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“…Irresistible, all the colour, sexy glamour and excitement one could wish for…great fun. And delivered in first class Chandos engineered Super Audio sound.” - MusicWeb-International.com “… Sakari Oramo has the full measure of the complexities of this work [Sym No. 2] and both he and the BBC Symphony Orchestra meet its technical challenges with ease. Once again the superb Chandos recording does full justice to Oramo’s masterly and sympathetic reading of Schmitt’s rewarding composition. Thanks both to the sonic benefits of multi-channel SACD and the quality of the performances, this release is a major addition the discography of this unduly neglected composer and can be unreservedly recommended.” - CDChoice.co.uk “… For the Symphony in particular, this splendidly recorded disc is worth investigating, especially if you know little or none of Schmitt’s music already.” - BBC Music magazine “… The recording can only be described as sumptuous, with this intricately scored music revealed in great detail without any hint of dryness in the acoustic. Not for nothing are Chandos renowned for their recording skills, and under the baton of their Chief Conductor, the orchestra play with the virtuosity necessary for the listener to be able to luxuriate in Schmitt’s orchestration…” - MusicWeb-International.com Making his debut on Chandos, Sakari Oramo, who with the BBC Symphony Orchestra this year has championed new and rarely performed works, presents in surround sound the extravagant musical world of Florent Schmitt. The recording follows two exceptional Barbican performances with the same forces, a ‘sensuous and exotic’ Antoine et Cléopâtre, according to the Financial Times (2016), and the first performance for nearly a dozen years of Symphony No. 2 (2017). The Second Symphony, the last major work by Schmitt, has nothing valedictory about it: as lavish and rhythmically sophisticated as his earlier music, emphatically bounding in fast passages and supple in slow, it also encompasses all the different musical expressions and styles that he had used over almost eight decades of composing. On the other hand, it is far from being an ‘old man’s piece’. ‘It is really exuberant – very, very inventive, and incredibly busy for everyone’, as Sakari Oramo explained in a BBC Radio 3 interview. The symphony is paired with the two orchestral suites from Antoine et Cléopâtre, music written for Shakespeare’s play, premiered in 1920 at the Paris Opéra, and very rarely recorded since then.