We are thrilled to share that Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 and Stucky: Silent Spring was nominated for a 2023 GRAMMY® Award in the Best Engineered Album, Classical category! Congratulations to engineer Mark Donahue on his nomination! “Throughout the symphony, passion is omnipresent, be it in a positive or ominous posture. Honeck unravels with his musicians to infinite perfection a modern version of a symphony that is all too…
We are thrilled to share that the International Classical Music Awards have nominated two of our recordings in the 2023 ICMAs! The final result with all winners will be announced on January 18, 2023, and the Award Ceremony and Gala concert will take place in Wrocław, Poland on April 21, hosted by the NFM Philharmonic. Nominations Symphonic Music Manfred Honeck & Pittsburgh Symphony Contemporary Music Martin West & the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra
Gramophone Magazine’s Christian Hoskins reviews the University of Texas and Jerry Junkin’s Migration recording in the November 2022 issue: This generously filled album brings together four works by contemporary American composers either scored or adapted for wind ensemble. Adam Schoenberg’s Second Symphony is a programmatic piece inspired by his wife’s family’s migration to the United States. The first of its five movements, ‘March’, with its imposing brass statements and busy percussion, communicates the tension that…
Rafael de Acha previews and reviews Cecilia Duarte’s Reencuentros recording on All About the Arts: “Cecilia Duarte gives renewed life to a dozen Latin American songs… the profound meditation on the end of life Alfonsina y el Mar, arranged by David Scanlon for his string bass as the sole accompaniment to Duarte in a posthumous homage to the Argentine poetess Alfonsina Storni, follow each other in impressive succession evidencing Cecilia Duarte’s beautiful voice and her impeccably…
Huntley Dent has added Nadia Shpachenko’s Invasion: Music and Art for Ukraine to Fanfare‘s “Not To Be Missed” list! “Calling upon her friend and sometime collaborator, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Lewis Spratlan, Shpachenko commissioned Invasion, which is scored for piano and chamber ensemble. My expectations of grim, angry music were overturned by Invasion, whose three sections, lasting 12 minutes, don’t echo the stark bleakness of wartime Shostakovich, or any other war music I can think of. Instead, Spratlan…
Huntley Dent has a second Fanfare rave review for the University of Texas Wind Ensemble and Jerry Junkin’s Migration recording in the Not To Be Missed Section: “This is an eye-opening release… There is no air of elitism around this collection, thankfully. The splendid sound of a large wind orchestra (the UT Wind Ensemble, at 65 strong, ranks as an orchestra to me) doesn’t immediately connote a piece as sophisticated as Corigliano’s brilliant Clarinet Concerto,…
Fanfare‘s Mark Novak gives the University of Texas Wind Ensemble’s Migration recording a Five Star Review and places it in the “Not To Be Missed” section! “This is an outstanding compilation of music for wind ensemble by four living American composers. The first accolade goes to Reference Recordings and their superbly excellent recording which can be heard even with standard CD resolution. The dynamic range is wide, the impression of being present in the hall…
In June 2022, a group of music critics, journalists, festival promoters, music venue managers, musicians and other Blues music industry professionals nominated the best in Blues music in twenty-two categories for the 15th Annual Blues Blast Music Awards. We are thrilled to share that Doug MacLeod has been nominated for the Acoustic Guitar Award, and Jim Gaines (A Soul to Claim) has been nominated for the Producer Award! Voting begins Tuesday, July 12th at BluesBlastMagazine.com!…
Doug MacLeod’s A Soul To Claim received a four-star review in the July 2022 issue of Downbeat Magazine: “Doug MacLeod’s A Soul To Claim, like many of his 21 previous albums, makes it clear that he’s an archetype of the top-level blues storyteller: wry, sharp-witted, virile, inclined to poke fun at sentiment.… MacLeod bestows his music with a human intimacy that’s a function of his affable personality and the original material he works with. With…
Reference Recordings is excited to announce multiple nominations for the 2022 GRAMMY® Awards! Best Orchestral Performance Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 Manfred Honeck, conductor (Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh & Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra) Best Engineered Album, Classical Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 Mark Donahue, engineer; Mark Donahue, mastering engineer (Manfred Honeck, Mendelssohn Choir Of Pittsburgh & Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra) Congratulations to all involved in this double-nominated album!!! Producer of the Year, Classical David Frost Congratulations to producer David…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Michael Stern and the Kansas City Symphony’s new One Movement Symphonies album left The Arts Fuse’s Jonathan Blumhofer asking for a sequel, or even a whole series: “Michael Stern’s new recording with the Kansas City Symphony (KCS) celebrates a subgenre one probably doesn’t think about all that much: the single-movement symphony. Given the rewards of this album, which showcases symphonic works by Samuel Barber, Jean Sibelius, and Alexander Scriabin, perhaps one should. … Stern and his forces…