Pensacola Symphony Orchestra / Amazonas Festival – Manaus, Brazil / Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, New York / Brevard Music Center, North Carolina

Guest tenor Michael Hendrick delivered his lines with sound musicianship, character and gusto. From the first bars of the opening number, ‘The Drinking Song of the Earth’s Misery’, he established the appropriate sweet and sour mood for the rest of the symphony… The very brief third song, ‘Of Youth’, is the most positive in the cycle. Here the orchestra and the tenor attuned their instruments to establish an atmosphere of delight where a party of beautifully dressed young friends drink and chat in a porcelain pavilion. The tenor line lies again in the high range, but Hendrick‘s vocal abilities and demeanor conveyed to the audience a clear picture of this charming scene; the soloist and orchestra ending quietly like a whisper… The twist of mood in the cycle started with another drinking song, ‘The Drunkard in Spring,’ where the carefree messenger utters ‘If life is but a dream, why then trouble and care?’ This scherzo, where the tempos are pulled back and pushed constantly, was excellent.
~ PensacolaNewsJournal.com