The New York Times published “5 Classical Music Albums You Can Listen to Right Now” featuring a selection of the New York Times Classical Critics’ favorite new releases and David Allen has an absolute RAVE review for Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony’s Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5 and Schulhoff Five Pieces recording:
“make no mistake, it is a masterpiece, a dark psychological thriller that soars and scars and ends up being rather unnerving. Drawing on Tchaikovsky’s sketches and personal biography, Honeck writes in the album’s booklet that the work is in some respects a portrayal of depression. But he offers neither a cold, clinical analysis of the score nor the complacent, simplistic narrative of triumph over disaster that so many of his colleagues are content to find in it. Securing orchestral playing of unrelenting intensity and utmost exactitude, Honeck instead gives the symphony all the harrowing drama — the dread, the instability, the vertiginous sense of being on the edge — of a mental breakdown. … this Fifth, one of the greatest ever recorded, does make one conclusion inescapable, though it is more of a confirmation by now: There has not been a conductor like Honeck in a long time.”
—David Allen, The New York Times