**** Excellent Album

Hi-Fi News Album Choice

“This third album from the Cleveland Orchestra's own label maintains the superlative technical standards of the first two – if there are more immaculate orchestral recordings being made right now, I've yet to hear them… Yefim Bronfman is the coolly self-effacing soloist in Schnittke's 1979 concerto, unifying its disparate Baroque, Romantic and modernist-industrial idioms with (to me) revelatory assurance. “

“A long-standing orchestra/conductor team at their peak.” *****

"... Welser-Möst and the Clevelanders may have just set a new standard for me in Prokofiev’s Symphony No 2...."

“… If the programme appeals, this exceptionally well-played, luxuriously packaged own-label release should prove much more than a souvenir.”

“… In March 2020 … neither Yefim Bronfman nor the orchestra have ever played the work [Schnittke’s Concerto for Piano & Strings]. But enforced furlough allowed them to learn new repertoire and they livestreamed three performances in October that year … The result is a searing experience, the players audibly gripped and maintaining their hold on listeners until the final notes have died away …”

“You’ve got to hand it to the Cleveland Orchestra: their latest release, which pairs pieces by Alfred Schnittke and Sergei Prokofiev, certainly has a niche quality. Surely neither work on it – Schnittke’s 1979 Concerto for Piano and Strings or Prokofiev’s knotty 1925 Symphony no. 2 – lives anywhere near the musical mainstream. Yet, in their fundamental restlessness, irony, and lack of pretension, both scores sound remarkably timely. The Schnittke, for one, is a revelation. Just about 20 minutes long and not overtly virtuosic, it’s music of powerful contrasts of mood and sonority… It certainly is a treat to have Yefim Bronfman playing the solo part. The Russian pianist is firmly in his element throughout, delivering a mix of muscular purpose — the keyboard part never wants for presence … The strings of the Cleveland Orchestra and music director Franz Welser-Möst deliver an account of the orchestral writing that’s plenty intense — the music’s violent explosions don’t hold back … Many of these same qualities are also evident in their reading of Prokofiev’s Second Symphony… if you’re looking for instrumental music that grapples with tumultuous events, times, and circumstances, this may well be the disc for you.”