. 4 and MacMillan: Larghetto for Orchestra in Culture Spot LA: “Opening and listening to a new CD by Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is always exciting because although I never know exactly how Honeck will interpret a work, especially a warhorse that has been recorded too many times to count, I know there will be some surprises. In the PSO’s latest recording of…
New York Times Names Pittsburgh Symphony’s Brahms And MacMillan as a Must Hear
The New York Times has just published a list of “Five Classical Albums to Hear Right Now” and number one on the list is the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Manfred Honeck’s Brahms: Symphony No. 4 and MacMillan: Larghetto for Orchestra! “these forces have been setting new standards in the standards, their records combining astonishing playing… Right on cue, their new album offers James MacMillan’s gnarly-to-seraphic Larghetto for Orchestra, atmospherically adapted from his choral “Miserere” for its premiere in…
CVNA Hails Pittsburgh Symphony’s Brahms & MacMillan as a Spectacular Achievement
Classical Voice North America has a new rave review for the Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck’s recording of Brahms: Symphony No. 4 and James MacMillan: Larghetto for Orchestra: “Honeck begins Brahms’ Fourth Symphony by lingering on the upbeat, emphasizing the way the first two notes can sound like a sigh. Those two notes are immediately inverted, so goodbye temporarily to the sigh, but Honeck’s rhetorical gesture establishes a certain wistfulness characteristic of Brahms’ first two…
Pittsburgh Symphony’s Brahms & MacMillan is “Top Notch”
The Classical Music Sentinel reviews Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck’s Brahms: Symphony No. 4 & James MacMillan: Larghetto for Orchestra recording: “In the beautiful [Symphony No. 4] Andante moderato… Honeck’s focus and attention are diverted to the charm of the orchestration. The lush string writing around the 8:00 minute mark, and the many fine moments in which the Pittsburgh woodwind section shines through. The boisterous and ebullient character of the following movement is well projected in…
Four Stars from AllMusic for Stylus Phantasticus
Wonderful four-star review for Pacific MusicWorks and Tekla Cunningham’s Stylus Phantasticus recording in AllMusic: “The composers range from fairly obscure (Giovanni de Macque) to all-but-unknown, even for people who have studied the early Baroque. Cunningham is a lively and virtuosic player who captures the daring mood and the spirit of experimentation in this radical group of works, and, as concertmaster of Pacific MusicWorks, she is able to surround herself with a continuo group quite attuned to what she…
Classical Candor Review for Stylus Phantasticus
John J. Puccio reviews Tekla Cunningham and Pacific MusicWorks’ Stylus Phantasticus recording on Classical Candor: “the compositions follow a pattern of earliest to later music, with the earlier ones a bit less ornate. The Carlo Farina sonata, for instance, is almost sedate in its execution. Its subtitle, “detta la Desperata,” translates as “called the despairing,” an emotional piece if rather despondent in tone. MusicWorks provide it with an appropriately passionate melancholy. The harp and harpsichord…
Audiophile Audition Gives Five Stars to Manfred Honeck and Pittsburgh Symphony’s Brahms & MacMillan Album!
Audiophile Audition critic Steven Ritter gives a five-star review to Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s Brahms: Symphony No. 4; MacMillan: Larghetto for Orchestra recording: “Certainly, the last movement of the Fourth Symphony is the orchestral pinnacle of the age in relation to the variation form. … It is this last movement to which the entire symphony is directed, and its success depends on how well the previous movements are balanced. … Many conductors…
Remembering Carlisle Floyd
We were saddened to hear of the death of Carlisle Floyd, considered the “Father of American Opera”, yesterday, September 30, 2021 at the age of 95. Reference Recordings was proud to have released recordings of two of his operas, “Wuthering Heights” and “Prince of Players”. “Prince of Players” garnered his first ever GRAMMY® nomination for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. In the liner notes of Prince of Players, Floyd wrote, “having this outstanding performance recorded for…
Early Music America Has a Rave for Stylus Phantasticus!
Early Music America has a new rave review for Pacific MusicWorks and Tekla Cunningham’s Stylus Phantasticus album: “There’s a passage in Johann Heinrich Schmelzer’s Violin Sonata No. 4, the central work in his Sonatae unarum fidium, that both meets and defies expectations. The violin melody hovers over soft organ chords, knotting itself in quick mordents before rushing downwards in a wild frenzy. Yet there is always a sense of songlike expressivity, the musical line present even in…
A Stereophile Rave for One Movement Symphonies
Stereophile Magazine critic Stephen Francis Vasta gives Michael Stern and the Kansas City Symphony a four-and-a-half star rating and the sonics a five-star rating in his review for their new One Movement Symphonies recording: “These three symphonies, all dating from the first half of the 20th century, comprise so apt a program that I’m surprised no one did it before. … The program demands front-line virtuoso playing, and the Kansas City Symphony proves up to…
Stylus Phantasticus Reviewed in Audiophile Audition
Tekla Cunningham and Pacific MusicWorks’ Stylus Phantasticus recording gets a wonderful new review in Audiophile Audition from critic Fritz Balwit: “The ensemble features both baroque guitar and chitarrone of the leader Stephen Stubbs and the rare and remarkable baroque harp of Maxine Eilander. Both together and separately these delicate instruments are very nicely captured. More than anything else on this recording they bathe the ear in a new sonority within the baroque style. Those instruments blend…
Concerto Net Gives 4 Stars to One Movement Symphonies
Concerto Net gives a four-star review to the Kansas City Symphony and Michael Stern’s One Movement Symphonies recording: “Each of these stylistically different composers solves the challenges this form would inherently present, and each proves it to be a liberating and artistically durable form for their eras.… Conductor Michael Stern’s exquisite pacing in this performance points up the specificness of Barber’s command of the concept… Barber’s oceanic strings and coloratura brass find the composer at…
Five Stars for One Movement Symphonies from BBC Music Magazine
Michael Stern and the Kansas City Symphony’s One Movement Symphonies recording gets a Five Star review from BBC Music Magazine: “this orchestra offers here a classy standard of playing, plus the conductor-and-orchestra chemistry that’s needed to generate musical results as memorable as these, and in three very different works. … The Kansas players respond superbly to [Samuel Barber’s] virtuoso drive and momentum, with a burnished fullness of tone which also brings out the best qualities…