Archive for Steven Kruger
Fanfare Reviews The Pittsburgh Symphony’s Vivid and Exciting Eroica
Steven Kruger reviews Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 and Strauss: Horn Concerto No. 1 recording in the January/February 2019 issue: “Manfred Honeck certainly knows how to make a good record. … [this] new release from Reference Recordings demonstrates again how reliably Honeck supplies us with a vibrant performance and the most interesting liner notes you will read anywhere. … This is the most vivid modern ‘Eroica’ I know… It’s…
Fanfare Magazine Raves About Utah Symphony’s Mahler Eight
“Well, here is the symphony no one could capture—captured at last? I think so! Every music lover grayer than a few decades will recall how pervasive once was the notion of an “unrecordable piece,” a work destined to mock the best efforts of microphones and loudspeakers of the day. … The Mahler Symphony of a Thousand was a holy grail of sorts, attempted from time to time, but essentially out of reach. … I thought…
Manfred Honeck’s Strauss Opera Suites Recording is Groundbreaking!
Order Now “This is a groundbreaking recording—and a wonderful one!…Manfred Honeck himself catalysed the effort, in collaboration with Czech composer Tomás Ille. … Strauss pushes the borders of harmony in Elektra and employs a complex orchestra of 110, larger than most of his tone poems. … Honeck has marginally rescored it down to the merely mammoth forces customarily used in Strauss’s tone poems. Most importantly, he has woven the punchy, mercurial, polyphonic score into a…
Pittsburgh Symphony’s Tchaikovsky & Dvořák a “Winner”
“Manfred Honeck has a winner here again with the Pittsburgh Symphony. It would be hard to praise this recording too much. Not only does he bring us the most exciting recorded Tchaikovsky “Pathetique” I know—plus arrange a fine unified suite from Dvořák’s Rusalka—he’s taken trouble to pen the best CD program notes I recall reading anywhere, complete with audio index points and examples of what he’s trying to accomplish. Honeck’s observations about Tchaikovsky’s life and…