Concert Schedule 2010 / 2011

Bernard Jacobson, Seattle Times, 29th October 2010
“The young English conductor Michael Francis, who also plays double bass in the London Symphony Orchestra, made an impressive US debut with a cleverly designed program in the “Mainly Mozart” serie…Impressive was the way he heightened the contrasts between stormy and lyrical in the first movement of the Haydn, and his graceful and often eloquent baton technique invested the minuet of the work with positively tigerish zest.”

Zach Carstensen, Gathering Note, 29th October 2010
Across the entire program, Francis drew out microscopic details, subtle dynamics, and snappy tempos that sounded like they took weeks to perfect but were actually achieved over mere days.

Stephen Smoliar, San Francisco Examiner, 12th November 2010
“…Francis conducted this work with precision and a general sense of how the overall energy flows from one episode to another…[He] endowed this music with the celebratory spirit that it deserved….”

Allan Ulrich, Financial Times, 16th November 2010
“The evening was made memorable by the debut of conductor Michael Francis, who led Milhaud’s La Сréation du monde and Weill’s Symphony No 2 with crisp technique and uncommon empathy for these disparate works.”

Steve Kruger, The Berkshire Review, 20th November 2010
“The finale begins with woodwind arpeggios that sound as ecclesiastical as Brahms, but ends with a street chase and a serious accelerando culminating in the loudest tub thumping kettledrum thwack an orchestra can muster. The audience loved it. And Michael Francis received all the applause and foot shuffling from the San Francisco Symphony that a guest conductor could possibly hope for. He is clearly headed for a major career.”

Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, The Classical Review, 19th November 2010
“It was Mutter’s second concert as the Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence with the New York Philharmonic after an opening concert of Beethoven string trios. There was a chamber music feel about last night’s production, too, with a pared-down ensemble directed by Mutter herself in the Mozart concertos, and by the engaging young English conductor Michael Francis in Rihm’s Lichtes Spiel.”

James Bash, Oregon Music News, 28th February 2011
“Even though the appearance of home-grown artist Thomas Lauderdale as the featured soloist drew a large crowd to the Oregon Symphony concert on Sunday afternoon at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, it was the last-minute podium debut of Michael Francis that stole the show……Not changing the program one iota, Francis more than held his own with music that he had never conducted before, articulating each piece with an array of gestures and nuanced stick work that wonderfully conveyed the musical landscapes of Igor Stravinsky, Franz Schubert, Edvard Grieg, and Arturo Marquez….… Francis and the orchestra had elegance at its fingertips with its graceful interpretation of Schubert’s Symphony No. 5. The orchestra created graceful, balletic passages and energetic, forceful ones, keeping Schubert’s music lively and focused. It was like a chamber ensemble that really listens to each other….…With Marquez’s “Danzón No. 2” Francis and the orchestra showed off its animated side, creating the rhythmically intoxicating swirl of a dance floor somewhere in Latin America…… Overall, the performance belonged to Francis, and I hope that he will be invited back to conduct the orchestra in the near future.”

Tom Aldridge, Nuvo, 4th April 2011
“…British guest conductor Michael Francis […] not only showed real nimbleness […] but exerted strong control over his forces.”

Jay Harvey, IndyStar, 2nd April 2011
“Francis showed himself adept at managing shifts of color and rhythm, skills that were displayed in expansive form […] in a stirring performance of Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2 in D major. Characteristically a conductor of large gestures, Francis brought out the rhythmic subtleties in the second movement, and his encouragement of the brass (always a risky move) there and in the finale was rewarding.”

James McQuillen, The Oregonian, 11th April 2011
“And for the second time, [Michael Francis] led an assured, cohesive and compelling performance…With beautiful shaping – energetic, well-rounded phrases with wispy ends that fell off into silence – and keen contributions by the wind principals especially, it was a graciously fantastic performance.”

James Bash, Oregon Music News, 11th April 2011
“Guest conductor Michael Francis whipped the Oregon Symphony into a veritable whirlwind of sound during Bohuslav Martinů’s Fantaisies symphoniques…Francis displayed an incredible array of gestures and stick work to inspire the orchestra to reach into the emotional complexity of Martinů’s music and express it to the fullest. The wildest gyrations seemed to be spot on every single time, and the ending result was stunning.”

Steven Kruger, The Berkshire Review, 17th July 2011
“Francis exhibits remarkable ease on the podium. He belongs there. His gestures are easily understood by the audience and always seem just specific enough to be followed by an audible change in the orchestra. And he uses his height to pull off moments of real lunging energy. But he does not preen in profile, like Maazel, or stand ceremonially before the orchestra looking like its owner at a dinner party, as Temirkanov does. Once in a blue moon, Francis will close-out a diminuendo with a finger-flutter, learned no doubt from his LSO mentor Valery Gergiev, but that is the limit of his eccentricity.”