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	Reviews Turku Philharmonic Orchestra / 1 February 2007 TURUN SANOMAT, 7.2.2007 --- Stravinsky's Petrouchka was an entertaining, yet sophisticated musical experience. Jonathan Stockhammer's conducting was very clear and meaningful, and the orchestra played at a correspondingly high level. Stockhammer styled the Hitchcockian thriller Petrouchka with countless exciting details, contrasts and thousands of colours. DER TAGESSPIEGEL, 23/3/2007 --- Igor Stravinsky's Petrouchka Suite floods the Philharmonie like a sunbeam. Conducted by Jonathan Stockhammer, the DSO plays from beginning to end with freshness, dedication and good humour. MDR New Year Concert, Gewandhaus Leipzig / 1 January 2007 LEIPZIGER VOLKSZEITUNG, 3/1/2007 --- One cannot help but hear that rhythm and energy are at the very top of Stockhammer´s musical agenda - and for these dances (Dvořák) that's not a bad thing. But naturally there is more than that there. Opulent inner-voices bloom between the rattling of cymbals and chuntering of the double bass, in a way only Dvorak could have devised. The metre lurches again and again, spiritedly lending a stable platform to this romp. And it is on this platform that the elegant, precise and demanding Stockhammer moves so competently and sensuously as to let the ravishing strands of the cellos and violas, second violins, woodwind and brass flourish. Finnish Radio debut / 3 March 2006 HUFVUDSTADSBLAD 5/3/2006 --- The opening concert of Musica nova, which presented music by contemporary American composers, focused on the art of writing music for orchestra. All four works by three composers indulged in finely tuned treatment of the orchestra and the skill of making a big symphony orchestra sound great. (...) The conductor Jonathan Stockhammer who was born in America and lives in Germany, did a fantastic job. Under his baton, the RSO developed a brilliant sound, and this is exactly how new music has to be played - even when the score is complicated, every little detail was perfectly clear. HELSINGIN SANOMAT, 5/3/2006 --- Three of the most important American composers were presented in the opening concert of Musica Nova. (...) Jonathan Stockhammer led the RSO brilliantly; in the two works by Thomas, it sounded like an enormous chamber orchestra. Faustus premiere at Opera National de Lyon / 9 March 2006 ANACLASE, 20/3/2006 --- But it is certainly to the orchestra that Pascal Dusapin dedicates the greatest dramatic impact, as if the text were to inspire him finally to the most beautiful pure music, truly fascinating and emotionally gripping. Credit is definitely due to the Orchestre de l'Opera de Lyon under the baton of the American conductor Jonathan Stockhammer who gives us ninety minutes of remarkable homogeneity, precision and dramatic intensity. Without covering or weakening the voices, the orchestra spreads a polychrome grid - detailed by the composer with virtuosic skill - using a number of percussion instruments to create a rich palette of coulours, differenciated to the extreme, so that they almost create a sixth character, "like a second angel, without words". LES ECHOS, 20/3/2006 --- ...Jonathan Stockhammer's clear and concise conducting is an invaluable help in getting one's bearings... DIAPASON, May 2006 --- Brilliant balance, beautiful orchestra playing under conductor Jonathan Stockhammer. RESMUSICA, 18/3/2006 --- Subtly and intelligently led by Jonathan Stockhammer, the Lyon orchestra sounds admirable..." Stavanger Symphony debut / 23 March 2006 STAVANGER AFTENBLAD, 24/3/2006 --- Bruckner’s 6th symphony got a great performance under the confident baton of Stockhammer. (...) This high-calibre group forms a community of chamber music individualists, truly a dream ensemble. Faustus premiere at Opera National de Lyon / 9 March 2006 ANACLASE, 20/3/2006 --- (…) But it is certainly to the orchestra that Pascal Dusapin dedicates the greatest dramatic impact, as if the text were to inspire him finally to the most beautiful pure music, truly fascinating and emotionally gripping. Credit is definitely due to the Orchestre de l’Opera de Lyon under the baton of the American conductor Jonathan Stockhammer who gives us ninety minutes of remarkable homogeneity, precision and dramatic intensity. Without covering or weakening the voices, the orchestra spreads a polychrome grid – detailed by the composer with virtuosic skill – using a number of percussion instruments to create a rich palette of coulours, differenciated to the extreme, so that they almost create a sixth character, “like a second angel, without words”. LES ECHOS, 20/3/2006 --- Jonathan Stockhammer’s clear and concise conducting is an invaluable help in getting one’s bearings. DIAPASON, May 2006 --- Brilliant balance, beautiful orchestra playing under conductor Jonathan Stockhammer. RES MUSICA, 18/3/2006 --- Subtly and intelligently led by Jonathan Stockhammer, the Lyon orchestra sounds admirable. Finnish Radio debut / 3 March 2006 HUFVUDSTADSBLAD, 5/3/2006 --- The opening concert of Musica nova, which presented music by contemporary American composers, focused on the art of writing music for orchestra. All four works by three composers indulged in finely tuned treatment of the orchestra and the skill of making a big symphony orchestra sound great. (...) The conductor Jonathan Stockhammer who was born in America and lives in Germany, did a fantastic job. Under his baton, the RSO developed a brilliant sound, and this is exactly how new music has to be played – even when the score is complicated, every little detail was perfectly clear. HELSINGIN SANOMAT, 5/3/2006 --- Three of the most important American composers were presented in the opening concert of Musica Nova. (...) Jonathan Stockhammer led the RSO brilliantly; in the two works by Thomas, it sounded like an enormous chamber orchestra.” Zappa's Greggery Peccary and other Persuasions with Ensemble Modern CLASSICS TODAY It'sabout time.More than a decade after the release of its first Zappa album,YellowShark, the redoubtable Ensemble Modern has put together another marvelous program of musical gems from one of the 20th century's most inventive and iconoclastic composers. Kooky titles aside, the music ranges from the zany (The Beltway Bandits, which sounds kind of like Messiaen with a rockbeat) to the terrifying (Naval Aviation in Art?).Zappa the beguiling melodist comes to the fore in Peaches En Regalia,while Revised Music For Low Budget Orchestra is a miniature tone poem teeming with invention and ceaselessly entertaining licks for the various players. Indeed, the one quality that characterizes all of Zappa's music is itsin exhaustible drive and superabundance of ideas. No matter hw outrageous, it's important to remember that he was an extreme perfectionist, one who (like Conlon Nancarrow) despaired that this music ever could be played by human beings in real time with the necessary precision and attention to detail that he required. YellowShark demonstrated that in the right hands his work indeed can be played, and more to the point, should be.One of Zappa's favorite composers was Edgard Varèse, and his spirit hovers over a lot of this music, particularly in the gestural language of works such as Put A Motor In Yourself (and arranger/transcriber AliN. Askin seems to have picked upon this as well, particularly in the writing for woodwinds).So much in this music anticipates by years the trendy classical/rock fusion pieces so common today among the younger generation of composers, the difference being that Zappa's seriousness all went into his compositional craft rather than into creating music expressive of little more than a tedious and inflated sense of thecomposer's own self-importance. The highlight of this collection is the hilarious and typically Dadaist nightmare The Adventures of GreggeryPeccary. It's impossible to describe what happens in the course of this 21-minute freak show, composed moreorless along the lines of Peter and the Wolf for narrator(s)and orchestra, and indeed despite the extreme clarity of the sonics, events come at you so quickly that it's difficult to take it all in at once--but that only means you have reason to listen to it again, so no problem there. Suffice it to say that Zappa's demented sense of musical and verbal humor gets a complete workout with a compositional bravura and split-second sense of timing that would make Looney Tunes legend Carl Stalling proud. As with all of the performances here, the playing of Ensemble Modern under Jonathan Stockhammer is astoundingly perfect, the sound brilliant and ideally suited to the material in both clarity and impact. Let's hope we don't have to wait another decade for the next Zappa project from these forces, and that some enterprising conductor (Esa-Pekka Salonen perhaps?) will tackle the big orchestral works as well.