A fantastic review from Peter Quantrill in this month’s GramophoneMagazine for volume two in our series of Complete Piano Concertos of Ernst Krenek on Toccata Classics. Congrats to Mikhail Korzhev, Eric Huebner, Nurit Pacht, Adrian Partington, Kenneth Woods, conductor, producer Benjamin Michael Haas, Ben Connellan (engineer), and many thanks as always to Antje Müller and her team at the Ernst Krenek Institut. Read the whole thing here
“…angular in shape, yes, but hardly moer so than a minor-key quartet melody of Haydn, and developed with a comparable, resourceful invention.”
“Within its cosmopolitan, mid-Century, mid-Atlantic idiom, this music is always heading somewhere with a purpose, underpinned by a thoroughgoing Austro-German understanding of harmony and counterpoint, tension and breadth, cause and effect.”
“For all its evident challenges, Krenek’s solo piano writing always sounds pianistic in the hands of Mikhail Korzhev, whose touch is necessarily robust but not clangorous in spiky dialogue with Nurit Pacht‘s violin…”
“I’ve only praise, too, for the supporting energy of Kenneth Woods, conductor and the English Symphony Orchestra, who play with the conviction that this is music worth believing in.”
