Brahms: Hungarian Dance No. 20 in E minor

“It's been true for many years now that American orchestras have been sounding more middle- European, but the Pittsburgh Symphony could easily be mistaken for a top German orchestra, like Leipzig or Dresden, in this music. Listen to the slow movement of the Fourth Symphony where Marek Janowski really has his players leaning into the harmonic radiance of the writing. All those wondrous transfigurations evolve so naturally and so dreamily that the brawny exuberance of the Scherzo – tough and resilient in Janowski's hands – really does come as an unexpected blast.
Approaches differ greatly with regard to the highly innovative first movement, the whole of which constitutes a development of sorts. So, how soon do the darkening clouds descend? For some they cannot descend soon enough. But here it's as if Janowski is delaying the inevitable right through to the high anxiety of the final pages. He tightens the screw relatively late in the movement. The slow movement then restores some sense of prior well-being and inner calm, as does the still centre of the finale with its tranquil flute and trombone-led chorale variation. The refulgence of the playing is a constant source of pleasure.
The Hungarian Dances come in Brahms and Dvorák's orchestrations, their kinship self-evident.
They are earthy and sinewy with plenty of surge factor in the lower strings and the requisite cheekiness in the phrasing exemplified by those traditionally tantalising hesitations and stomping downbeats.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“…the Pittsburgh Symphony - increasingly one of the nation's finest - could easily be mistaken for a top German orchestra, like Leipzig or Dresden, in this music. The refulgence of the playing is a constant source of pleasure and any conductor who is as mindful of Brahm's ingenuity, invention and sheer vision as Janowski demands to be heard. The Hungarian Dances... are earthy and sinewy with plenty of surge factor in the lower strings and the requisite cheekiness in the phrasing exemplified by those traditionally tantalising hesitations and stompling downbeats.” Gramophone Magazine, March 2009

“The second instalment of Marin Alsop's Brahms symphonies series is as authoritative, understanding and warm-hearted as the first.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2005 ****

“This is a late-summer idyll of a performance, easily paced, nicely judged and warmly played.
For first-time buyers it will provide unalloyed pleasure; for older hands it will satisfy without necessarily enlightening or surprising.
It is one of those Brahms performances whose centre of gravity is in the violas, cellos and horns.
This is apt to the symphony's lyrical, ruminative character, though there are times when the music is robbed of its light and shade. In the finale, for example, one rather misses the chill-before-dawn mood of the lead-in to the recapitulation; and one needs a keener differentiation of horn and trumpet tone to catch the final page's incomparable D major blaze. Alsop's account of the third movement is strong in contrast, the oboe-led Allegrettograzioso strangely muted, the quicker 2/4 section done more or less to perfection. That said, you might think the slow movement under-characterised: insufficiently distinct in tone and temper from the first.
The symphony was recorded in Blackheath Concert Hall, the Hungarian Dances in Watford's Colisseum: a bigger, brawnier acoustic that doesn't suit the music quite so well. In dance No 18 in D, one of Dvorák's orchestrations, there is a noisy, cluttered feel to the performance. By contrast, the alfresco No 3 in F, winningly and economically orchestrated by Brahms himself, is played with real charm and style.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“a recital that made you feel a great deal better when you came out than when you went in” Daily Telegraph