"Nicolas Flagello is one among many worthy 20th-century American composers to have fallen between the cracks. His language is post-Romantic in the manner of Barber and Menotti, but that only provides certain jumping off points. He is also rigorously neo-Classical, an adept orchestrator, and a master of the rhetorical gesture. Both the point and pithiness of his Symphony No. 1 and his Theme, Variations, and Fugue would have made Brahms and Roussel, among others, smile."
"David Amos is an old hand at producing effective performances of pieces that don't as yet have a performing tradition. Here he elicits inspired playing from the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra. The recording is fine by current standards, and the liner notes by Fanfare's Walter Simmons are concise and informative. This is a wholly meritorious addition to Naxos's ongoing 'American Classics' series." -- William Zagorski, FANFARE

"Naxos's sound is couched in an ideal balance of spaciousness, presence, and detail, with climactic moments packing a startlingly gutsy wallop. The timing claimed on the cover is 10 minutes short of the actual disc duration: one is getting even greater value for very little money, and at Naxos's price it would amount to self-defeating, criminal neglect to pass this by." - Adrian Corleonis, FANFARE