Basel Chamber Orchestra / Weber, Mendelssohn and Berlioz
"Much-loved and familiar though all these works may be, each was performed in the freshest possible way. The string playing was daring and virtuosic. Intonation faltered occasionally in the Mendelssohn, but it was always responsive to McCreesh's committed direction."
The Guardian, February 2008
Gabrieli Consort and Players / 'The Road to Paradise' on Deutsche Grammophon
"As always, the Gabrieli Consort's singing is of the highest quality."
The Financial Times, June 2007
"There are riches here, superbly sung by the Gabrielis."
Sunday Times, June 2007
Gabrieli Consort and Players / Handel Acis and Galatea
"Handel conceived this work for a tiny group of singers plus a small ensemble, and this was how Paul McCreesh and the excellent Gabrieli Consort presented it… Ninety minutes never passed so fast."
The Independent, May 2007
"McCreesh and his players kept the score light on its feet."
The Guardian, May 2007
Gabrieli Consort and Players / Haydn's The Creation at Barbican Hall
"Is The Creation really Haydn's masterpiece? String quartet lovers might disagree; so might anyone who has heard a mediocre performance. However, Paul McCreesh's performance with his Gabrielli Consort and Players was extraordinary... McCreesh had tweaked the clunkier parts of the text slightly, just as Haydn probably would have, had he had better English... McCreesh's upcoming studio recording is something anyone who has ever doubted this piece should listen out for."
The Guardian, 31 October 2006
"McCreesh has also taken the bold step of reassessing the English libretto...McCreesh has kept the spirit of the original but fine-tuned it to go better with the notes. It certainly enabled his soloists for this performance to convey the sense of awe and drama in Haydn's music... The massed choral voices were incisive, too, while the vast orchestra made an impressive sound... but McCreesh's bold, demonstrative conductive style kept everything together and conveyed the dramatic sweep and ever-freshed joyousness of Haydn's masterpiece."
The Telegraph, 31 October 2006
Gabrieli Consort and Players / Mozart Symphonies at London's Mostly Mozart Festival
"…Paul McCreesh and his period-instrument Gabrieli Consort & Players lavished as much care upon it as if it had been a late masterpiece ... so packed with intense nuance that, for once, one welcomed the taking of every possible repeat…"
The Independent, 19 June 2006
Gabrieli Consort and Players / Mozart C Minor Mass
"Paul McCreesh's new recording of Mozart's unfinished C minor Mass matches Gardiner..Christie..and Hogwood in exhilaration and sensitivity, and arguably surpasses all-comers in the crucial choice of female soloists."
The Daily Telegraph, January 2006
"Paul McCreesh and his forces provide a fine sense of vigour and sensitivity, revealing the music's power and constant ingenuity, as well as its many passages marked by a sense of uncertainty…"
BBC Music Magazine, December 2005
McCreesh propels his period-instrument band and incisive choir with feverish energy. There's never a dull moment. Yet he also has the imagination and control to conjure up delectable oases of calm…"
The Times, October 2004
Mozarteum Orchestra at the Salzburg Festival / Mozart and Mendelssohn
"...He has the Mozarteum Orchestra ... confidently under control; his entire body is employed in his extrovert, almost dance-like, conducting style..."
Kronenzeitung, 30th August 2005
"...McCreesh almost literally "jumped in" for the indisposed Ivor Bolton at the last of the Mozarteum Orchestra's Mozart matinee: enthusiastic, dynamic and spirited. ...He dazzled the audience with delicately phrased Mozart and very well played Mendelssohn..."
DrehPunktKultur, 29th August 2005
Gabrieli Consort and Players / Gluck Paride ed Elena on Deutsche Grammophon
“…at the Proms, Paul McCreesh’s Gabrielli Consort and Players will present Purcell’s The Fairy Queen. Should be terrific, though will it pip their own new CD release, Gluck’s opera Paride ed Elena? That’s doubtful: Gluck’s retelling of Paris and Helen’s pathway to love features Magdalena Kozená, stupendously eloquent as the Trojan prince reduced to jelly by the beauty of Sparta’s queen. And Susan Gritton’s reluctant Helen is almost her equal in purity of pitch and tone. McCreesh’s forces lend spirited support in a delightful score that should be much better known.”
The Times, 1 July 2005
“Setting the seal on a magnificent issue is McCreesh’s thrilling conducting and the playing of his Gabrilei Consort."
The Sunday Times, 15 May 2005
Beethoven Orchestra / Schubert and Haydn
“…The British conductor Paul McCreesh, who conducted all four concerts of this series of works by Mendelssohn, Schubert and Haydn, knows how to motivate the musicians: the music sparkles, has tempo, excitement and humour. McCreesh’s background in the early music scene, an invaluable influence on the classical and romantic repertoire, shows up in the vitality of his interpretation.
The influence of nature is not as obvious in Schubert’s fifth symphony. The nineteen-year-old composed the piece for an amateur orchestra. Accordingly, the texture is quite sparse, often reminiscent of Mozart. McCreesh underlines the provenance of the piece by using a minimum of players in the string section. Even though they cannot play as fully here as in the Mendelssohn Overture, the classical balance of the chamber orchestra spoke for itself.
The Haydn was once again colourful; McCreesh had chosen the late Symphony no.99 in E flat major, written for the London concert public. McCreesh, who conducts without a baton, was attentive to every detail of the score and accorded as much suspense to the slow introduction as he did depth to the adagio. The horns graced the extremely lively finale with elegant flourishes. The audience of this practically sold-out concert reacted with enormous applause."
General-Anzeiger, 28 June 2005
Musikkollegium Winterthur / Gluck, Mozart and Beethoven
“…a feast for every ear … the conductor shaped the orchestra’s dynamics with marvelous skill … [Beethoven’s] Fourth Symphony was full of virtuosity in which the orchestra really reached its limits and - mobilised by an excess of energy - made the piece sound challenging, refreshing and revolutionarily new…"
Neue Züricher Zeitung, 10 June 2005
Israel Camerata / Dvorák, Serly, Haydn
“McCreesh’s elegant conducting…was sheer pleasure to watch… McCreesh’s graceful leadership unearthed a marvelous array of colors from the responsive players.”
Jerusalem Post, 10 January 2005
Gabrieli Consort and Players / Biber Requiem / DG-Archiv 00289 474 7142
“…a typically thoughtful tribute from Paul McCreesh and his Gabrieli singers and instrumentalists, recorded in the gently resonant acoustic of Tonbridge School Chapel in July this year. Typically, though, McCreesh has done much more than just perform two of Biber’s choral works and put them together on a disc. This is another of the Gabrieli Consort’s careful reconstructions, which aim to place the music in an authentic historical context. …McCreesh’s perfectly tended performance, with the instrumental interludes carefully considered and placed, makes [the Mass in B flat] into a work of real beauty.’
The Guardian, 10 December 2004
“The Mass and Requiem recorded here…make aa rewarding coupling in a thematic programme decised with characteristic flair by McCreesh… A fascinating issue.
The Sunday Times, 5 December 2004
Gabrieli Consort and Players / Handel Belshazzar
“Paul McCreesh and his Gabrieli Consort and Players proved valiant champions of Handel’s epic score, offering resolute playing and bold singing in the choruses.”
Independent on Sunday, 19 December 2004
“…[Belshazzar’s] less familiar pleasures came up the more freshly in this latest revival by the Gabrieli Consort and Players, under their director Paul McCreesh, in the renewed splendours of Christ Church, Spitalfields… Though relatively restrained in orchestration, the string writing is surely among the most variously textured Handel ever achieved, and the resonance, lilt and shine McCreesh’s players brought to it was a delight.”
The Independent, 22 December 2004
“…If the church had received a thorough overhaul, that was nothing to what Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort & Players did for the music, excavating its foundations, scrubbing its textures, chiselling its rhythms and polishing its surfaces, until the work sounds like a new piece…There is no doubting the vigour with which the music leaps off the page. Chorus and orchestra were on tip-top form. The solo singers made every character come alive…”
Financial Times, 17 December 2004
“…Both composer and conductor demanded equal virtuosity from the chorus as from the soloists. And the Gabrieli Consort swept all before them, in highly charged yet supple part-writing, as McCreesh propelled plot and counter-plot forward.”
The Times, 15 December 2004
“…The Gabrieli Consort and Players’ performance of Handel’s oratorio Belshazzar brought this lascivious story to vivid operatic life, conducted with infectious energy by Paul McCreesh. Belshazzar is one of the least familiar of Handel’s late oratorios, but the Gabrielis made a compelling case for the piece, revealing some of the composer’s most moving and dramatic music… But the real achievement was McCreesh’s. He paced the three-hour work with fluidity and insight. The dramatic engine of the performance was the Gabrieli players’ sensitivity in the works’ long accompanied recitatives, Handel’s most effective device, especially in Bickley’s long concluding narration. The pastoral bliss of the final chorus was a revelation of the Gabrieli singers’ subtlety and the endless invention of Handel’s music.’
The Guardian, 16 December 2004
Gabrieli Consort and Players / Mozart Mass in C minor
“…the severe splendour of the marmoreal, Baroque-style choruses, as declaimed by the Gabrieli Consort and finely paced by McCreesh. And, among the solo items that revert to the Salzburg rococo manner of Mozart’s earlier masses – once naughtily described by Stravinsky as “operatic sweets of sin” – Tilling came into her own in the “Et incarnatus est”, phrasing with exquisite purity and poise.”
The Independent, 27 October 2004
“…The ear was well ravished, too, as Paul McCreesh’s Gabrieli Consort and Players blazed through Mozart’s incomplete but still epic Mass in C minor. McCreesh propels his period-instrument band and incisive choir with feverish energy. There’s never a dull moment. Yet he also has the imagination and control to conjure up delectable oases of calm, none more striking here than at the heart of the sublime Qui Tollis, which Mozart surely wrote with his mind full of Bach.”
The Times, 22 October 2004
Britten-Pears Young Artists / Mozart Zaide
“…The sympathetic handling of phrasing and dynamics by conductor Paul McCreesh and guest teacher Ann Murray helped the young singers bring a delightful freshness to the arias…”
The Guardian, 29 June 2004
“…the Britten-Pears Orchestra, conducted by Paul McCreesh, played stylishly, with full string sound and especially good natural horns and oboe…”
The Sunday Telegraph, 4 July 2004
Gabrieli Consort and Players / Handel Saul on Deutsche Grammophon
Critics’ Highlights of 2004 in The Guardian and BBC Music Magazine.
“…This is the first serious challenge to John Eliot Gardiner’s 1989 performance … The result is comparably overwhelming.”
The Guardian , 21 December 2004
“…the results are equally vivid, whether in the brazen, celebratory opening choruses, the Aeschylean “Envy, Eldest born of Hell”, or the cathartic elegy. A magnificent set, to rank alongside McCreesh’s Theodora and Solomon.”
The Daily Telegraph, 29 May 2004
“…The special strengths of Paul McCreesh’s performance here lie in the drama and the urgency he brings to the work, the keen sense of character he imparts to the music, the vigorous pacing that carries the action forward with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy … I found this a gripping and very inspiriting performance…”
Gramophone, June 2004
“…McCreesh confronts the work with his usual feeling for colour and with great fluidity and richness of contrasts in the dramatic interaction … intense Handel … fluid and natural … This version is the most recommendable of the moment, probably the most well rounded recording of the work currently available…”
Scherzo, May 2004
“…McCreesh conjures a performance of unusual power and glory … McCreesh keeps a level head about speeds and general deportment; the result is one of the most roundly satisfying Handel oratorio performances for some time…”
The Times, 5 March 2004
“…This … makes the strongest possible case for Handel’s masterpiece. …McCreesh … has an exemplary track record is this repertoire…”
Classical CD of the Week, The Sunday Times, 7 March 2004
“…the performance of Saul under McCreesh is arguably the finest available … a sumptuous affair … Paul McCreesh giving the score the mixture of spacious grandeur and sharp-edged drama it really demands.”
The Guardian, 26 March 2004
“…In his fourth Handel oratorio recording, Paul McCreesh is at his most accomplished by far and the necessary gravitas exerts its authority admirably…”
Répertoire, March 2004
“…All is brilliantly captured in this new recording under Paul McCreesh. The richness of Handel’s scoring … is superbly realised and the wide emotional range of the drama is quite thrilling…”
Evening Standard, March 2004
Komische Oper / Handel Alcina
“…From the podium, Paul McCreesh occupied himself with the orchestral support, demonstrating the work’s full dynamic spectrum…”
Scherzo, April 2004
“…Best of all was Paul McCreesh’s sensitive handling of Handel’s magnificent score. The characters gained musically useful contours and the orchestra has, in fact, not forgotten how to play quietly…”
Die Welt, March 2004
“…McCreesh, meanwhile, achieved an outstanding result: the orchestra, sounding as if transformed, was lead by the enthusiasm of the conductor into a world of baroque effects and there, in the most unusual colours, set about accompanying the many stylish arias…”
Märkische Allgemeine, March 2004
“…All the turmoil of love, the disguises and magic were spirited alive musically under Paul McCreesh…”
Märkische Oder Zeitung, March 2004
“…His musical conception is precise, clear and above all full of spirit…”
NDR-Kultur, March 2004
Gabrieli Consort and Players / Mozart Requiem
“…This was the consort’s first real venture into Classical territory. If the hard-edged rasp of the bassoon in the opening chorus wasn’t what we were used to, then that set the tone for the performance. McCreesh’s propulsive speeds and the orchestra’s clear, astringent sound erased any lingering thoughts of old-fashioned choral society trudges…”
The Guardian, 6 February 2004
Gabrieli Consort and Players / Gluck Paride ed Elena
“…one of the most thrilling evenings I have spent in the theatre in many years … a conductor of genius … the music breathed with a naturalness that almost no purveyors of authenticity on period instruments are willing to allow, and the shape of each act emerged with satisfying inevitability…”
The Spectator, 1 November 2003
“…one of the happiest evenings of the operatic year…”
Opera, December 2003
“…The Gabrieli Players played with tremendous verve and unanimity, and Paul McCreesh made a fluent and supple conductor.”
The Daily Telegraph, 23 October 2003
“…McCreesh’s direction was impeccably placed, electing to emphasise classical restraint rather than the proto-Romantic histrionics that so inspired Berlioz”
Evening Standard, 23 October 2003
“…this event was truly one to savour … this account again demonstrated how very good his [McCreesh’s] instinct is for the wider arc of an opera … playing of such consummate style and delicious texture…
The Independent on Sunday, 26 October 2003
Gabrieli Consort and Players / Music for the Duke of Lerma Archiv 471 694 – 2
“…the latest in a string of superb recordings by Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort. Everything comes together magnificently … Music for the Duke of Lerma deserves a hundred stars…”
Goldberg, March 2003
Royal Danish Opera / Mozart Die Zauberflöte
“…The new conductor Paul McCreesh puts focus on the light colours, not at least thanks to his playfully light organic tempi. He is an absolutely enormous benefit to this performance of the Magic Flute. The orchestra sounds seductively light, tender and sweet and the articulation is very delicate. It could not possibly be more charmingly Mozart…”
Politiken, August 2003
“…The new man in the pit, Paul McCreesh, used the opportunity to recreate The Magic Flute in a lighter and more well defined light with more emphasis on the color of the wind instruments, and with great effect. McCreesh started the evening with a very intense overture and earned the first of many a heart felt applause. People had clearly come to enjoy a good evening in the Royal Opera House and the mutual inspiration between the hall and the stage continued to blossom the whole evening…”
Jyllands Posten, August 2003
Gabrieli Consort and Players at the BBC Proms / Handel Saul
“…McCreesh … was alive to the score’s every emotional shift, from the grand ceremonials with which it opens to the shattering grief at its close. He was also strong on the flashes of wit that throw the central drama into sharper relief … Overall, this was an outstanding achievement…”
The Guardian, August 2003
“…Paul McCreesh kept a firm grip on style and pacing, busily urging his singers and players through a musically intelligent reading…”
The Daily Telegraph, August 2003
“Handel’s Saul is ostensibly about sectarian war, but its real subject is common old human frailty. Paul McCreesh and the excellent Gabrieli Consort and Players, whose recording is imminent, gave a colourful, vigorous and deeply moving reading of the work.”
Evening Standard, 26 August, 2003
Welsh National Opera / Handel Jephtha
“…Paul McCreesh’s conducting of this rich and thrilling score was full of vitality, colour and fire – no thin-blooded authentic preciousness here…”
The Daily Telegraph, 27 May 2003
“…Musically, this is a great WNO night. Paul McCreesh, used to directing his own hand-picked period instrumentalists in Handel, gets wonderfully alert and stylish playing from the company’s orchestra, and its famed chorus revels in the glories Handel composed for massed voices…”
The Times, 1 June 2003
“…It’s a gorgeous, powerful, clever production; played with brio by WNO’s orchestra and winningly conducted by Paul McCreesh…”
The Independent on Sunday, 25 May 2003
“…Paul McCreesh, better known for conducting Baroque bands with refined art, draws a stirring performance … from the WNO’s unregenerately modern orchestra...”
The Financial Times. 28 May 2003
Gabrieli Players / Bach St Matthew Passion on Deutsche Grammophon
“…the results are amazing. Indeed, everything about this recording is wonderful: the instrumental playing, McCreesh’s supple and sensitive direction; and a superb octet of soloists … the crisp sound of the Gabrieli Consort takes on a nimbus of majesty.”
The Times, 12 April 2003
“The dramatic impact of this unique version of the St Matthew Passion is astonishing, thanks not only to the incisiveness of the performance under Paul McCreesh, but to the vivid immediacy of the recorded sound, with words exceptionally clear…”
The Guardian, 4 April 2003
“…a compelling directorial vision, a dramatically cohesive whole which stands alone without the need for slogan… McCreesh’s account has an unremitting singularity of purpose … A memorable and vitally conceived new account.”
Gramophone, May 2003
Deutsche Symphonie Orchester Berlin and Andreas Scholl / Haydn, Bach, Handel and Mozart
“…He is passionate about all kinds of music and gave a performance of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony as it has never been heard before … full of life, temperamental and free. The molto allegro of the final movement shot forth with the expected aggressive accelerandos, so much so that one feared the orchestra would explode and not be able to stand by the end of it … he is a poet with the baton: understanding and forceful at the same time…”
Berliner Morgenpost, December 2002
Gabrieli Consort and Players / Bach Christmas Oratorio
“…Paul McCreesh is a past master at setting both mood and pace in baroque music such as this ... he has the knack of giving impetus to what he is conducting without making it sound rushed. There was rhythmic propulsion, lilt and buoyancy...“
The Daily Telegraph, December 2002
Gabrieli Consort and Players / Handel Solomon on Deutsche Grammophon
“…It’s hard to imagine anyone conducting or playing it better than Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort and Players. McCreesh gets right to the heart of its pomp and circumstance, its opulent pageantry, its sudden swerves into darkness (the judgement scene is very tense) and its moments of eroticism and lyricism…”
The Guardian, April 2001
Voted one of the TOP 100 Conductor’s of the 20th Century
“…McCreesh's great and defining gift is a startling ability to marry erudition and imagination to revelatory effect …. even greater things can be expected…”
Classic CD Magazine