Recordings
2023 — String Cosmology: Husa, Stucky, Coleridge-Taylor, Elgar & Bruckner (Albany)
American Record Guide
"The playing and conducting here would be hard to match, never mind better. If you’d like over an hour of great string music beautifully played and interpreted in fine sound, look no further…Karel Husa’s Divertimento...is a masterpiece. The piece is a dazzler."
Fanfare Magazine
Five stars
“Under Mandarano’s direction the Sinfonietta of Riverdale plays with a high degree of technical proficiency, with exact ensemble, incisiveness, energy, and spirit.This CD offers a diverse and entertaining program of works for string orchestra in excellent performances. [Especially] the Husa, Stucky, and Coleridge-Taylor selections, all of which are worth hearing. An unequivocal recommendation.”
Husa: “…Abundant energy in the outer movements and gripping intensity in the middle one …vigorous and thrusting, replete with slashing attacks and frenetic activity. The second… after a brooding opening rises gradually in intensity to a climax that Mandarano aptly characterizes as “shattering” and “desperate.” The dance-like Finale lightens the mood with lively, prancing rhythm.”
Elgar: “The Mandarano recording is at the top [of comparable recordings]…Mandarano’s account excels in transparency, detail, and incisiveness…liveliness and verve…with its singing line and unimpeded forward movement.”
Take Effect (online)
[Elgar's Serenade] blends the strings with much awe and sophistication in the album’s best selection. {Bruckner’s} Quintet in F Major: Adaigio, unfolds with a sublime intimacy that allows the strings to wrap themselves in a dreaminess we won’t soon forget…
[as conductor, Mandarano] shapes this timeless, captivating affair.”
2011 — Live & in Concert Vol. 1. Debussy, Massenet and Honegger (Arabesque)
2014 — Live & in Concert Vol. 2. Music by J. S. Bach and Richard Wagner (Arabesque)
Theodora Hanslowe, mezzo-soprano
2016 — New World Serenade: Adams, Caplan, Corigliano, Piston & Zwilich (Albany)
Fanfare Magazine
“The Sinfonietta of Riverdale under the direction of Mark Mandarano brings all of the music off exceedingly well, with stellar playing…Considering the quality of the music, the performances, and the recorded sound, this CD comes highly recommended all around.”
Texas Public Radio
“Every now and then I drop a new classical release in the player and find myself instantly delighted by new music. Such was the case earlier this summer when I lifted the Albany Records release “New World Serenade” off the stack, with its picturesque cover painting of the aurora borealis by 19th Century American landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church.”
Music Web International
“This delightful and splendidly planned disc pulls together music from the younger (Caplan), middle (Adams) and older (Corigliano and Zwilich) generations of living US composers. It then adds an acknowledged 20th century American master who nonetheless seems somewhat in danger of disappearing between the cracks of history… lithe playing and vivid sound. A lovely disc.”
1999 — Wagner (Bridge)
World Premiere Performance, Westchester Philharmonic, Mark Mandarano conductor, Paul Dunkel Flute
New York Premiere at Carnegie Hall, American Composers Orchestra, Mark Mandarano, conductor, Paul Dunkel, flute
World Premiere Recording, Westchester Philharmonic, Mark Mandarano, conductor, Paul Dunkel, flute, Bridge Records
Voted “Best of Year” by the Sunday Times, London
“Simply Spectacular”
Melinda Wagner's Pulitzer Prize-winning Flute Concerto receives its premiere recording by the commissioning artists in this generally excellent performance. The sheer sound of this piece is utterly beguiling. The extraordinary slow movement reveals the composer's gift for sustaining interest over a lengthy span of intensely quiet music, and the orchestral performance there, as well as in the two quicker parts, is simply spectacular. — Classics Today, David Hurwitz
“Immaculate”
Here, the string playing is warm and clear, the difficult rhythmic counterpoint kept immaculately clean by Mandarano. — New Jersey Star-Ledger, Willa Conrad
“A Brilliant Performance”
The Concerto for flute, strings and percussion by Melinda Wagner receives a brilliant performance. — TEMPO, Guy Richards
“Exemplary”
The performance is exemplary: hats off to Bridge for permitting the concerto’s premiering soloist and orchestra the chance to record the piece. — FANFARE, Stephen Ellis
As assistant conductor
Over the years, I have assisted orchestras, composers, conductors and the production team for a number of recordings.
For these others, I was not, strictly speaking, a part of the recordings, but I did work with Leon when he performed these pieces in New York prior to the recordings of these works in London.
