“Paul Anthony McRae’s conducting of the combined forces of the Pacific Symphony and the Pacific Chorale in Handel’s “Messiah” proved an eminently balanced and frequently moving performance at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Saturday.
McRae established the quality of his leadership with the first strains of the overture – clean and energetic, crisp and compelling. Throughout the entire oratorio, he drew ever-polished, dramatically attentive readings from the musicians.
“The minute Paul Anthony McRae walked on Friday night, you could hear the difference. For one thing, he had the orchestra playing extraordinarily well, with a virtuosity in the strings to make you sit up and take notice.
You heard it in the authority of the Faure, in the sculpted frame in which he set the concerto and in his surging performance of the Beethoven Fifth, which brought down the house. It was a stirring performance in the big classic style.
The strings had assurance, strength and beauty, and McRae, taking a brisk, almost brusque approach, made an often hackneyed score sound fresh. No mean feat where the Beethoven Fifth is concerned.”
“Some of us who grew up going to concerts by the Chicago, Philadelphia or Boston symphonies are as balky as mules about Brahms. If we don’t get that damask tone and that powerful surge of inimical undertow, we feel cheated — and we just don’t get it often nowadays.
When the Florida Philharmonic played Brahms’ First Symphony Tuesday night in Fort Lauderdale, under the direction of its former resident conductor, Paul Anthony McRae, this was the finest Brahms the group has played in my hearing.
Despite the hall’s dryness, the strings did a remarkably resilient job and produced a dusky, burnished, streaming sound and the majestic brass chorales were genuinely impressive. McRae conducted the symphony so that it had a spaciousness of development both cumulative and climactic.
The effect was not that of a sweeping impact with brilliance, but rather of a singing line varied and expanded as the symphony unfolded in grandeur.”
“A real surprise: superlative conducting and utterly beautiful sound – it’s hard to imagine a more perfect Pulcinella Suite.
The English Chamber Orchestra is a really marvelous group: beguiling solos and precision ensemble are normal for them. And here’s a conductor who puts them to use in the service of sheer sensual delight.
Long life to the conductor and many happy recordings!”
“When the Tenth Symphony was premiered, the year after Stalin’s death, all the bitterness, terror, and anguish exploded. Paul Anthony McRae’s interpretation Saturday night plunged into the dark, harrowing heart of this seminal work.
Seldom have I heard a darker, more brooding account of the sublime first movement (which rises to a series of orchestral screams, unique in orchestral music.) Even more impressive was McRae’s mastery of the elusive finale: the rambunctious gaiety was there, to be sure, but it was shadowed by tension and fear. "Is it OK for us to smile now?" the music seemed to be saying. "Yes", says Shostakovich, but watch your back.
The Greensboro Symphony Orchestra’s playing was nothing short of magnificent.”
“It takes a musician of extraordinary assurance and tremendous self-control to steer even the English Chamber Orchestra, with whom Paul Anthony McRae, a British born American trained conductor, was making his debut through Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite.
But McRae, helped by his clear-cut though by no means understated style, managed it well, giving us a characterful and well-disciplined performance of Respighi’s decadently orchestrated pastiche The Birds (Gli Uccelli) into the bargain.”