Concert Schedule 2015 / 2016

Sharon Kennedy Wynne, Tampa Bay Times, 31st December 2015
“I love how fancy it makes me sound to say that my favorite concert of the year was the debut of Michael Francis as music director of the Florida Orchestra. The Oct. 2 Masterworks concert featured a dazzling pianist on Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and 86 musicians parading Aaron Copland’s iconic American Symphony No. 3.

It’s because I’m more of a Green Day kind of gal that this show ended up being my favorite, thanks to the mini music appreciation class from Professor Francis.

Like all of this season’s Masterworks concerts, if you arrive early, you get to hear a talk with inside stories about the music and the composers. Francis is a charming speaker, and when he got wound up in describing Copland’s music he was riveting. He described how the first movement embodies an internal clash with trombones, “almost like the heartbeat of the soul of the nation.”

With his vivid descriptions in my head, I had a clear vision as the music played of the wide American plain, the tick-tock of the Industrial Revolution, the tragedy of war and the post-war optimism of Fanfare for the Common Man.

He also prepared us for Rachmaninoff and what pianists call the Mount Everest of concertos. Guest pianist Valentina Lisitsa, a classical star of YouTube, delivered the complex performance needed, her fingers sprinting down the keys with blinding speed.

Francis is only the fourth in the orchestra’s 48-year history, but this British import clearly has the soul of a teacher and a broad democratic view of music’s appeal. Previous directors have viewed their role as curators of the best in classical music, not to be popular.

Francis, with his many pops shows on the season’s calendar, has taken his orchestra to shopping malls and hospitals and clearly plans on giving the common man more than a little fanfare in Tampa Bay.”

Tom Aldridge, Nuvo, 19th October 2015
“[Michael] Francis, with crisp, exacting baton work, got corresponding playing from his orchestra: perfect phrasing, excellent dynamic shaping, continuous precision. After experiencing that opener [Mendelssohn’s Overture to Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, Op. 27], I expected and got similar finesse in the Tchaikovsky, and especially in the big closing work, Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations.”

Jay Harvey, Jay Harvey Upstage, 17th October 2015
“Francis and the ISO caught the becalmed mood of the first part of “Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage” perfectly, which made the transition to the energetic second half of the piece all the more exciting. The ensemble exhilaration was well-maintained right through to the triumph of trumpets and chords of gratitude for safe arrival in harbor at the very end.”

Andrew Meacham, Tampa Bay Times, 23rd January 2016
“With Mozart & More, which opened Friday at the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts, Francis and the orchestra sandwiched a piano concerto and a symphony by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart between Igor Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks concerto and a percussion composition by John Cage relying mostly on makeshift or primitive instruments…

The evening started with the 1938 work by Stravinsky, one of the 20th century’s most influential composers. The Concerto for Chamber Orchestra in E-flat, or “Dumbarton Oaks” (so named for the Washington, D.C. estate where the meetings that created the United Nations were held) is a 15-piece concerto in three movements. The 10 stringed instruments set an aggressive pace that is at once edgy and deferential to the baroque era Stravinsky wanted to honor.

All the musicians except for the cello and double bass stood to perform the piece, as if for an impromptu meeting. Two horns supported the strings while a single flute cut the other way, a kind of instrumental antiphony or counterpoint. The piece zigs and zags and races to an abrupt conclusion…

The concert closes with Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 (1788), in which the virtuoso’s full range of genius is on display. A dissonance early in the first movement cuts like a blade; the tempo soon quickens. By the fourth and final movement, the strings are leading furiously or suddenly softening, the symphony about to conclude or just shifting gears. Every time you think you know where it’s headed, Mozart pulls the rug out from under you.

The composer demands a lot out of orchestras, and so does Francis. It could be my imagination, but in his fourth month it is hard to listen to the orchestra without thinking that they are playing more cohesively than ever before. This evening is well worth attending, as Mozart & More unites the work of three ground-breaking musical minds in an energizing way.”

Michael Tumelty, Hearld Scotland, 24th April 2016
★★★★★
“NO holds barred here, ladies and gentlemen. Five stars all round. The BBC SSO on Thursday night, playing as though there was no tomorrow, and this was their only chance to do it, produced a scorcher of a concert with conductor Michael Francis, a new name to me, but clearly a young man with his eye on the ball and his ear and mind on the score…”

“The start and end of the concert were both magical, with the four flutes for Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question positioned in the choir seats, Hedley Benson’s profoundly evocative trumpet solo up aloft, out of my sight, and the softest bed of string sound imaginable providing an onstage, gentle halo of chordal warmth; and then, at the other end of the night, the SSO laid on a red meat course with a gorgeously-juicy, on-the-bone account of Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances.”

Ken Walton, The Scotsman, 22nd April 2016
“The spatial dimensions of the Ives [The Unanswered Question] – the distant but increasingly insistent solo trumpet in the audience gallery, the increasingly discordant flute responses up in the choir stalls, against the sonic blank canvas of strings on stage – were a theatrical thrill.”

Julian Sykes, Le Temps, 25th May 2016
“Michael Francis had chosen two English composers of the 20th century to compliment the programme – a happy combination. Combining elegance and ardour , the British conductor gave the utmost expressiveness to the Fantasie on a Theme of Thomas Tallis by Ralph Vaughan Williams without lapsing into sentimentality. There is even a choreographic dimension with the string orchestra divided into two groups, the smallest set apart, positioned at the front of the stage (nine players). The quartet formed of the first desks, with the dialogue from violist Eli Karanfilova violist and violinist François Sochard, were particularly invested…

Crowning the evening, the ingenious Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge by Britten produced a great effect. Each variation is finely characterized, with the spirit of virtuosity and breezes of lyricism sometimes so poignant (the “Funeral March”)…It just goes to show what a cleverly crafted programme of twentieth century music can be to an enthusiastic public!”

Ken Herman, San Diego Story, 6th June 2016
“[Regarding Mozart’s Gallimathias musicum] Francis’ violins sported a mellifluous shimmer, and the entire orchestra’s tight rhythmic ensemble maintained its fresh, buoyant air from start to finish…

Francis gave [Mozart’s Bastien und Bastienne] score a spirited interpretation, full of youthful optimism…

In its opening night offering, the Mainly Mozart Festival orchestra displayed the polish and clean ensemble we have come to expect from this elite assembly. Now in his second season as Music Director, Francis is making the orchestra his own. The players exhibit a freer, more relaxed sound, and the strings are noticably sweeter. I eagerly wait to see how this approach translates into other orchestral styles.”

Ken Herman, San Diego Story, 16th June 2016
“Although most conductors pay scant attention to Schubert’s first four symphonies, Francis made a compelling case for Schubert’s Symphony No. 1 in D Major. Based on Joseph Haydn’s sturdy classical four-movement design, Schubert’s First Symphony sails through those well-charted waters with buoyant optimism. From the orchestra, Francis elicited clean, articulate phrasing, even in the busiest passage work. He was not afraid to bring out bold dramatic surges now and then, but he never sacrificed the orchestra’s cohesive ensemble.”

Stanwell Anderson, San Diego Reader, 18th June 2016
“…the level of [Schubert’s] counterpoint in the fourth movement is breathtaking, and my breath was surely taken away by the virtuosity of the MMF Orchestra, and their dapper, elegant, and gesticulationally eloquent conductor, Michael Francis.”

Marcus Overton, San Diego Union-Tribune, 20th June 2016
“Two Mozart symphonies — nos. 5 and 52 — were played with an attention to detail that swept aside problems that always bedevil this transparent music: attacks and releases were immaculate, and intonation was superb.”

Zachary Lewis, The Plain Dealer, 18th July 2016
“British conductor Michael Francis made his Cleveland Orchestra debut Saturday night with a mostly English program…and concluded with a stunning realization of Vaughan Williams’ epic Symphony No. 2, a portrait of the city the composer lived in and loved for significant periods…

Francis led a brilliant and committed performance of this large and colorful canvas of a symphony, keeping close rein on the sprawling structure of the huge first movement while eliciting countless lovely details from the orchestration. His grasp of the work’s drama was sure, and his ear for Vaughan Williams’ textures in the Lento and the Whistler-esque Scherzo — the former an essay in grays, mauves and muted blues, the latter a fantasia of pulsing darkness and flaring light — was all that could be hoped for.

The anguished finale, with its dark march and fugitive allegro, landed with immense impact, while the extended coda, bringing together evocations of all that has passed in the score, was perfectly limned, demonstrating what can be achieved when a peerless orchestra and a fine conductor collaborate.”