“Tout aussi stupéfiante est cette partition, que George Jackson dirige avec beaucoup de souplesse, car elle relève à la fois du retour aux sources (les variations infinitésimales deMusic for 18 Musicians, en 1976) et du renouvellement (motifs orientalisants, faux prélude de Bach)pour témoigner d’une véritable régénérescence, tant de la musique que du compositeur.”

Pierre Gervasoni, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Steve Reich: Reich/Richter, Philharmonie de Paris, Le Monde

 

“The acoustics of this endearingly quirky opera house are excellent and the ENO orchestra sounded radiant under the accomplished direction of George Jackson. Textural detail emerged clearly and the dramatic momentum was unfaltering.”

***** Barry Millington, Evening Standard

 

“Humperdinck’s debt to Wagner is inescapable in this score, and George Jackson and the ENO Orchestra draw it out in a way that adds to the music’s stature without sounding merely derivative.”

***** Peter Reed, Classical Source

“Da groovt und jazzt es, klassische Klänge stehen neben einem frei melodischen Spiel der Kräfte. Diese Musik überzeugt auch dank Dirigent George Jackson und des recht groß besetzen Wiener Kammerorchesters.”

Peter Jarolin, Theater an der Wien, Tscho Theissing: ‘Genia’ (World Premiere), Kurier

“The full-scale ENO Orchestra under George Jackson makes the late-Romantic score sound marvellous.”

George Hall, Grange Park Opera / Hänsel und Gretel, The Stage

“George Jackson’s conducting is so idiomatic, drawing first-class playing from the orchestra of English National Opera.”

David Mellor, Grange Park Opera / Hänsel und Gretel, The Mail on Sunday

“Humperdinck’s debt to Wagner is inescapable in this score, and George Jackson and the ENO Orchestra draw it out in a way that adds to the music’s stature without sounding merely derivative. A piercing solo trumpet in the Prelude for a moment stranded you in Parsifal, links between orchestra and singers were expertly and naturally judged, and the music’s abundance of charm, atmosphere and shameless memorability are all there for the hearing. If I were coming to this inexhaustible opera for the first time, this would be a touchstone production.”

Peter Reed, Grange Park Opera / Hänsel und Gretel, Classical Source

English National Opera’s orchestra brought out all that there is in Humperdinck’s music under the nurturing baton of conductor George Jackson.”

Christopher Walker, Grange Park Opera / Hänsel und Gretel, London News Online

“The English National Opera Orchestra plays well for conductor George Jackson and Grange Park’s excellent acoustics are a boon for everybody.”

Richard Fairman, Hänsel und Gretel / Grange Park Opera, Financial Times

“George Jackson conducts the ENO orchestra who play beautifully. The result is a charming and elegant rendition of the score.”

Louise Lewis, Hänsel und Gretel / Grange Park Opera, British Theatre Guide

“The musical delights started with the first notes of the overture as the horn melody rose out of the pit, rich in texture and beautifully shaped. George Jackson and the orchestra brought out the well-made counterpoint which underlies Humperdinck’s score. Yes, the glorious melodies were there, finely phrased and, well, glorious. But weaving them together was a sense of this beautifully made German counterpoint, which showed the work’s complex history […]. And George Jackson, a young conductor to watch, was clearly alive to the various resonances in Humperdinck’s score. Yes it is Wagnerian, but I also heard pre-echoes of Mahler in the Act Two folk-sequences. Throughout the amount of detail was wondrous, yet woven into an enchanting construction which mixed humour with the magical […]. Whatever other musical delights the production offered, and there were plenty, I kept coming back to Jackson and the orchestra.”

Robert Hugill, Hänsel und Gretel / Grange Park Opera, Planet Hugill

“The preponderance of high voice types – with only one male voice on stage – fills the score with lightness and air, as if illuminated from behind. These two components create a woozy, even uncanny, atmosphere, something cemented in the brilliant textural responsiveness of the ENO orchestra under George Jackson.”

Benjamin Poore, Hänsel und Gretel / Grange Park Opera, Bachtrack

“Jennifer Pike delivered a truly spellbinding account, possessing an opulent tone when called for, sensitive and ethereal on other occasions, and rising to considerable heights of virtuosity and musicianship in the first-movement cadenza. She had the inestimable advantage of a conductor who likewise sees the work as genuinely symphonic – for, in those relatively lengthy orchestral passages in the first and second movements, George Jackson raised the stature of the music to a rarely-encountered level, absolutely enthralling from first bar to last.”

Robert Matthew-Walker, Classical Source

“Overcoming the dry and rather forthright acoustics of Covent Garden’s St Paul’s Church with a perfect balance between all parts of the orchestra, up-and-coming young conductor George Jackson coaxed an appropriately dramatic rendering of this overture.”

John Pritchard, London Firebird Orchestra, Seen and Heard International