Press

  • "John Storgårds underlined the score’s raw energy and highlighted its strikingly violent and tender juxtapositions, driving the music to irresistible climaxes and poignant solo utterances"
    David Truslove, Opera Today, September 2025
  • "Here Storgårds allowed the music all the breathing space it needed, his string players finding astonishing depths of warmth and exquisite softness."
    Rohan Shotton, Bachtrack, June 2025
    BBC Philharmonic
  • "From quietest moments to the most extrovert, the music had shape and direction, and an underlying thread of tension."
    Scott Cantrell, The Dallas Morning News, April 2025
  • "One of the highlights of this year’s Proms season was John Storgårds and the BBC Philharmonic’s blistering account of Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony"
    Neil Fulwood, Nottingham Culture, 4 October, 2024
    BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
  • "Storgårdsin johtamisesta välittyy musikaalinen ja näkemyksellinen tahto, ja hänellä on maaginen taito tartuttaa se kaikkiin muusikoihin."
    Aija Haapalainen, Turun Sanomat 6 September, 2024
    Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, Season opening concert
  • "Käsi sydämellä: olihan tämä oli aivan fantastinen tulkinta Šostakovitšin tärkeimpiin kuuluvasta sinfoniasta ja yksi orkesterin viime vuosien parhaista konserteista. Syystäkin yleisö ponkaisi heti pystyyn hurraamaan esityksen jälkeen."
    Harri Hautala, Aamulehti, 28 April, 2023
  • "Guest conductor John Storgårds acquitted himself admirably with a score [Mahler symphony no. 5] that many conductors – Tár and Leonard Bernstein among them – have considered the Everest of their respective careers. Storgårds’s fine, controlled conducting brought out the best in the TSO, which for the past decade has been slowly making its way through all nine symphonies. ... I actually find it quite difficult to write about the Adagietto, twelve minutes of musical perfection so extraordinary that we risk burying it under the weight of superlatives, so all I will say is that the TSO got it right."
    Jeremy Gee, Toronto Guardian, 22 April, 2023
    Toronto Symphony Orchestra, April 2023
  • "It felt as if the conductor John Storgårds had the audience hanging on every note of Shostakovich’s 15th and final symphony"
    Rebecca Franks, The Times, 5 August 2022
    BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
  • "Storgårds […] is a fine conductor of Shostakovich"
    Mark Pullinger, Bachtrack, 25 March 2022
    BBC Symphony Orchestra
  • "Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra continued on Wednesday with brilliantly planned concert programs. The symmetrical program included two massive piano concertos by Brahms and two short but not small works by Webern: Five Pieces for Orchestra Op. 10, as well as the Four Pieces for Violin and Piano Op. 7, which influenced its tonal world, and which at the beginning of the concert was subtly interpreted by John Storgårds, who conducted the concert, and pianist Kirill Gerstein. The concert was like an exhibition with small and huge paintings."
    Sonja Saarikoski, Helsingin Sanomat
    Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, March 2022