“He’s really a superman, and when I play with him it is something out of this world. … I’ve just never seen a person who has such a great talent and such energy to laugh, to share music, and an ability to touch people.”

                                               — Lang Lang, pianist

“He is a conductor who takes risks. I’ve done things for him that I wouldn’t dare do on my own. … He’s somebody who can give an artist freedom, but then also take the reins back … to create the kind of tension in a performance that’s needed to raise the performance up to the very highest level. That’s a very fine line, and he absolutely accomplishes that.”

                                               — Renée Fleming, soprano

“He just doesn’t have time for the ego thing, and that is what’s so lovely. You feel completely comfortable with him musically, personally. … It’s like a roller coaster ride. To have a maestro who is that open and welcoming and generous is such a gift for the soloist. … I think that Christoph Eschenbach is the greatest music director anybody could possibly ask for.”

                                               — Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, violin

“This is a man who is European to his fingertips, but who has got all this new world energy and curiosity.”

                                               — Simon Rattle, conductor

“I always feel that he’s inside the sound. He’s at one with that. The music is his love. You can see that. He kind of glows or twinkles from the inside out.”

                                               — Augusta Read Thomas, composer

“Thank you for bringing back both the excitement and brilliant playing to The Philadelphia Orchestra and for your great reading of the Dvořák Eighth Symphony on Saturday night, September 25th. … Please keep up your progressive programming and your wonderful music making.”

                                               — Albert O. Wilhelmi III (Somerdale, NJ)

“We always enjoy the sounds of the orchestra, but tonight the sounds were beyond description in their beauty. It [Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6] was so moving that at one point I felt like bursting out of my seat with joy and sadness at the same time.”

                                               — Susan Kettell (Philadelphia, PA)

“I have lived long enough to have heard Stokowski as a child and Toscanini, Ormandy, Muti, and Sawallisch and your rendition of Tchaikovsky’s 6th takes second place to none of them. It was wonderful.”

                                               — J.J. and Ada Bentman (Lancaster, PA)

Christoph Eschenbach with The Philadelphia Orchestra

“Mr. Eschenbach’s conducting had sweep, tender feeling and a distinct point of view.”

                                               — The Wall Street Journal

“Mr. Eschenbach, with a powerful, resonant orchestra at his disposal, was looking for the heroic side of a piece [Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony] that others approach simply as a radiant burst of high spirits.”

                                               — The New York Times

“Many great conductors try to tame the piece [Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde]; Eschenbach embraced its constant threats of chaos, which created ... engrossing inner tension... .”

                                               — The Philadelphia Inquirer

“[Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (‘Eroica’)] has been played almost constantly for two centuries now, and yet it all seemed new on Monday. … [Eschenbach] made full use of his wonderful orchestra and its large and lustrous string section, yet there was nothing ‘fat’ about the sound. On the contrary, the playing had drive and sinew….”

                                               — The Washington Post

“The program was filled out by Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (‘Eroica’) in a seamless collaboration between orchestra and music director Christoph Eschenbach. … In this wide-reaching symphony, … Eschenbach achieved unification by strongly animating the compositional building blocks common through the entire piece.”

                                               — The Philadelphia Inquirer

“[T]he Philadelphia Orchestra sounds just as gorgeous as ever. … The climax of the Andante moderato sang with an uncommonly beautiful instrumental voice. … Mr. Eschenbach probably has more adventure in his soul than any of [the Orchestra’s] conductors since Stokowski.”

                                               — The New York Times

“[Eschenbach] proved that … he is a formidable, original and convincing Beethoven interpreter. … In the second movement [of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony], the conductor’s customary mastery of transitions was particularly ingenious, creating extra cohesion by merely holding the final note of a musical episode a second longer, or pointing forward with a tiny crescendo.”

                                               — The Philadelphia Inquirer