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OPERA REVIEW, 11 July 2008 --- The superb-sounding Bochum Symphony Orchestra, masterfully directed by Steven Sloane, was mostly seated on a stationary platform off to the left. As the audience glided forward and back, the music seemed to hover there in space. You passed through it like a force field.

About the Mahler cycle at the Philharmonie Essen:

WAZ, 26/4/2007 --- Perhaps there is no other piece by Gustav Mahler (...) which attains such immediacy, particularly when it is as skillfully balanced as by Steven Sloane, who illuminates so many facets of the work throughout. These tempo relations were just right (...). This transparency of voices, which created evocativeness, was just right. These colours and dynamic processes were just right. And above all, Sloane (...) is not too academically analytical; the music does not sound as if it has been taken out of the fridge.

RUHRNACHRICHTEN, 26/4/2007 --- The Bochum Symphony Orchestra managed to impress the sold-out house at the Essen Philharmonie so much that the audience had to take a moment to catch their breath. Then, the applause simply did not stop - for minutes. For Bochum's Orchestral Director Steven Sloane, this was one of those triumphant moments which bonded him with his musicians.

DER OPERNFREUND, 25/4/2007 --- For any Gustav Mahler fan who had the good fortune to be there, last night was pure adrenaline! What an exceptional conductor and what an orchestra! Yesterday evening, the Bochum Symphony gave a terrific performance of Mahler's "Resurrection Symphony" under their enormously gifted conductor Steven Sloane, proving to a sold-out house in the Neue Essener Philharmonie that they deserve to be counted amongst the most remarkable interpreters of Mahler of our time.

About Die Soldaten, opera by Bernd Alois Zimmermann, RuhrTriennale 2006:

OPERA NOW, January/February 2007 --- Steven Sloane rose to the superhuman challenges Zimmermann poses the conductor, his efforts much in evidence on the numerous screens required to communicate across such vast distance. Sloane controlled his enormous orchestra and satellite percussion batteries with a calm that belied the almost hopeless difficulty of this deliberate complex score. (...) The Triennale's staging was certainly a once-in-a-lifetime experience and undoubtedly a truly terrifying ride.

FAZ, 7/10/2006 --- Incidentally, this is one of the most remarkable qualities of this production: that the turbulences as well as the intimate scenes of the events on stage were subtly adjusted to the sound of the orchestra, as if the complex serial structure of the composition had to be visualised through an equally complex, formalistic production. In this respect, Steven Sloane has worked wonders in leading the highly motivated Bochumer Symphoniker. (...) the sound always remained transparent, of a subtle presence, almost as in chamber music.

SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG, 7&8/10/2006 --- The floridness of the orchestra sounds, which is often criticised, seems wondrously straightened here; even in moments of cumulative, deafening power, the sound characteristics, which Steven Sloane created, are transparent, well-balanced and have presence. Even when „Die Soldaten" remains a tour de force for singers, musicians and directors to this very day, the Bochumer Symphoniker treat the orchestra part as a matter of course in an astonishing way (...). This event is worth another journey to the Ruhr valley at the end of this year's Ruhrtriennale season.

DIE WELT, 7/10/2006 --- But the listener is not only captured by the optical maelstrom, he is also embedded in an acoustical event, mercilessly precise and still spurred on with a warm human touch by the Bochumer Symphoniker under the capable Steven Sloane. There is cembalo chirping in twelve-tone baroque, tender cantilenas for lost Fräuleins, brutally piled up clusters, with avantgarde jazz, surging organ and constantly new percussion attacks.

RHEINISCHE POST, 7/10/2006 --- But the star of the evening is Steven Sloane at the rostrum of the wonderfully disposed Bochumer Symphoniker - and not only because he can be seen on almost 30 monitors in the hall, so as to properly incorperate even a baritone standing 150 meters away. Indeed, Sloane conducts the enormous number of participants with such calm and composure that one cannot cease to be amazed, one is swept up in the effect. (...) Awaking from the dream and the nightmare at the end, the audience´s applause and exultation went on and on. An outstanding evening.

DAS OPERNGLAS, November 2006 --- "Die Soldaten" may have been the biggest challenge in the 87-year history of the Bochumer Symphoniker (...). Countless guest musicians had to be brought in to make up the more than 120-strong orchestra. The mere achievement of holding together this enormous apparatus, which extended into the side-aisles of the concert hall, deserves the highest praise. Conductor Steven Sloane competently mastered the task with the help of two assistants and technical resources. Zimmermann's "pluralistic current of time and experience" (...) became in this accurate rendition a surprisingly homogenous sound experience, which was instantaneously hair-raising.

OPERNWELT, November 2006 --- And yet another miracle can be reported from this haunting evening. It was performed by Steven Sloane and the Bochumer Symphoniker, who worked through Zimmermann´s score - a hybrid stratification of Bach Chorales, of free jazz and arias accompanied by harpsichord, of audiotape montages and eruptions of percussion - in two dozen rehearsals.
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NEW YORK TIMES, 10/4/2003 --- Mr. Sloane's vibrant, deftly paced account made much of the music's captivating qualities: plushly chromatic harmonic language; arching lyrical outpourings; rich and luminous orchestration; brash, angular and percussive flourishes to convey the ruthlessness of the conquering Roman forces.
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Foto: Christoph Fein
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Foto: Michael Grosler
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Foto: Christoph Fein