Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra

“The inherent mobility of his idiom seems to make for a magical refreshment of standard gambits — suddenly scuttering woodwind, cutting brass, the slicing, soaring string line. At his most rhetorical, he’s never actually predictable.” Sunday Times, 10th March 2013

“Released for the first time as a set, they make the perfect tribute for this year's Lutosławski centenary. Salonen's best qualities as a conductor are exemplified here too, whether in the care with which he marshalls and balances the neoclassical textures of the First Symphony...or brings so vividly to life the immaculately crafted surfaces of the Third and Fourth.” The Guardian, 28th March 2013 ****

“Salonen’s sense of shape and atmosphere are refined and timeless. The playing in all of these works is largely excellent, though the wind and brass solos stand out as particularly strong in [the Fourth]” MusicWeb International, 6th May 2013

“it is very good to have Salonen's version of the Second Symphony restored to the catalogue; he captures its elusive qualities, and the LA strings sound at their most potent here in the surging warmth of the second movement...this holds together compellingly as a cycle.” BBC Music Magazine, June 2013 ****

“Salonen's Lutoslawski symphony cycle provides a refined but often exciting take on a impressive corpus of work...The performances are utterly convinced and the clear, impressively 'present' sound is ideally suited to them, though involving three separate acoustical settings.” Gramophone Magazine, June 2013

“It wins a special place among many fine Mahler Symphony No. 9 recordings with its unflinching clarity and general spciousness...That may have something to do with the unflappable demeanour of the LA Phil; these top American players rarely get in a lather.” BBC Music Magazine, June 2013 ****

“Dudamel live in 2012 coaxes polished, full-throated playing in every department, brass strong and sure, strings positively luscious, woodwind responsive to every italicising demand...Many will appreciate Dudamel's boisterous engagement notwithstanding a tendency to pass over the longer line and with it Mahler's sense of foreboding” Gramophone Magazine, May 2013

“Dudamel's tempos are excellently judged as a basis and the orchestral playing at times approaches the superlative level...Time and again, throughout Dudamel's performance, one is impressed by the sheer musicianship and commitment of the playing” International Record Review, May 2013

“Dudamel lovingly shapes this vast landscape, bringing to it an affirming view. He keeps everything moving along nicely, at least until those moments of the finale when all energies ebb away and we are left with those halting, bare lines.” Sunday Times, 24th February 2013

“This new, live, Mahler 9 sounds impressive – microphones are closely placed and you really feel in the thick of things...Each precipitous climax is paced with mature skill, the tension cannily ratcheted up...It’s really, really good, and Mahler anoraks will fondly recall Giulini’s similarly broad 1970s recording.” The Arts Desk, 16th March 2013

“Although “the Dude” can be stilted in the first two movements, there are many compensations: gorgeous textures, powerfully rhetorical gestures and superb clarity. In the ethereal finale he doesn’t reach the heights of Abbado or Haitink, but if you want a young man’s view of mortality, this can’t be bettered.” The Times, 23rd February 2013 ****

“Salonen’s forces throw themselves into the affray with plenty of pep. Ryan McKinny acquits himself well as the Entertainer, master of ceremonies at a big Soviet rally...the [Symphony] cackles and grimaces with more vigour than Orango...there’s a bright heat and clarity here” The Times, 29th June 2012 ***

“the piano score of the prologue to Shostakovich's abandoned opera Orango blazes with colour in Gerard McBurney's orchestration.” The Independent, 1st July 2012 ****

“Even if some of the music [of Orango] sounds thin in this Gerard McBurney orchestration, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s LA forces give it five-star treatment — the rising American tenor Michael Fabiano is outstanding — and it serves as an agreeable bonne bouche to Salonen’s stupendous account of the bewildering Fourth” Sunday Times, 9th July 2012

“[Orango's] trenchant wit and seriousness of satirical purpose leave you wishing more of it had survived...Salonen conducts [the Fourth] with cool lucidity and a sense of remorseless logic...The immense climax of the finale isn't as shattering as it could be, but elsewhere Salonen's fondness for clear textures is very much in evidence, and often admirable.” The Guardian, 12th July 2012 ****

“The Prologue makes a curious yet first-rate companion to the mighty Shostakovich Four. Salonen's approach to this half-human, half-monster Symphony is well-calculated...the LA recording adds much to our understanding of an extraordinarily complex giant.” BBC Music Magazine, October 2012 ****

“[The Prologue] comes rip-roaringly off the surviving piano score in Gerard McBurney's spookily authentic orchestration...It's a composerly account [of the Fourth] in which every thematic connection, however oblique, has something to say. Clarity is forensic, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic achieving levels of precision that can...totally suspend disbelief.” Gramophone Magazine, October 2012

“McKinny is a Master of Ceremonies of tangible malevolence...Salonen gets a lively response from his choral and orchestral forces, pointing up the music's humour to the audible enjoyment of the audience...this occasion may well be the first time [Salonen] has tackled one of the symphonies. The Fourth is the right choice in that its combining wilfully disparate material with an essentially pluarlistic idiom plays to this conductor's interpretative strengths.” International Record Review, September 2012

“does the prologue work as a stand-alone piece? Emphatically, yes...This is vintage Shostakovich, big, bold and biting, the fine soloists and chorus believably balanced...McBurney and Salonen exercise good judgment with this intriguing score..Worth it for Orango alone; look elsewhere for the symphony.” MusicWeb International, June 2012

“The mood ranges from serenity, ritual, repetition and non-vocal "chant" to dignified, meditative grandeur...Fragments from Kanon Pokajanen...is delivered with addictive Slavonic passion...In all senses, this latest ECM-Pärt collaboration is entrancing.” The Observer, 22nd August 2010

“...the work, cast in three incantatory movements and scored for strings, harp, timpani and percussion, is as deep as anything Pärt has written.” Sunday Times, 29th August 2010 ***

“Almost 40 years on from his third symphony, Arvo Pärt returned to the form with this "Los Angeles" symphony...Scored for string orchestra, harp, tympani and percussion, it opens imperceptibly in a quiet shimmer of strings before developing in stirring but sombre manner, the waves of rising string flourishes peaking like straining voices” The Independent, 20th August 2010 ****

“Like much of Pärt's other works, it weaves the effect of musical suspension in time, helped by motivic and stylistic similarities across its three movements...The Estonian Philharmonic Choir are just as effective in the Kanon Pokajanen fragments...delivered in a crisply enunciated, religiously-weighted performance.” Charlotte Gardner, bbc.co.uk, 24th August 2010

“Salonen gradually steers the soundworld from Hollywood underscoring towards the monasteries of Orthodox Russia, evoking desolate landscapes and, in the final movement, a sense of ritual deliverance from destruction.” Classic FM Magazine, November 2010 ****

“There has probably never been a symphony like this...Repeated listening brings great rewards: this is a true symphony for the 21st century.” Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2010

“Esa-Pekka Salonen's Piano Concerto runs for more than half an hour, barely pausing for breath. Recorded live in Los Angeles's Walt Disney Concert Hall, this performance has virtuosity and no-holds-barred exuberance in abundance. Helix, written two years before concerto and less than a third of its length, is an even more uncompromising demonstration of textural overload... Performance and recording are stunning, the audience reaction at the end ecstatic. Bronfman's authority in this music is phenomenal...” Gramophone Magazine, March 2009

“Esa-Pekka Salonen's Piano Concerto runs for more than half an hour, barely pausing for breath. The turbulence and energy of the music give it a surreal quality, as if the whole history of the Romantic concerto were being feverishly revisited and reshaped in 2007 with a matter-oflife- and-death urgency. You may hear echoes of any number of august historical figures – Scriabin, Rachmaninov, even Respighi – but the aura is always contemporary. While those composers might recognise Salonen's rhythmic vocabulary, and the flamboyant rhetoric of his piano-writing, his harmonic palette is something else.
Recorded live in Los Angeles's Walt Disney Concert Hall, this performance has virtuosity and no-holds-barred exuberance in abundance.
On early acquaintance it was hard to find enough shape or sense of purpose within the welter of notes, the sheer density of the soloorchestra mix. But Salonen the composer certainly has the courage of his convictions. Helix, written two years before the concerto and less than a third of its length, is an even more uncompromising demonstration of textural overload, a noisy, relentlessly forceful response to the image of a spiral revolving at increasing speed. Performance and recording are stunning, the audience reaction at the end ecstatic.
Dichotomie (2000) for solo piano provides a useful digest of Salonen's current compositional preoccupations. Its first movement deploys aggressive but constantly shifting rhythmic mechanisms whose origins lie in Prokofiev, while its second seems closer to the flowing spontaneity of the Ligeti Etudes. Bronfman's authority in this music is phenomenal and here, at last, you sense a genuine match between medium and message.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010