Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s Brahms: Symphony No. 4 & MacMillan: Larghetto for Orchestra release receives a five-star review in the December issue of BBC Music Magazine!
“In this outstanding performance of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, Manfred Honeck draws a wonderfully rich, almost Central European string sound from the Pittsburgh Symphony, matched by equally mellifluous and wonderfully blended colours from the woodwind and horns. …there’s a thrilling immediacy to their playing which seems absolutely appropriate to the triumphant fanfares in the opening Allegro non troppo, or to the unbounded joviality of the third movement Allegro giocoso. …There are many other passages in this performance that make you sit up and experience the music anew… The serenity and beauty of James MacMillan’s Larghetto, a remarkably effective orchestral transcription of his earlier Miserere for unaccompanied chorus, provides necessary balm after the turbo-charged dynamism of this Brahms 4.”
—Erik Levi, BBC Music Magazine