KUSC FM

(USA)

"The VIEW FROM OLYMPUS album suggests that John Psathas is one of the most exciting composers working anywhere today. This is vital, wholly original, instantly appealing, obviously important music."

It really is a stunningly fine album -- unarguably great music, thrillingly played, recorded and packaged. (And this from someone who hears -- or at very least sees -- everything.) 

Jim Svejda KUSC FM (USA)

RADIO NEW zEALAND

National Radio Nine to Noon

“He’s a composer who builds everything around the rhythm. He’s a composer who builds around percussion and this recording is so much energy, so much alive..”

“The saxophone playing on this is just absolutely sublime. And of course the NZSO..”

“Its an album to me that I’m going to keep living with because every time I put it on there’s something new..”

“Classical music has a sense of being quite staid, quite conservative, whereas this recording to me just screams at you, moves so well and yet is quite reflective at moment...”

“You’ve got this incredible sax and percussion that winds through it.. I mean I’m just stunned..”

“Beautiful production from Rattle records..”

Manu Taylor & Eva Radich Nine To Noon

Dominion Post

Brilliantly written.. a masterly integration of piano, strings and percussion..

The results are dramatic and convincing representations of some magnificent playing.

John Button DOMINION POST

NZ Listener

This landmark issue sticks its neck out and takes imaginative risks. It will deservedly sell like hotcakes.

Ian Dando NZ LISTENER

New Zealand Herald

read the full review

Feat worthy of an Olympian

The same small'n'savvy Auckland company who gave us the Wellington composer's Rhythm Spike album now have the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra play some of the man's big scores…

There are moments in View from Olympus, where the frenzy of the wine-crazed Maenads seems to know no bounds. Balancing these, American saxophonist Joshua Redman blows it cool and velvety in Omnifenix, Psathas' first Saxophone concerto...

But even here, when the tempo picks up, expertly propelled by the biggest band in the land under Marc Taddei, the delirium is such that even Lance Philips' drumkit cadenza seems an oasis of measured calm...

The colours in View from Olympus spill and radiate from the first page where Michael Houstoun's piano and Pedro Carneiro's xylophone twinkle in a Stravinskian grotto...

The reverberant slow movement, dedicated to the composer's children, is a shimmering wonder; a three-minute encore, Fragments like a jazzy tribute to a Satie Gnossienne...

The recording does every shift of mood and sound the fullest justice.

William Dart NZ Herald

Auckland Metro

"Star Turn"

“In classical music terms, this is The Lord of the Rings”

Gilbert Wong Metro