Bruckner Cycle

»I find Roth’s direction of the score is sure-footed. [...] his tempo choices seem consistently sensible and he conducts the music with the intelligence that I’d expect from a conductor with his perceptive pedigree. In realising his conception of Bruckner’s music, he is supported by very fine playing from the Gürzenich-Orchester. Finally, the Myrios recorded sound is excellent in every respect.« – John Quinn

»The natural, unforced tread of the first movement’s second subject is a particular delight, as is Roth’s pleasingly easeful way with the slow movement and the late climax to which it naturally builds.« – Richard Osborne

»No Cologne orchestra director, not even Günter Wand and Marek Janowski, has shaped the Gürzenich Orchestra in such a record-breaking way as Roth. The Schumann symphonies: Departures into wild youthfulness. And now the Bruckner symphonies: world champion in conception, sense of style and degree of maturity. Roth recently recorded the Fourth in the rarely performed original version. Hardly any other German orchestra currently plays it with such brilliance.« – Wolfram Goertz

»Roth leads a compelling account – superbly played and recorded, bloom and lucidity happily married and sporting a wide dynamic range(...).« – Colin Anderson

»Roth creates the right mood with the Gürzenich Orchestra right from the start and celebrates the symphony on the one hand opulently in the tutti and at the same time with an adept attention to detail in the entire architecture. His profound understanding of Bruckner's work provides the listener with an almost traumatic-sounding andante. The scherzo (here in the original version) is lively, powerful and exciting to the last note. The excellently performing Gürzenich Orchestra unfolds all its virtuosity and enormous inventiveness in the allegro moderato.« – Kai Germann

»The Gürzenich Orchestra from Cologne plays the Fourth Symphony under chief conductor François-Xavier Roth with tension, contrast and without pathos. Thus Bruckner’s Romantic gains immediacy and secularity. The wistful slow sections in the first movement are particularly moving, on a path that Roth clearly sets out as a path from doubt to powerful self-confidence.« – Remy Franck

«Despite all the technical challenges, the Gürzenich Orchestra achieves a balanced overall vision that avoids too sharp breaks. Roth breaks down the orchestral sound in high transparency of the voices, the many instrumentation finesses profit from the chamber-musical togetherness.« – Dr. Ingobert Waltenberger

»The sombre, Andante march movement is steadily paced without undue haste and once again the horns provide sterling service, blip-free; its elegiac, resigned mood is maintained by dynamic restraint and minimal vibrato from the cellos iterating the main theme. I do like the way Roth cranks up the volume and tension for the conclusion of this otherwise gentle movement, transforming it into something much grander and imposing, with a superb brass contribution.« – Ralph Moore 

»This is the second in an ongoing series of Bruckner symphonies from Roth and the Gürzenich-Orchester, which delivers top-notch playing in the transparent textures favored naturally enough by Roth; he is better known as a historical-instrument specialist. Roth is emerging as one of the hot conductors of the day, and here, with a rather deliberate, detailed reading of the Fourth, he penetrates the work's creative origins.« – James Manheim

Record of the week: »(...) an impressively airy sound.« – Andrew McGregor