Kirill Gerstein

Classical CD Reviews: Philip Glass, “Music in Eight Parts,” Thomas Adès, “In Seven Days,” and Anna Clyne, “Dance”

July 23, 2020
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Music in Eight Parts is a welcome and inviting addition to the Philip Glass canon; the Summer of Thomas Adès continues with a stirring new recording of the British composer’s keyboard work; Anna Clyne’s Dance is, without a doubt, one of the finest pieces I’ve heard this year.

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Classical CD Reviews: Thomas Adès’s Orchestral Works, Aaron Copland’s Symphony no. 3, and Leonard Bernstein’s “Songfest”

April 14, 2020
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A terrific release showcases the Boston Symphony Orchestra and composer Thomas Adès. Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony deliver a radiantly honest recording of Aaron Copland’s Symphony 3.

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Classical CD Reviews: The Tchaikovsky Project, Schumann Symphonies nos. 2 & 4, and Holst Orchestral Works

September 14, 2019
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Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic do justice to a lot of Tchaikovsky’s orchestral music, while John Eliot Gardiner and the London Symphony play Robert Schumann’s famously-dense orchestrations with clarity. But Michael Stern’s account of The Planets completely lacks mystery.

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Classical Concert Review: Thomas Adès conducts Liszt, Adès, and Tchaikovsky

March 8, 2019
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The BSO recently announced an extension to artistic partner Thomas Adès’s contract. It is lucky to have him. So are the rest of us.

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Classical CD Reviews: Gerstein plays Busoni, Josefowicz plays Zimmermann, and Vähälä plays Szymanowski

February 4, 2019
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Pianist Kirill Gerstein’s take on Busoni is exhilarating; the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra serves the forceful music of composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann, and violinist Elina Vähälä does right by Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto.

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Classical CD Reviews: Michael Tilson Thomas conducts Schumann and “The Gershwin Moment”

February 1, 2018
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The San Francisco Symphony delivers performances of chamber-like sensitivity and remarkable transparency.

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Concert Review: Sibelius and Busoni at Symphony Hall

March 13, 2017
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In the Piano Concerto, Ferruccio Busoni seemed to want to have the final word in the tradition of the Romantic concerto.

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CD Reviews: Lara Downes’ “America Again,” Gerstein’s Liszt, and Melnikov plays Prokofiev

December 20, 2016
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Lara Downes’ America Again is a great album, and one with multiple layers of meaning.

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Classical Music Review/Commentary: BSO / Pianist Kirill Gerstein – Whose America?

July 20, 2015
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The BSO’s Americana concert could only provide four beautiful snapshots of a very complicated landscape.

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Concert Review: Kirill Gerstein and the Boston Symphony Orchestra/Thomas Adés

November 16, 2012
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With “In Seven Days,” Thomas Adés seems to have developed a musical language that’s complex yet not forbidding: there’s no sense that his music is weighed down by expectations of the past, even as he freely refers to archaic compositional forms.

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