"If taste in music-making can pass from one generation to another, that certainly seems to have happened with conductor Michael Stern. Yo-Yo Ma said of the conductor’s father, violinist Isaac Stern, that he left 'no tone unsterned.' Similarly, Michael Stern’s Kansas City Symphony is defined by its elegant and beautiful tone, splendidly adapted to the character of the music it plays... Michael Stern’s Ralph Vaughan Williams ranks with that of the best English conductors... We should be thankful to have a fine digital recording of the complete suite from Vaughan Williams’s incidental music for Aristophanes’s The Wasps... Reference Recordings’ sound engineering on this CD is superb. It has space, depth, and beautiful balance...a highly worthwhile disc. Any lover of English orchestral music will be very satisfied with it..." — Dave Saemann, Fanfare
Labels: Elgar and Vaughan Williams, Fanfare Magazine, Kansas City Symphony, Review