Royal Opera - GERSHWIN’s PORGY AND BESS
You have to know instinctively about the ache, the ebb and flow, the innate syncopations of this score to conduct it half-decently.Andrew Litton, the all-American hero in the pit, did a whole lot better than that. The explosive vamping of the introduction gave notice of his fire and drive and desire to swing. He wrenched out the drama, the emotional hot-spots ...Litton can pride himself on having shown his orchestra the way to the style and fascinating rhythm of this music.
— Edward Seckerson, The Independent
Mr. Litton, in his house debut, makes the most of the house advantages: he keeps the music light, rhythmically forward and texturally well-ventilated, finds tautly "continuous" drama in Gershwin's format of recitative and song, and altogether proves himself a marvellously apt, idiomatically assured Porgy conductor.
— Max Loppert, The Financial Times
The score (Porgy and Bess) benefits from room to breathe and expand, and it is superbly realized by the American conductor Andrew Litton and the Royal Opera House Orchestra. Pacing is marginally brisker than under Rattle in Sussex (and on record), but no less rhythmically incisive or emotionally supercharged.
— Rodney Milnes, The Times, London
Gershwin's alluringly eclectic score (Porgy and Bess) — part jazz, part gospel, pure class — gets a superbly idiomatic performance under young American conductor Andrew Litton. To say this is the best show in town is merely to state the obvious. There us nothing to touch it.
— David Gillard, Daily Mail
The performance (Porgy and Bess) is conducted with zest, flair and brilliance by the young American Andrew Litton, making his debut in this house, and the score is played with zing and swing by the orchestra.
— Michael Kennedy, The Sunday Telegraph