Musica Viva NY press reviews

END OF THE WAR TO END ALL WARS - November 11, 2018

Oberon’s Grove, November 12, 2018

“Sunday November 11th, 2018 – This evening, at All Souls Church,  Musica Viva NY  and the  New Orchestra of Washington  marked the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I with a beautiful and deeply moving program. The acoustic at All Souls is a marvel: voices fill the air with effortlessly wonderful sound, and experiencing Maurice Ravel’s  Le Tombeau de Couperin  there gave me the sensation of sitting among the musicians. This immediacy gave the entire program a feeling of intense involvement.”

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SUNRISE IN THE CITY - May 20, 2018

Vocal Power, Vocal Glory
Harry Rolnick, ConcertoNet.com, May 21, 2018

“Musica Viva is one of the many choirs in New York providing ecletic programs. . . Conductor Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez is a dynamic force in choral music. Like most choral conductors, he needed no baton, his 37-voice ensemble well balanced, colorful, and, within the always tricky audio of a church, was resonant when needed, tranquil during those rare moments of this forceful concert, when tranquility was desired.”

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AN ELEGY FOR ALL HUMANITY - May 7, 2017

How Brahms’s ‘A German Requiem’ became an anthem for our time
James R. Oestreich, The New York Times, May 12, 2017

“In Mr. Hernandez-Valdez’s arrangement, “Song of Nature” runs a crowded 10 minutes or so. The music traverses the dynamic gamut, soft to loud, several times, but the message, generalized as it was, was effectively conveyed by the excellent chorus of 35 and the narrator, David Rockefeller Jr. For the requiem, Musica Viva deployed 11 players in Joachim Linckelmann’s arrangement for chamber ensemble to good effect, and again, the chorus came through loud and clear. With Devony Smith and Joseph Beutel as fine vocal soloists in the Brahms, and Shabnam Abedi in the Bernstein, this was indeed a stirring concert“

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