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Edinburgh Guide

Review: EIF24, Fire in my mouth

The multimedia elegy for the victims of the fire, Fire in my mouth, was given its first performance in 2019. In the first concert of its residency at this year’s International Festival, the Philharmonia Orchestra gave the elegy its first UK performance under the baton of its Principal Guest Conductor, Marin Alsop.

New York Classical Review

Review: NYO-USA brings it all home with assist from Thibaudet

Marin Alsop conducted, and pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet has returned as soloist, playing Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Thibaudet has already shown himself a superb partner for young musicians, his élan complementing their energy. Alsop’s qualities of precision and drive were also ideal, as was her own experience with the rest of this excellent program, which opened with Samuel Barber’s Symphony No. 1 and finished in the second half with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherezade—not to mention two encores that were custom-made, or close to it.

(Photo: Chris Lee)

Classical Music: BBC Music Magazine

100 Unforgettable BBC Proms

Marin Alsop is the first woman to conduct the Last Night of the Proms. ‘I feel certain that Henry Wood would see this evening as a natural progression towards more inclusion in classical music,’ says the American in her speech.

Classical CD Choice

Review: Margaret Brouwer – Rhapsodies – Marin Alsop

This programme, in the capable hands of Marin Alsop, makes strong cases for the pieces on offer, particularly the First Symphony which sports a Dutch hymn-like melody and confident, colourful orchestral writing.

Conductor Marin Alsop and the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra show the enormous multifaceted nature of Bernstein’s funny, parodic and also voluptuous music.

BR-KLASSIK
Gazeta Wyborcza

Review: “Black Mask” by Krzysztof Penderecki at NOSPR

[Marin Alsop’s] magnificent performance of “The Black Mask” was probably preceded by a meticulous analysis of the work. She conducted the opera with extraordinary clarity and awareness of the sonic effect that Penderecki enshrined in the masterful instrumentation of the work. She set in motion a purely sonic total theater, shocking especially in the last phase of the work, in which soloists, chorus and orchestra personify the crowd of Bolkow’s inhabitants, smothered with horror and premonition of death. Alsop heard echoes of Penderecki’s “St. Luke Passion” in this section of the piece. […] Her interpretation was masterful – characterized by her control of every chord, every sound sequence, and her ability to create heated emotions.

Los Angeles Times

Review: Marin Alsop is an admirable agent for change in the documentary ‘The Conductor’

In her years of cultural leadership, she’s been more than just an internationally renowned conduit for the intentions of history’s great composers and the sounds filling a concert hall. She’s also absorbed the hopes of young baton-holding aspirants and underserved musicians everywhere, nurturing their dreams and spreading them far and wide.

CNN

Christine Amanpour interviews Marin Alsop

The first woman to lead a major American orchestra Marin Alsop talks about her tough road to the top of classical music and the new documentary about her life “The Conductor.”

“If anyone has the courage and power to change the world through music, it’s Marin Alsop.”

–WQXR

“… a formidable musician and a powerful communicator, a conductor with a vision of what an American Orchestra could be in the 21st Century.”

New York Times

“Alsop has again packed the houses, and made her orchestra play like there was no tomorrow.”

The Times

“There is no doubt that Alsop has the goods: a compelling vision of how she wants a piece of music to sound and the ability to draw that sound from a group of players.”

Chicago Sun-Times

“With Alsop and the Baltimore players, the effect was one of total revelation.”

Washington Post