Karl Georg Berg, Die Rheinpfalz, 29th June 2023
“After a festive first part of the overture, Michael Francis ignited a multitude of musical firecrackers in dazzling colors at the current opening concert, at least in the fast main part [of Haydn’s Music for the Royal Fireworks], and unfolded an igniting and brilliant sound magic. The Staatsphilharmonie played with the vigor, flexibility and responsiveness of a specialist ensemble…
With Schubert’s great C major symphony D 944, Michael Francis and the brilliantly arranged Staatsphilharmonie once again offered a formative, absolutely coherently conceived and overwhelmingly expressive interpretation of one of the great symphonies in music history. Here, too, the formal overview and tonal clarity in connection with an uninterrupted tension and great clarity in the visualization of Schubert’s musical figures were inspiring. These are facets of a life picture that is blossoming at its core, in which, of course, moments of terror (at the climax of the second movement and shortly before the orgiastic final bars in the finale) are not missing. Francis also played this to the full – so the arc to the final concert was stretched.”
