Charles Pope Jr, ConcertoNet.com, 20th November 2014
“Opening and closing with stunning presentations of Britten and Hindemith, this week’s subscription concert by the National Arts Centre Orchestra was arguably the most vibrant to date in NACO’s forty-fifth season. Major credit goes to yet another rising UK conductor, Michael Francis, who commanded the orchestra with subtlety […]
Natasha Gauthier, Ottawa Citizen, 19th November 2014
“Francis conducted the NAC Orchestra just last season, and on Wednesday he returned with an eclectic program of themes and variations.
Benjamin Britten honoured a former teacher in his Variations on a Theme by Frank Bridge. It’s an early work for string orchestra, a slightly academic series of display […]
James Chute, U-T San Diego, 26th October 2014
In Michael Francis’ first season as Mainly Mozart Festival Orchestra’s music director, his course is clear. For the just-announced 2015 season, he’s going back to Mozart.
“What we’re really looking to do in 2015 is celebrate Mozart,” said Francis, who succeeds the 26-year-old festival’s founding music director, David […]
Stephanie Hayes, Tampa Bay Times, 25th October 2014
“The concert began with an odd nugget of music in Ives’ Central Park In the Dark, an experimental piece from 1906 that imagines just what the title says. The strings were sequestered off stage, providing distant sounds of night. It all rose into a cacophony of street […]
Bay News 9, 23rd October 2014
Local Bay News team interviews Michael Francis regarding his new role as the Music Director for The Florida Orchestra.
Original footage available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFEOEzMTM50
Stephanie Hayes, Tampa Bay Times, 22nd October 2014
Michael Francis was relieved. His books had just arrived from overseas.
The British conductor was starting to plot a life here as music director of the Florida Orchestra. He had spent the weekend with his pregnant wife, shopping for furniture to fill their new Land O’Lakes home, visiting […]
Paul Driver, Sunday Times, 16th February 2014
“…[Michael Francis’] easily authoritative readings of Dvorak’s Violin Concerto…and New World Symphony provided a frame of familiarity for seldom-heard works by the somewhat neglected Polish composer…Andrzej Panufnik, whose centenary year this is.
His Sinfonia Sacra (1966) gave the concert a spectacular beginning. The first of its tightly written movements — three […]
Neil Fisher, The Times, 7th February 2014
★★★★
“…Hearing two of his most skilfully constructed works, vividly performed by the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Michael Francis, afresh was something of a revelation. Sinfonia Sacra, from 1966, is a hymnlike vision to Poland’s Catholic faith, but its ecstatic song only arrives after three fragmentary […]
Penny Homer, Bachtrack, 7th February 2014
★★★
“…The pairing of Dvořák and Panufnik is perhaps explained by their nationalism, although both composers framed it in different ways. Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony is subtitled “From the New World”, as if looking across to his Czech homeland from New York. It is only really in the second movement that […]
Tim Ashley, The Guardian, 6th February 2014
★★★★
“Sinfonia Sacra, with its ricocheting percussion, assertive brass and ritual string chants, seethed with tension…
Among the most remarkable and original of Panufnik’s scores, [Lullaby] was exquisitely done – a perfect performance.”
