“Benjamin Bayl, who has operatic experience and is comfortable with voices, was attuned to the score’s essential starkness and gravity. In music that’s all about texture, he unleashed sounds from these perio instruments that showed how radical Rossini was, and how indebted to this work Verdi’s Requiem is. All the colours of Rossini's Alpine tone poem - the Overture to William Tell - registered vividly on the Hanover Band's period instruments, and Bayl steered this familiar music with fresh imagination.”

(John Allison, The Telegraph)

“It was Wagner who theorised that the dramatic C Minor opening depicts Coriolanus’s warlike determination while the yearning secondary melody represents his mother’s appeal for mercy. Principal Guest Conductor Benjamin Bayl delivered just such a dramatic trajectory.There was a tangible solidity to the ARCO sound, from the resolute opening through the bosom-heaving dramatics, and all done with impeccable intonation. Bayl offered a controlled performance, yet one that pulsed with energy, ensuring the development section always had a sense of purpose. A real buzz in the lower strings mingled with sonorous brass (in particular the superb natural horns), while the woodwind featured mellow flutes and a bassoon sound so entirely different from that of the modern instrument.”

(Clive Paget, Limelight Magazine)

“Benjamin Bayl is a familiar figure at the OSPA. He is one of the few guest conductors invited to work with the orchestra, who manage to give it its own personality and a better sound. On Thursday in Gijon and yesterday in Oviedo, he conducted an excellent concert with Schubert and Mozart in the programme. Bayl's way of understanding and conveying Schubert's music is, in fact, Schubertian. That is to say, direct and moving, infused with emotional variability based on melodic tenderness and fluctuating changes of tempi, modulations and expression. These features were apparent in the Symphony No. 9 which tied the monumental and energetic with the subtle and poetic. A picturesque performance, very full of color, well played and expressive.”

(El Comercio)

“The return of much loved Benjamin Bayl to OSPA sealed the success of the evening at the Auditorium. His conducting is well known here, both in symphonic and also operatic repertoire. Bayl never leaves any note sounding indifferent, always looking for the balance of orchestral sonority in his dynamic interpretations.”

(La Nueva España)

“Benjamin Bayl displayed a mature understanding of Mozartian musical line and elicited some fine playing from the Polish National Opera Orchestra, especially the strings and woodwinds, who were both virtuosic and subtle.”

(Jonathan Sutherland, Bachtrack.com)

“Bayl led the orchestra of the Polish National Opera gracefully. They sounded soft, agile and elegant - the qualities necessary to perform Mozart’s music.”

(Wyborcza.pl)