Rave reviews on Măcelaru and ONF’s Warner Classics Saint-Saëns album release
Cristian Măcelaru and the Orchestre National de France’s complete Saint-Saëns symphonies album has received encomiums from a plethora of musical reviewers
This week, critics commend the success of Camille Saint-Saëns: Complete symphonies featuring the Orchestre National de France led by Cristian Măcelaru praised for his leadership and style.
Lucas Irom of Classiquenews mentions: “This integral driven by the bubbling and very detailed Cristian Măcelaru now sets a new benchmark for the French symphonic repertoire: happy performer who has power and an eye for detail, also endowed with a rather fabulous inner energy. He is very attentive to the balances between desks, to the overall sound format as well as to the individual quality of the instrumental nuances.”
Le Figaro writes: “Upon his arrival at the head of the Orchestre National de France, in the midst of a health crisis, the Romanian Cristian Măcelaru had also included this recording project on the training agenda, and wanted to make it a priority at the start of his mandate. . . Rich idea. From the first bars of the extremely rare Symphony in A major , the work of a 15-year-old composer, which opens the cycle, one is struck by the fluidity of Măcelaru’s direction. His sense of naturalness. This elegant suppleness marries with as much delicacy as concern for contrasts in its inspiration.”
RTBF Radio’s Nicolas Blanmont claims: “Cristian Măcelaru delivers a careful and convincing interpretation of the five symphonies, and benefits from the presence of Olivier Latry for the organ symphony.”
France Musique Radio notes: “The Orchestre National de France launched its concert season at the beginning of September and the work of Camille Saint-Saëns continues to be one of the great themes of the orchestra’s 2021 season, making the hundredth anniversary of the death of the composer.”
Nicolas Quiroga from Diapason Magazine states: On December 15, 2021, at the Auditorium de Radio France, “Cristian Măcelaru closes the celebrations of the hundredth anniversary of the death of Camille Saint-Saëns by conducting a Requiem well suited to the circumstances, since the composer died on December 16, 1921. We applauded the transparency of the texture (the strings are not for nothing), the finesse of the details, the circulation of themes within the orchestra.”
To discover more about the album, click here.