Bygone ages come back to life - Maria Makraki at the conductor's stand of the Baden Philharmonic
"...The way Stravinsky deals with early music has something refreshingly modern - and the conductor Maria Makraki ensured that this performance of his work was equally as modern. The differing musical worlds of the Baroque and the 20th century were brought together with light-hearted ease. The result was a pleasing, relaxed musical experience very much appreciated by the audience. After the interval the conductor treated the audience to a further programmatic delicacy. As in the previous works, elements of style from different epochs were united, this time in Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's Italian Symphony. The conductor Maria Makraki approached the symphony from the viewpoint of the Romantic. Even the first movement began unusually, leaving a lasting, but not uninteresting impression. Makrari is particularly disposed to strong, dynamic contrasts; she took the second movement with a refreshing lack of sentiment and after an unobtrusive third movement got down to business again with a lively and temperamental final movement. This was Mendelssohn at its best and most interesting, well deserving of the enthusiastic applause that followed."
(Karl-Heinz Fischer, in: Badische Neueste Nachrichten, 07.02.2005)