Uwe Rauschelbach, Schwetzingen Zeitung, 4th July 2023
“Beethoven’s “Great Fugue” is already a renunciation of the familiar and the conventional. Music that is out of the ordinary. Who wants to go somewhere, but has no orientation or goal. Even the fugue pattern doesn’t hold up and is bursting at the seams. Under their chief conductor Michael Francis, the strings play as if their lives were at stake. Punctuation that looks like blows. Classic twists that turn out to be deceptive illusions. And all of this presented with the utmost transparency; all voices can be heard, and yet everything is pure turmoil. Heading into a future that is still in the dark…
…Mozart’s Requiem in Robert Levin’s version hits us like an elemental force. The impetuous conducting of Michael Francis, who drags us directly before the divine court on the “Day of Wrath”, is followed by the cathedral choir and orchestra with absolute commitment. This unbounded dynamic can hardly be increased, it moves in body and soul and leaves us humbly on the pews, as if full of powerful energies…
Emotional passion and musical expression can hardly be combined more impressively…This is how this classic of music history shows itself in its revolutionary way, overthrowing all previous experiences.”
