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The New York Times February 26, 2005
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“[Ross] Edwards, born in 1943 in Sydney, Australia, composed his 20-minute concerto specifically for the virtuosic Australian oboist Diana Doherty, who also boasts a dancer's nimbleness and an actress's charisma, qualities the composer utilizes in this choreographic concerto. In a completely darkened hall, the fidgety yet plaintive sounds of Ms. Doherty's oboe are heard from offstage. As the light gradually brightens, she becomes visible, a Pan-like figure in a bare-shouldered black jump suit who leaps about the stage interacting with various members of the orchestra. This is a very public piece. But last night the public loved it; Ms. Doherty was a wonder, and Mr. Maazel, who conducted the work's 2002 premiere in Sydney, led a beautifully shaded and beguiling performance.”
Anthony Tommasi
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The New York Times January 13, 2005
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“Mr. Maazel's account of the Mozart … was packed with illuminating touches. One was the briefest hint of a pause before the exposition repeat in the opening Allegro moderato. Another was Mr. Maazel's emphasis of a more typically submerged viola response to the main violin line, later in the same movement. Throughout the performance, the string articulation was crisp and the textures were fully transparent. … Strauss was the same age when he wrote the Horn Concerto No. 1 (Op. 11). It isn't performed often, partly because Strauss's eventual accomplishments so clearly show it up as juvenilia, but also because its solo line is full of … perilous moves for a hornist. Philip Myers, the Philharmonic's principal hornist, was in exceptionally good form. He played the exposed horn line with power, assurance and at times a lovely poetic lilt that made an eloquent case for the work.
“Mr. Maazel and the orchestra contributed vividly as well. Some conductors … presented this piece as a work of restrained Neo-Classicism. Mr. Maazel pulled out all the stops, showing it as a broad-boned, fully Romantic score.”
Allan Kozinn
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The New York Times September 23, 2004
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"The "New World" Symphony was exciting and brilliantly played [Mr. Maazels] bold approach reclaimed an overplayed work and compelled you to listen afresh. From the murky stirrings of the slow introduction to the first movement to the brassy proclamations of the rousing finale, the performance was vigorously executed, unsentimental, on the edge and full of vitality."
Anthony Tommasini
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The New York Sun September 20, 2004
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"By any reckoning, Mr. Maazel is a formidable man. His combination of learning, experience, and talent is hard to beat. He is about as good as it gets these days."
Jay Nordlinger
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The New York Sun June 14, 2004
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"The big story at the Philharmonic continues to be the tenure of Lorin Maazel, who in his mid-70s seems an uncontainable kid — though a sage one. He is conducting with amazing vigor, and insight, and even when you cant go along with him, you are engaged by him. His performances, as a rule, are brisk, clean, and coherent. At their best, they are spellbinding, reminding you of why you loved music in the first place."
Jay Nordlinger
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The New York Times June 5, 2004
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"There are two reasons to catch the all-Russian program in which Lorin Maazel led the New York Philharmonic on Thursday evening at Avery Fisher Hall. The most pressing is the spectacular performance of Scriabin's 'Poem of Ecstasy' that closes the program. The second, but not by much, is Yefim Bronfman's supple account of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 4 (Op. 40). The orchestra's playing could hardly be bettered. The strings cruised virtuosically through the score's high-stress passages, and the mercilessly exposed brass playing was brawny and solid, and as good as it can be."
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The New York Times April 9, 2004
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"The Philharmonic is playing better than I have ever heard it play....
"Mr. Maazel [is] a born Straussian, fully idiomatic and with the myriad specific insights he brings to nearly all music fully integrated into a compelling interpretation. And, by the way, he proved once again that the best conductors know how to make Avery Fisher Hall into the best-sounding concert space in New York City....
"Mr. Maazel launched into an impassioned account of the "Meistersinger" Prelude, which, for all its polish, breathed with hearty Nuremberg good feeling. He capped this off with the glittering "Lohengrin" Prelude to Act III. The audience, as most audiences have been at all these concerts, left buzzing with pleasure....
"Mr. Maazel is ... a superb Bruckner conductor. To my taste, executionally but also interpretively, his account of the Bruckner Seventh was about as good as Bruckner conducting gets."
John Rockwell
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The New York Times February 18, 2004
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"[Maazel] had the orchestra sounding in top form: the brass in particular played as a sleek and unified phalanx and the strings spun smooth and seamless webs out of Wagner's inextinguishable melody Mr. Maazel's interpretations were most convincing in 'Tannhuser' as well as in two encores the preludes to Act I of 'Meistersinger' and Act III of 'Lohengrin' music that lends itself to his exacting vision, his gift for textural clarity and his virtuoso baton technique."
Jeremy Eichler
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The New York Times December 28, 2003
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"Lorin Maazel and the players deserve accolades for starting the subscription season in September with an involving performance of an ambitious new symphony by Stephen Hartke, one of America's best composers."
Anthony Tommasini
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The New York Observer October 15, 2003
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"I have attended a number of Philharmonic concerts this season and, under Lorin Maazel's Mephistophelean baton, the orchestra has never sounded more exciting. Mr. Maazel may not be a pin-up whippersnapper in the mold of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Esa-Pekka Salonen, but not even the feverish Finn can match this veteran maestro at revving the hoariest works vividly into the present tense. Mr. Maazel likes to conduct without a score, and his command over these world-class musicians is breathtaking. World-class, edge-of-the-seat ensemble playing is the result."
Charles Michener
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The New York Sun October 13, 2003
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"This performance [of Debussy's Ibria] was insistent, forward-moving — and fantastically accurate.... Mr. Maazel gave us unluxuriating Debussy, to which some object, but which, in my view, is refreshing. So, this was just another routine subscription concert at Avery Fisher Hall. I sometimes wonder whether New Yorkers realize just how good they have it."
Jay Nordlinger
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Classicstoday.com October 2, 2003
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"Berlioz called [Romo et Juliette] a "dramatic symphony." Whatever that may be, it's a work of limitless imagination, and Lorin Maazel and the New York Philharmonic played it to the hilt Thursday night
"Maazel is an accomplished Berlioz conductor and he presented the one-and-a-half hour-plus work without an intermission, leading without a score. He had his well-drilled orchestra playing at the top of its form, with gorgeous wind solos, precise strings, and powerful, noble brass."
Dan Davis
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New York Magazine September 29, 2003
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"The conductor, after just one year as the orchestra's chief, has the musicians playing at the top of their game."
Peter G. Davis
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The New York Times September 26, 2003
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"In the Strauss and Stravinsky works, Mr. Maazel was less circumspect. Both are scores he has conducted frequently and recorded, and like many of the works in his core repertory, they have become canvases on which he paints pictures of his own. That's the point of interpretation, of course, and whatever else one might say about Mr. Maazel's conducting, it is rarely bland or uninflected."
Allan Kozinn
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The New York Observer September 25, 2003
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"Then the heavens opened: Maestro Maazel, with a showman's flourish, pulled back the curtain on one of Mahler's most resplendent extravaganzas. Not since the heyday of Herbert von Karajan in Berlin have I heard an orchestra so responsive to a conductor's iron-clad will the musicians seemed to revel in the bright, hard acoustics to the point where you could practically see your face in the gleam of the brass."
Charles Michener
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The New York Sun September 22, 2003
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"This is a piece [Mahler's Fifth Symphony] close to Mr. Maazel's heart, and baton, and he executed it superbly. The listener had the feeling of being in masterly hands, allowing him simply to take the measure of the work itself Mr. Maazel gave us a tight, disciplined, surefooted Mahler Fifth. It was unsentimental, unneurotic, un-Bernsteinian. This was a Mahler Fifth shed of mental, emotional, and musical baggage. Only the good stuff — the true stuff — remained. This is the kind of performance the Mahler Fifth deserves."
Jay Nordlinger
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The Star-Ledger September 20, 2003
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"Maazel and his orchestra were astonishingly virtuosic. Conducting without a score, Maazel was precision incarnate, with a tensile strength to his rhythmic grip."
Bradley Bamberger
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