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.
