Cristian Mandeal releases an acclaimed Bruckner Symphony No. 9 with the Hallé label
Cristian Mandeal conducts a ‘distinguished Bruckner Nine’ with the Hallé orchestra and receives numerous outstanding reviews including features by Gramophone Magazine and BBC Music Magazine.
Gramophone Magazine, April 2010
‘This is as fine a Bruckner Ninth as any we have had on record from an English orchestra... [Mandeal] has the art of growing the music, of easing the pulse on after the initial exordium to the point where a broad, flexible yet forward-moving pulse has been established. There is thus nothing broken-backed about his handling of the first movement’s great double exposition as there is with some conductors.
The Hallé’s realisation of the reading is finely moulded, powerful where necessary, and distinguished above all by the sustained intensity of the playing in the music’s quietest passages...The treacherous wind passages in the great concluding Adagio are all expertly managed, as is the awesome but awkward Scherzo, which Mandeal plays with a pace and élan comparable to that of Sigmund von Hausegger on his pioneering 1938 recording of Bruckner’s original score.’
- Richard Osborne
BBC Music Magazine, February 2010
‘Cristian Mandeal conducts a distinguished Bruckner Nine’
Performance *****
Recording *****
‘there are alternative ways of treating and understanding [Bruckner Symphony No. 9] which are less disruptive [than that of the Dresden Staatskapelle/Fabio Luisi recording;] in which the violence alternating with near-serenity shows Bruckner coming to terms with the warring elements in his tormented personality and giving them form. This account from the conductor Cristian Mandeal belongs to the latter school, and it is supremely well executed by the Hallé... The playing is of fierce precision and immense power.’
- Michael Tanner
Other praise includes:
‘...a vivacious scherzo and an adagio full of solemn detail, which the orchestra delivers in dazzling style, commend a release which has formidable catalogue competition.’
Classical Music, January 2010
‘...the Scherzo succeeds excellently and the monumental Adagio has the Hallé responding with memorable expressive depth and fullness of tone, in clear and spacious recorded sound.’
Classic FM Magazine, March 2010
