Archive for Featured
Pittsburgh Symphony’s Bruckner Symphony No. 7 and Bates: Resurrexit an ICMA Symphonic Music Nominee
The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Manfred Honeck’s Bruckner Symphony No. 7 and Bates: Resurrexit recording has been nominated for the 2025 International Classical Music Awards in the Symphonic Music category! See the full list at icma–info.com Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 & Bates: Resurrexit REFERENCE RECORDINGS® proudly presents Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7, in a new interpretation from conductor Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. It is coupled with the first recording of Mason Bates’ Resurrexit, which was composed in 2018…
2025 GRAMMY® Nominees!
We are thrilled to share three nominations for the 2025 GRAMMY® Awards! Congratulations to all involved in these two fantastic recordings. Best Engineered Album, Classical Bruckner: Symphony No. 7; Bates: Resurrexit Mark Donahue & John Newton, engineers; Mark Donahue, mastering engineer (Manfred Honeck & Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra) Producer of the Year, Classical Dirk Sobotka: Bates: Resurrexit (Manfred Honeck & Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra) Best Choral Performance “A Dream So Bright – Choral Music of Jake Runestad” Eric…
Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 & Bates Resurrexit in The New York Times
The New York Times‘ “5 Classical Music Albums You Can Listen to Right Now” column features Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 & Bates Resurrexit recording: “simply excellent… the effect in practice is magical… Even more than in his terrifying account of the Bruckner’s Ninth, you get the sense that he holds the composer in awe. And it’s difficult not to feel a similar reverence for the players of the Pittsburgh…
Celebrate Earth Day with Jake Runestad’s Earth Symphony
In celebration of Earth Day 2024 on April 22nd, we are offering an early opportunity to pre-order our upcoming release with True Concord Voices & Orchestra featuring Jake Runestad’s “Earth Symphony”. Earth Symphony is part of their album with director Eric Holtan and pianist Jeffrey Biegel, A Dream So Bright: Choral Music of Jake Runestad, which will be released on FRESH! From Reference Recordings this July. As part of the Earth Day celebrations, you can…
Fanfare RAVE review for Schubert by Candlelight
Fanfare’s January/February 2024 issue features a rave review for Sergei Kvitko’s Schubert by Candlelight recording: “For every dozen pianists who record Schubert’s evergreen Moments musicaux and Impromptus, there is rarely one who plays with the presence and artistic maturity of Sergei Kvitko. There are stretches of this live recital from Madrid in 2022 when Kvitko’s depth of expression evoked echoes of classic Schubert pianists on the order of Edwin Fischer and Artur Schnabel. It isn’t surprising that…
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 & Schulhoff: Five Pieces nominated for GRAMMY® Award
Mark Donohue of Soundmirror has been nominated for the GRAMMY® Award for Best Engineered Album, Classical for his work as engineer and mastering engineer for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra album Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 & Schulhoff: Five Pieces (conducted by Manfred Honeck)! Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 & Schulhoff: Five Pieces REFERENCE RECORDINGS® proudly presents Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, in a significant new interpretation from conductor Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. It is coupled with Erwin Schulhoff’s Five Pieces, newly arranged for…
Gramophone Reviews Spanish Impressions
The Hermitage Piano Trio’s Spanish Impressions gets a marvelous review in the Gramophone Magazine Awards Issue: How savvy to begin a programme of Spanish piano trio works with Enrique Arbós’s Three Pieces, Op 1, particularly with its boisterous opening Bolero. The Hermitage Piano Trio give their all, serving up liberal doses of idiomatic rubato and heel-kicking accents. …Note, too, cellist Sergey Antonov’s almost viola-like sonority above the staff and the utter evenness of his tone…
BBC Recording of the Month: “Pittsburgh Electrifies in Tchaikovsky’s Fifth”
Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 and Schulhoff: Five Pieces is the BBC Music Magazine Recording of the Month! “Honeck’s overriding objective has been to revivify a work that in lesser hands can easily lose its freshness and originality. To achieve this, he has followed Tchaikovsky’s carefully delineated performance instructions to the letter, investing every musical phrase with a wealth of insight, detail and colour. From the outset, Honeck’s infinitely…
Pittsburgh Symphony’s Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5 and Schulhoff Five Pieces is a New York Times Pick!
The New York Times published “5 Classical Music Albums You Can Listen to Right Now” featuring a selection of the New York Times Classical Critics’ favorite new releases and David Allen has an absolute RAVE review for Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony’s Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5 and Schulhoff Five Pieces recording: “make no mistake, it is a masterpiece, a dark psychological thriller that soars and scars and ends up being rather unnerving. Drawing on Tchaikovsky’s sketches…
Garrick Ohlsson and the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra’s Complete Beethoven Piano Concertos a Gramophone Editor’s Choice
The Complete Beethoven Piano Concertos recordings from Garrick Ohlsson, Sir Donald Runnicles and the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra are a July 2023 Gramophone Magazine Editor’s Choice! “whenever [Sir Donald Runnicles] and [Garrick] Ohlsson collaborate, time is never spent in conversation beforehand about tempos, phrasing or other details. They simply begin making music together and thus, in an exercise of intuitive symbiosis, arrive at their joint interpretation. The result, as heard here, is a spacious,…
Announcing Limited Edition LPs!
Reference Recordings is excited to have come across a limited collection of some of our earliest recordings on LP — including our first-ever recording, created in 1976 before Prof. Keith O. Johnson began working with RR! Explore the recordings below, and make sure to look through the images as each one includes the LP Jacket with information about the backstory of the recordings. We regret we cannot ship to the EU or UK at this time.…
Gramophone Reviews Le Dolce Sirene
The Bach Aria Soloists’ Le Dolce Sirene gets a great review from Laurence Vittes in the March 2023 issue of Gramophone Magazine: “The Kansas City-based Bach Aria Soloists make their recording debut on Reference Recordings with a lovely album of Monteverdi, Bach, Handel and Mendelssohn, complemented by Cecilia McDowall and concluding with their own improvisation on La folia. Recorded with the label’s trademark sweet and clear perfection, ‘Le dolce sirene’ achieves that audiophile miracle, sounding even…
Audiophile Audition Gives an Ovation to Bach Aria Soloists’ Le Dolce Sirene
Audiophile Audition‘s Fritz Balwit has a wonderful overview and review for the Bach Aria Soloists’ Le Dolce Sirene recording: “The most striking feature of this opening track is the keening sound of the violin paired with a minimal cello basso continuo. This was my first exposure to the exceptional skills of the violinist and director of the ensemble, Elizabeth Suh Lane… substantial works that will appeal to fans of modern vocal recitals. They don’t lack…
Fanfare Says Invasion is Not To Be Missed
Fanfare Magazine’s Colin Clarke says Nadia Shpachenko’s Invasion: Music and Art for Ukraine is “Not To Be Missed”: “Spratlan’s music is viscerally exciting, a sonic representation of (understandable) anxiety via a preponderance of gesture. The performance is as good as one could imagine. It falls to Shpachenko to present Piano Suite No. 1 (2021), a somewhat Schoenbergian utterance, perhaps particularly in the initial “Capriccio.” Shpachenko truly understands, as does Spratlan, the expressive nature of dissonance,…
Doug MacLeod is a 2023 Blues Music Award Nominee!
The Blues Foundation announced its 2023 Blues Music Awards Nominees and Reference Recordings is excited to share that Doug MacLeod has been nominated for his 22nd Blues Music Award with a 2023 nomination for Acoustic Blues Artist of the Year! Doug MacLeod Recordings on Reference