Leo Hussain receives superb reviews in the European press for his Katya Kabanova at La Monnaie, Brussels (November 2010)

Salzburger Nachrichten
“Leo Hussain is no stranger to the podium of the Orchestre symphonique de la Monnaie. The Salzburg music director has already caused a sensation here with Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre. With Katya he has firmly cast aside his reputation as an assistant to various star conductors (like Rattle, Muti and Gergiev) and has become one of the great white hopes of his profession in his own right. It was simply terrific how he now ploughed through Janacek’s music with both passion and care, and let it blaze up from the pit, how he made sound colours glow, how with a breathtaking momentum formed a completely coherent whole. He managed to integrate everything.

Andrea Breth and Leo Hussain have staged a musically and scenically convincing Katya Kabanová at Brussels Opera La Monnaie.”

Sueddeutsche Zeitung
“Hussain, who was appointed at Salzburg Landestheater a year ago, presents a rugged Janacek, made up of countless dazzling pieces of a musical mosaic. Romantic allusions, atmospheric sounds, traces of chant and stark modernity are to be found alongside the naive sounds of nature and desperate protest. What does this piece ultimately aim for? Nothing less than a new, anti-romantic, anti-idealistic idea of man. This is what Hussain argues. His Janacek writes tradition anew.”

La Libre
“Extraordinary musical direction by Leo Hussain: the young English conductor, who had already impressed in "Le Grand Macabre," proves he also excels more ‘traditional’ repertoire. He creates colour, lyricism and expressivity, but also virtuosity in highlighting detail and handling tempi. One feels he is in perfect symbiosis with the Orchestre Symphonique de la Monnaie, who seemed galvanized by this collaboration.”

Deutschlandradio Kultur
“Precise, elegiac and disturbing, the Symphony Orchestra of the Théâtre de la Monnaie under Leo Hussain shattered every illusion. The young British conductor, formerly assistant to Valery Gergiev and Simon Rattle, justifiably seems to be at the beginning of a big career.”

Neue Zürcher Zeitung
“Young British conductor Leo Hussain shows that this interpretation of Katya is wholly anchored in the music. He manages to reveal Janacek’s modernity to an almost frightening extent. Nothing is smoothed over, resolved or embellished. Rather, a bright light is being shone on the glaring dissonances, the intertwined rhythms and the bizarre colours of the score, which illustrate the tragedy of the drama.”

Die Welt
“The astute conductor Leo Hussain aims not at magical sound or tone painting. He carves out these characters starkly and loudly, without artificially soft contours.”

Avant Scene Opera
“Leading an orchestra at the top of its form, in this score of formidable difficulty, is the young conductor Leo Hussain, already known here from Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre. Hussain is the winner of the evening, and promises a great career.”

RTBF Culture
“Andrea Breth and Leo Hussain: a transcendent collaboration...

Musically, it's a delight: it is the third time I've seen this drama at La Monnaie, but this is the first time I have really ‘heard’ the music in all its intensity. Leo Hussain is one of the great discoveries of the De Caluwe era (with a triumphant Ligeti Le Grand Macabre already behind him). Sometime fluid, sometime abrasive, the score is a triumph of sensuality and intelligence: Bravo Maestro!”

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