Certainly it would be difficult to find a more effective champion of this juggernaut of a piece than Christopher Lyndon-Gee. In his Rochberg recordings, also for Naxos, he has demonstrated am impressive ability to control large forces and shape complex textures in a way that always sounds purposeful and expressive. So it is here, not just in Amèriques, but also in Ecuatorial, Nocturnal, and above all Ionisation, which sounds amazingly nuanced, even dance-like in this interpretation. No matter how freaky Varèse gets (and in Ecuatorial especially the answer is "very"), Lyndon-Gee never seems to be trading expressivity and naturalness for mere precision; accuracy is a given, not an end in itself. The remaining works on the disc include Varèse's earliest surviving piece, the song Un grand sommeil noir, very nicely sung by Elizabeth Watts, as well as a notably pure, limpid version of Density 21.5, one of the 20th-century's masterpieces for solo flute.

As with many other Naxos releases from Poland (including Antoni Wit's largely excellent series of recordings), the engineering is warmly vivid within an ample acoustic that perhaps diffuses the impact of the brass and percussion just a bit, if never troublingly. Certainly it gives a good idea of the huge forces required for Amèriques. The men's voices of the Camerata Silesia also come off as just a bit tame and "choir-like" for the primal music of Ecuatorial, but in all ways that matter significantly, this is an outstanding release, and one of self-evident importance to Varèse admirers.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com