Reference Recordings
Conductor Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony deliver a conspicuously satisfying and fluent Bruckner Seventh. Dutch violinist Janine Jansen also possesses an uncommon ability to enliven the familiar.
The Kansas City Symphony’s new Brahms album with outgoing music director Michael Stern showcases three of his works with keyboard in arrangements for orchestra; Lahav Shani’s cycle of Bruckner symphonies with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra continues with a sterling account of the Fifth.
An admiring review of the latest disc from Hermitage Trio and praise for Boston Philharmonic and Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra concerts earlier this month at Symphony Hall.
This is a Tchaikovsky Fifth that’s thoroughly lived in.
We’ve got ourselves another winner in this ongoing Pittsburgh/Beethoven series. Warmly recommended.
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony have ways of digging into the music and providing new perspectives on it such that their recordings are, by and large, can’t-miss events.
This is a disc that begs for a sequel (or a whole series).
François-Xavier Roth and his period ensemble Les Siècles serve up freshness of playing and conviction of interpretation; Manfred Honeck is a conductor who can draw compelling, electrifying accounts of the standard canon as if on cue; the verdict’s mixed on the music of Lithuanian-born composer Mikalojus Čiurlionis.
Prince of Players is based on a play that also yielded the movie Stage Beauty, and it’s one of the best new operas to come along in years.
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