Archive for David Hurwitz
10s Across The Board for Brahms & MacMillan
Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony’s Brahms: Symphony No. 4 and MacMillan: Larghetto for Orchestra receives a 10/10 in Artist Quality and Sound Quality from ClassicsToday.com and David Hurwitz! “After a first movement outstanding for its exquisitely gentle (but still fluent) opening and an aptly ferocious coda, the remainder of the symphony is noteworthy for its unusual fleetness–no “autumnal” Brahms here! This approach pays big dividends in the ballad-like second movement, whose singing, legato melodies…
ClassicsToday Reviews Kansas City Symphony’s Holst: The Planets; The Perfect Fool
Watch a new ClassicsToday video review with David Hurwitz of the Kansas City Symphony and Michael Stern’s Holst: The Planets; The Perfect Fool recording: See the full review on ClassicsToday.com Purchase
Straight Tens for Pittsburgh Symphony’s Bruckner: Symphony No. 9!
Manfred Honeck and Pittsburgh Symphony’s Bruckner: Symphony No. 9 recording received a 10 rating for both Artistic and Sound Quality from ClassicsToday: “This is an amazing performance, captured in terrific sound. … Honeck’s aided by typically exceptional brass playing, with horns, trumpets, and trombones well differentiated in timbre, their musical lines clear in even the densest tuttis. The strings, too, make gorgeous sounds in the first movement’s second-subject “song period,” and throughout the Adagio. In…
ClassicsToday Reviews “Thrilling” Pittsburgh Symphony Recording
“This is juicy. I’m sure that many music lovers have wished that Strauss had made a suite from Elektra. It is, after all, one of his most exciting scores, as well as one of his most symphonically cogent. Well, here it is, courtesy of Manfred Honeck and Tomas Ille, and it’s a doozy. You get all of the major bits: Elektra’s opening monologue, the entry of Klytaemnestra, the recognition scene, the two murders, and of…
Honeck and Pittsburgh’s Beethoven a Recording for the Ages
The Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck’s BEETHOVEN: Symphony Nos. 5 & 7 recording receives perfect 10 ratings from ClassicsToday: “No matter how many billion recordings of this music we already have, a great performance offers its own justification, these are very great performances. … It’s not easy to offer interpretations of this music that sound new without turning capricious–that both respect the music and personalize it. Honeck and the orchestra manage to pull it off…
ClassicsToday Enjoys Utah Symphony’s Mahler Symphony No. 1
ClassicsToday editor David Hurwitz reviews the Utah Symphony’s new Mahler: Symphony No. 1 recording: “Under Music Director Thierry Fischer, it’s clear that orchestral standards are considerably higher today … just as this SACD reflects improvements in engineering since the 1960s. Fischer leads a singularly appealing performance of this perennially fresh and engaging music. The first movement builds inexorably, the tempo accelerating steadily through the exciting final pages exactly as Mahler requests. Indeed, Fischer’s control of…
Specs for the The Julia Irene Kauffman Casavant Organ, Opus 3875
In David Hurwitz’s fantastic new review of the Kansas City Symphony’s Saint-Saëns “Organ” Symphony recording, he states “I do wish, though, that Reference Recordings had included a stop list in the booklet. The instrument has some interesting timbres and I would have liked to know what resources it calls upon to make them.” Unfortunately these specs were not able to fit in the included liner notes, but in case anyone else might be curious, we…
ClassicsToday: A “Remarkably Good” Saint-Saëns from Kansas City
ClassicsToday‘s David Horowitz reviews the “remarkably good” Kansas City Symphony recording of Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3: “…this is an unusually vivacious and texturally transparent reading, recorded with welcome clarity in an acoustic that never permits detail to get obscured by excessive reverberation. The balance between organ and orchestra in the finale, even when everyone is blasting away, could not be more perfect. In the serene Adagio too, which flows with impressive poise, the soft tones…
ClassicsToday Says Honeck Has “Done Right” By Bruckner
ClassicsToday critic David Hurwitz says Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony have “Done Right By Bruckner’s Fourth” giving them a 10/10 rating for Artistic Quality: “The most immediately remarkable aspect of the performance is its huge dynamic range, especially from the brass section. Pittsburgh has possibly the best horn section in the world today, not just in its ringing fortissimos, but in its ability to play softly. The strings, too, manage triple-pianos without any loss…
ClassicsToday gives top scores to the new Pittsburgh Symphony SACD!
ClassicsToday gives a 10/10 for Artistic Quality and a 10/10 for Sound Quality to the new Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Dvořák & Janáček recording, hailing it as “Honeck’s Incandescent Dvořák 8th!” “There are few things more wonderful in the life of a record collector than a really great recording of a repertory warhorse. … along comes a performance by a conductor who loves the music, who has genuine ideas about how it should go and what…
ClassicsToday Gives Strauss full 10s!
ClassicsToday gives Pittsburgh Symphony’s Strauss recording a 10/10 in both Artist & Sound Quality! “Recordings like this restore one’s faith in the possibility of true musical greatness. Manfred Honeck conducts this music as do few others today. He’s not afraid to have a good time, nor is he a strict literalist. … For all of their larger-than-life qualities, Honeck remains sensitive to every dynamic nuance, intricacy of balance, and rhythmic quirk. Every one of these…
Reviews of Lincolnshire Posy (Dallas Wind Symphony) – Day 2
In light of the new Dallas Wind Symphony Sampler being released next week, we thought it might be fun to share some reviews of the Lincolnshire Posy album by the Dallas Wind Symphony that was released in January. We will do one review per day as some of these are long! So here are some uncensored reviews: Classics Today: http://www.classicstoday.com/review.asp?ReviewNum=12149Review by David Hurwitz10/10 Review (10-Artistic Quality, 10-Sound Quality) There is no shortage of recordings dedicated…