Michael Stern and the Kansas City Symphony’s new One Movement Symphonies album left The Arts Fuse’s Jonathan Blumhofer asking for a sequel, or even a whole series:
“Michael Stern’s new recording with the Kansas City Symphony (KCS) celebrates a subgenre one probably doesn’t think about all that much: the single-movement symphony. Given the rewards of this album, which showcases symphonic works by Samuel Barber, Jean Sibelius, and Alexander Scriabin, perhaps one should. … Stern and his forces clearly have internalized this wonderful music. …the KSC’s playing is nimble and spry. … a potent, cathartic exhalation. … Stern and the KSC never get lost in the music’s thickets. Indeed, the orchestra’s attention to the score’s dynamics and articulations is superb. One hears, as a result, all sorts of little details, from echoes of melodic lines across the ensemble to heterophonic gestures and nuances of scoring (Sibelius’s widely-spaced clarinet writing, for instance, comes across magnificently). Taken together with Stern’s rhythmically tight, texturally clear, bracingly unfussy approach to the larger piece, and this is one dynamic Sibelius Seven. … The KSC’s performance blends delicacy and bombast with equal vigor. … Reference Recording’s sonics are, by and large, warm and natural. Indeed, this is a disc that begs for a sequel (or a whole series)… The possibilities would be, if not endless, at least riveting.”
—Jonathan Blumhofer, The Arts Fuse