The Arts Desk‘s Graham Rickson has a new rave for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Manfred Honeck’s latest FRESH! From Reference Recordings SACD: “Dvořák’s…Eighth [symphony] is the most radical, and Manfred Honeck’s remarkable performance highlights its originality in some style. …[Honeck] justifies every interpretive decision in his sleeve notes, and the musical results are pretty special. … What follows is electrifying – an exuberant adrenalin rush… Reach the close, and you’ll hopefully be awestruck. Cheap…
The Arts Desk‘s Graham Rickson has a new rave for Kansas City Symphony’s Miraculous Metamorphoses recording: “If you’re not familiar with the [Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber] piece, start here. … Michael Stern’s Kansas City Symphony performance shows what can be achieved when a band on inspired form makes the effort to play what’s actually written. …It sparkles, abounding in oft-hidden detail. … And I’ve never enjoyed the chirping winds which…
Graham Rickson of The Arts Desk has calls the new Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra recording a “magnificent achievement.” “There’s an incredible elasticity and flexibility at work here. Manfred Honeck’s interventionist, hyper-romantic approach to three of Strauss’s most accessible tone poems pays enormous dividends…Everything sounds stupendous – this has to be the best-played, best-recorded Strauss anthology for years… Honeck’s players project with such chutzpah that any resistance is futile. A magnificent achievement.” —Graham Rickson, The Arts Desk…
Graham Rickson of theartsdesk.com has a great new review for our San Francisco Ballet Orchestra Bizet release: “So it makes perfect sense for a crack ballet orchestra to record the work and Martin West’s San Francisco Ballet forces play the work beautifully; this disc oozes frothy joie de vivre. Musically there’s little to surprise, but the symphony does it what it does with swaggering confidence and bucketloads of brio. It’s a work which will raise…
Kansas City Symphony’s Elgar/Vaughan Williams recording continues to bring in rave reviews! The ArtsDesk‘s Graham Rickson has a new review and places the recording in his end-of-year Top 10 list: “This is an exceptional disc in so many ways. The Kansas orchestral playing is flamboyant, assured, but always affectionate, and the recorded sound is possibly the most realistic I’ve come across. “The engineering really does serve the music, lending additional colour and warmth to Michael…