Joel Sandelson

Press

• Bremen Philharmonic

  Bremen, Germany

  Feb 2024

  • Under the gripping, agile conducting of Joel Sandelson, it was presented (especially by the strongly challenged strings) in an entertainingly swinging, taut pulsating manner and with proper verve.

    • Klassik begeistert
    • 04 February 2024

• YCA Award Winners' Concert

  Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Felsenreitschule

  Aug 2022

  • After the interval, Joel Sandelson not only coordinated the large instrumentation required by Rachmaninov for his Second Symphony with great percussion skills, he also shaped this almost hour-long journey of a masterfully varied, basically simple theme through often extreme emotional worlds, coherent and overwhelmingly colourful. It was magnificent how he repeatedly chiseled glowing drama out of the stream of beautiful melancholy tones, in the darkly grounded scherzo movement and in the finale, whose supposedly superficially noisy pathos built a bridge to Shostakovich's gaudy irony.

    • Dre Punkt Kultur
    • 27 August 2022

• La Orquesta de Valencia

  Queen Sofia Palace of Arts, Valencia

  Jun 2022

  • After an interval, essential to allow us to recover from the emotion of Radulović's performance, the young Sandelson conducted a passionate version of S. Rachmaninov's Symphony No. 2 in E minor, op.27. The orchestral sound achieved was fabulous. The strings achieved a burnished and dark fullness, well combined with the winds, and an intensity was maintained that did not seem to falter throughout the work. The director's rubato, far from being extreme, was totally convincing. This fluid approach, his control of rubato, and the sensitivity he displayed to different colors, combined to produce a performance that kept audiences hooked from the first bar to the last.

    • Docenotas
    • 20 June 2022

• Herbert von Karajan Young Conductors Award

  Salzburger Festspiele

  Aug 2021

  • Joel Sandelson - who was chosen as this year's winner by the jury on Monday evening - hung his hat much higher on the final day in the name of genius loci. He chose Mozart's "Linz Symphony" as his main work, a showpiece in the best sense of the word. This also tempts one to great gestures, heightened emotion, of which the conductor knew how to give a lot. Which does not mean that he lacked precision. But if one takes Beethoven's introductory "Coriolan" overture and the interpretation of Mozart's symphony as examples, a certain tendency towards vivid drawing and emotional exuberance became apparent. This suited Beethoven and his massive overture portrait of the Roman patrician and general with a stubbornly imperious attitude, chiselled out of an earthy C minor. The Camerata Salzburg played it out in convincing sound-image splendour.

    • Salzburger Nachrichten
    • 09 August 2021