The New York Times critic David Allen adds the Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck’s Beethoven: Symphony Nos. 5 & 7 to the Arts Beat Classical Playlist:
“Ninety seconds is all it takes to understand that Manfred Honeck’s is no sanitized Beethoven: the plethora of colorations, articulations and moods through which he forces the Fifth’s famous motto sees to that. Every phrase, every balance has been thought through in interventionist readings that are idiosyncratic but fully attuned to the spirit, if not the letter, of the scores. … this partnership seems incapable of laying down an ordinary recording.” —David Allen, The New York Times