Baltimore Sun: P-CE's "Soul-Touching Music"

The Baltimore Sun has followed up its preview with due diligence and published its review of the Post-Classical Ensemble's performance of Gustav Mahler's "Der Abschied" (Farewell) from Song of the Earth and the premiere of a piece by Zhou Long inspired by Mahler.

Said The Sun's Tim Smith :

The D.C.-based Post-Classical Ensemble is all about new things, and new light on old things. Friday night at the Clarice Smith Center, those two motivations came together for a fascinating exploration of Der Abschied (The Farewell), the last movement from The Song of the Earth, Gustav Mahler's indelible reflection on mortality and the comforting continuity of nature.

Click on The Baltimore Sun logo to read the full review (Friday, March 15, 2007):

Washington Post: P-CE "Revelatory Performance"

The Washington Post called the Post-Classical Ensemble's performance last Friday "a revelatory performance."

Further, The Post said:

The Post-Classical Ensemble may be the most thought-provoking music group in town. It's certainly one of the most innovative, using its concerts as laboratories for musical thought experiments. Often focusing on a single piece -- or even a single movement from a single piece -- the group probes a work's cultural "back story," pulling away layer after layer of context to expose its innermost core.

Click on The Washington Post logo to read the full review (Monday, March 19, 2007; Page C05):

Baltimore Sun: P-CE's "Music of Poetry"

The Baltimore Sun previews the Post-Classical Ensemble's performance of Gustav Mahler's "Der Abschied" (Farewell) from Song of the Earth and the premiere of a piece by Zhou Long inspired by Mahler.

Said The Sun's Tim Smith :

Music just doesn't get more profound than this.

Click on The Baltimore Sun logo to read the full review (Friday, March 15, 2007):

Gramophone: P-CE's DVD a "Vivid New Reading"

The upcoming April 2007 issue of Gramophone contains a review by Philip Kennicott of the DVD release by Naxos' of The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) and The River, with a new recording of Virgil Thomson's musical score by Washington's own Post-Classical Ensemble.

Dallas Morning News: P-CE DVD "Smartly Played"

The Dallas Morning News has reviewed Naxos' re-issue of Pare Lorentz's 1930s classics The Plow That Broke the Plain and The River -- with soundtracks re-recorded by the Post-Classical Ensemble (P-CE).

It's a joy to hear Thomson's agreeably flinty music in up-to-date sonics, smartly played by the Washington, D.C.-based Post-Classical Ensemble, under conductor Angel Gil-Ordóñez. Thomson allows himself brief moments of gnarly mood music, but otherwise the score is a nonstop medley of marches, hymns, folk songs and what the composer himself called "darn-fool ditties," in harmonizations as spare as Lorentz's Dust Bowl scenes.

Click on the Dallas Morning Herald logo to read the full story: