Reviews for Onyx Bruckner recording with RLPO

First reviews are out for Domingo Hindoyan's Bruckner recording for Onyx with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic:

Christian Hoskins, Gramophone:

"Domingo Hindoyan’s interpretation of the Fourth Symphony is well paced, admirably attentive to dynamics and avoids any interpretative eccentricities. Solo horn and woodwind passages are beautifully realised by the Liverpool players, and the Andante in particular is rich in atmosphere. The assured handling of the finale, including the carefully graduated ascent to the final peroration, suggests a conductor fully at home in the composer’s idiom”

The Times - Bruckner Weekend:

"The scale of the ambition was the most impressive thing. Not just the ambition of the composer at hand, Anton Bruckner — who composed symphonic soundscapes so vast that they’re known as “cathedrals in sound” by his admirers and “symphonic boa constrictors” by his enemies — but also the ambition of the team at the Glasshouse, the concert hall known until recently as Sage Gateshead, who had the guts to organise a festival of Bruckner’s music that would showcase his final three symphonies over one weekend with a host of guest performers.

Hearing any Bruckner symphony in a concert hall is something of a rarity in the UK, but hearing these three mighty masterpieces in the space of one weekend is a real luxury. Nothing yet has been scheduled on the scale of Glasshouse’s Big Bruckner Weekend anywhere else in the UK (and, one suspects, further afield) in the whole of Bruckner’s bicentenary year, and the organisers deserve as much of a bravo as the team of musicians they assembled.

When heard in such close proximity the grandeur of all three symphonies becomes even more apparent than usual, but what was most remarkable was the interpretative and musical variety on display. As played by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, No 7 sounded bathed in sunlight, shimmering with mysterious delicacy all the way through, and the conductor Domingo Hindoyan energised every phrase with a twinkling spirit of the dance. In contrast, Alpesh Chauhan conducted the opening of No 9 with a sense of shuddering darkness, but by the time they reached the slow movement, via a hammer-blow Scherzo, the musicians of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra had created a vision of magisterial transcendence.

But perhaps the highlight was the Hallé playing No 8 with surging brilliance and a sense of unfolding something vast. Mark Elder — who, remarkably, was conducting a Bruckner symphony for only the second time in his life — made sure that a crackle of energy palpitated beneath every phrase, even in the vast Adagio, driving everything forwards alongside the huge sense of scale.

Nor was that all. Alongside the symphonies, the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Glasshouse’s home team, performed the F minor mass with their chorus alongside Durham University Choral Society, and even the String Quintet got an outing with RNS principals. A sequence of unaccompanied motets sung in the vast foyer only set the seal on a completely exceptional experience, one to leave you exhausted and exultant at the same time.

★★★★★ “

Remy Franck, Pizzicato:

"As you can see from his programs, Venezuelan conductor Domingo Hindoyan has a soft spot for Bruckner. He has already performed several Bruckner symphonies with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, of which he is principal conductor. This recording is a compilation of several concerts in Liverpool.

The first thing that amazes me is how moderately Hindoyan approaches the tempo of the first movement and, even more, how much poetry he makes audible in it. It is also rather unusual how sweetly his second movement begins. Kurt Masur found a similar poetic charm in this movement with the New York Philharmonic. Hindoyan is a bit more introverted and thoughtful. In tempo, he leans more toward Thielemann than the much faster Haitink, who takes this quasi-Allegretto very pointedly. Hindoyan’s second movement of this Bruckner Fourth is one of the most compelling I have ever heard.

After so much depth, the Scherzo is very colorful and exciting in contrast, in the fast parts in clear contrast to the Trio.

Thanks to Hindoyan’s architectural flair and his ability to bring the jagged last movement into a coherent flow, this finale is revealed in all its incredible imagination. A magnificent Fourth!"