Kick off the Holiday Season with Horns for the Holidays
Not only are we celebrating the holiday season with our Holiday Sale, we’ve also got a new RR Radio track featuring music from the Dallas Wind Symphony’s Horns for the Holidays release! Enjoy! Purchase Horns for the Holidays along with any of the wonderful Dallas Wind Symphony releases and save 20% on your entire order! Click the image below and start saving!
More Praise For the Pittsburgh Symphony’s Strauss Release!
The praise keeps coming in for our new Strauss release with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra! Audiophilia Magazine has named Strauss one of the “Star Recordings of the Year!” “The orchestra’s soloists are exemplary here (horns, Eb clarinet and concertmaster, in particular). As an ensemble, the Pittsburgh Symphony provides an indulgent forward sweep which suits the passionate emotions of the works very well.” —James Norris See the full list on audiophilia.com! And French Magazine Audiophile-Magazine has…
Audiophile Audition with an absolute RAVE for Strauss
Audiophile Audition has a five-star, and absolute rave review for Pittsburgh Symphony’s new Strauss recording: “ It never ceases to amaze me that a recording can be so near the real concert hall experience. Here is an exceptional collection of three of Richard Strauss’ engaging tone poems from Reference Recordings. With an inspired conductor, Manfred Honeck (from Austria), and a world class orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony, recorded live, these performances are bathed in the latest…
Doug MacLeod Nominated For Blues Music Awards
The Blues Foundation announced the nominees for the 35th Annual Blues Music Awards yesterday, and RR’s own Doug MacLeod and his new release There’s A Time racked up THREE nominations! Acoustic Album of the Year There’s a Time – Doug MacLeod Juba dance – Guy Davis featuring Fabrizio Poggi Soulscape – Harrison Kennedy Avalon – Rory Block Unleashed – The Hound Kings Acoustic Artist of the Year Doug MacLeod Guy Davis Harrison Kennedy Little G…
RR Producers Nominated for Grammy Awards!
Two of the five producers nominated for the 56th Annual Grammy Award for Producer Of The Year, Classical featured Reference Recordings releases! Victor Ledin and Marina Ledin: Bizet: Symphony In C; Jeux D’Enfants; Variations Chromatiques (Martin West & San Francisco Ballet Orchestra) Traveling Sonata – European Music For Flute & Guitar (Viviana Guzmán & Jérémy Jouve) Voyages (Conrad Tao) Zia (Del Sol String Quartet) David Frost: Andres: Home Stretch (Timo Andres, Andrew Cyr & Metropolis…
Reference Recordings Holiday Sale!
It’s Time for the Annual Reference Recordings Holiday Sale! STARTING NOW! Until NOON on Friday, January 3, 2014 — Order 2 items or more and receive a 20% discount on EVERYTHING in our catalog (except already discounted sets) THE MORE YOU ORDER – THE MORE YOU SAVE! Sale ends at NOON on January 3, 2014. Ordering deadlines for delivery by December 24 (US shipping ONLY): December 13 for Free shipping, December 19 for Priority Mail…
Downbeat Magazine Tabs There’s A Time a Top Album of 2013
Downbeat Magazine names Doug MacLeod’s There’s A Time one of the Best Albums of 2013 in their January 2014 issue! Here’s a look back at the Downbeat review from July: “Unlike any of his previous 19 studio albums, Doug MacLeod made this one ‘Live’… It’s a spare, intimate and inspired performance. The Californian’s casually confident singing and quite yet powerful bottleneck or fingerstyle guitar playing … convey a sense that his true stories about colorful…
Classical Music Sentinel Reviews Strauss
Classical Music Sentinel is excited about the new partnership with the Pittsburgh Symphony! “As if to emulate the protagonist portrayed in Don Juan, Op. 20, conductor Manfred Honeck delivers the opening pages of this orchestral masterpiece with a swift, impulsive, impetuous and almost arrogant demeanor, true and relevant to the character. The members of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra respond with aplomb and sparkle… Whereas the opening minute impresses by its bravura, the final closing minute,…
Gramophone Reviews Bizet
Donald Rosenberg reviews San Francisco Ballet Orchestra’s new Bizet recording in the November 2013 issue of Gramophone Magazine: “Bizet sounds like a cross between Schumann and Brahms as transported to the layered textures of the orchestra. The atmospheres lean towards the brooding and dramatic, and Weingartner takes every opportunity to add sonic interest by passing figures among instrumental sections. The San Francisco musicians give the score a performance that balances tonal depth with expressive intensity.…
Manfred Honeck recieves Rave reviews from LA Phil Performances
Pittsburgh Symphony Conductor, Manfred Honeck, was in Los Angeles over the weekend as guest conductor for the L.A. Philharmonic, and just as critics are raving over his Strauss performances, his latest performances received high praise: LA Culture Monster “Honeck found a way, leaping into Dvorák’s ‘Carnival Overture’ as if to celebrate the hall’s existence with as boisterous and as exuberant a performance as you can imagine, getting a sharp response from the Phil on accents…
Culture Spot LA Reviews Pittsburgh Symphony Strauss
Pittsburgh Symphony conductor Manfred Honeck is guest-conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic this weekend, and West-coasters are taking note of his new Strauss recording: “These works have never suffered for lack of recordings. Thus, a new recording must offer something innovative, and Honeck and the PSO certainly accomplish that. Not only are the performances outstanding, but Honeck has really plumbed the depth of each piece for all of its power, grace and pathos, and he offers…
Elgar/Vaughan Williams Review in MusicWeb International
John Quinn of MusicWeb International reflects on his introduction to the Kansas City Symphony in our Elgar & Vaughan Williams recording: “This is my first encounter with the Kansas City Symphony…it is clear that under Stern’s leadership they have been presenting very enticing seasons for several years now. … These seem to be exciting days for the music lovers of Kansas City “…engineer Keith O. Johnson has presented these performances in exceptionally fine sound. In…
Some RR History from the Audio Engineering Society
In this short video from the Audio Engineering Society, Prof. Keith O. Johnson talks about the beginnings of he and Tam Henderson working together and their first RR LP, Professor Johnson’s Astounding Sound Show! Watch the full interview here:
SA-CD.net reviews new Strauss Recording
SA-CD.net reviewer Graham Williams gives the new Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Strauss recording a 4.5/5 for Performance and a 4.5/5 for Sonics: “the conductor’s … admiration for these works is self-evident from the incandescent playing that he elicits from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. “The work’s slow sections possess a dreamy sensuousness that emphasises the lustrous quality of the Pittsburgh Symphony’s playing … This broadness of approach extends to the delivery of the famous horn passage (from…
Richard Strauss Tone Poems
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Director, Manfred Honeck, on the Strauss Tone Poem Recordings: There are few composers who have such an impressive ability to depict a story together with single existential moments in instrumental music as Richard Strauss in his Tondichtungen (“tone poems”). Despite the clear structure that the music follows, a closer interpretative look reveals many unanswered questions. For me, it was the in-depth discovery and exploration of these details that appealed to me, as the…