"The program was a kind of 'Mozart’s Greatest Hits'. Eine kleine Nachtmusik was given a sparkling performance. Sometimes being a guest conductor can ignite a fire in an orchestra and there was no doubt that Ms. Chen lit one here; she infused a new energy into the orchestra’s performance. In the first movement Allegro, the violins were silky and performed with a refined lightness and outstanding ensemble. The basses, too, were energetic, powerful and precise. The languorous Andante was polished and sounded intimate, in spite of the large number of strings employed. Ms. Chen chose a slightly brisk tempo for the Allegretto. By the Allegro finale, Chen had set expectations for tight dynamics and precise entrances, and she delivered.The ASO strings provided a winning execution of this familiar favourite; lean, smooth and with beautifully sculpted dynamics. ... The Allegretto [of Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 24 in C minor] was bold; Chen and Lang were in lockstep in extracting the beauty, creativity and energy of the finale."

"...the orchestra played with great polish and commitment under Chen who deftly handled the alternating spoken and musical elements with clear stop-and-go cues.... The Danzon No. 2 by Arturo Marquez has become the Mexican composer’s sole repertoire piece to such an extent that one sometimes wonders if there really is a Danzon No. 1. Chen led a worthy performance of this overplayed work, bringing idiomatic lilt to the tango-like opening theme and syncopated bite to the ensuing dances, leading the music in her own Terpsichorean manner."

“Chen is diminutive but powerful, with an exacting style of conducting that commands attention.”
...
“Chen displayed almost everything you could want from a conductor: musicality, confidence, wonderful technique, and restless enthusiasm.”(Santa Rosa Symphony)

“Her controlled yet fluid conducting style combined clear cues and beats with sweeping, circular gestures reminiscent of the great maestro Seiji Ozawa.” (Santa Rosa Symphony)

“a vivid and energetic conductor”

“The evening’s diverse program took yet another turn with the concluding work: Igor Stravinsky’s 1919 Suite from The Firebird, music drawn from the composer’s first ballet collaboration with the Ballet Russes in Paris. It was in this magical, fairy-story work that one recognized Chen’s ability to plumb the depths of an orchestra’s potential and inspire joy and energetic performance from the players.”

“The performance indeed offered a captivating and inspired interpretation.” (translation)

"Taiwanese-born conductor Mei-Ann Chen... drew a richly romantic sound from the orchestra. ...The program began with Mozart’s overture to “The Magic Flute” and ended with Schubert’s Fourth Symphony. Chen conducted all of it with weight, precision and an intensity that sometimes became breathless."

"Grand Rapids Symphony's Classical Series concert, which repeats tonight, isn't easily explained. But it was exciting to experience. In part, that's due to the popularity of music by Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein. But mostly it's due to the incomparable Time for Three as guest artists and to the irrepressible Mei-Ann Chen as guest conductor. ... Chen... was a colorful, even flamboyant, conjuror of sounds and crafter of textures. The orchestra clearly was having a good time."

"The deeply-resonant opening chords [of Rimski-Korsakov's Scheherazade] contrasting the near transparent pianissimo wind chords that followed stand as a simple testament to the extreme capabilities of these musicians. What seemed simple at first carried through the musical and technical demands of the entire work. The string tone, magnificent in the lush romantic melodies, was coupled with excellent solo turns by all the winds and brass. By the conclusion we were spent by Chen’s exhilarating tempos of the tour de force performance."

"This album contains three twentieth century works for string quartet and orchestra in the baroque concerto grosso tradition: where a smaller ensemble (here the string quartet) is contrasted with a larger ensemble – the orchestra. ...Delights and Dances lives up to its title.... ...Benjamin Lees (1924-2010) Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra (1964) is a more serious and modern work. ...This is an exhilarating and significant American concerto, and the Harlem Quartet and Chicago Sinfonietta play it for all it’s worth. Chinese composer An-Lun Huang’s Sabei Dance is a crowd-pleasing four-minute work whose oriental lyricism clears the palate and prepares the listener for conductor, composer and arranger Randall Craig Fleischer’s West Side Story Concerto. ...the performance and recording of Fleischer’s arrangement is superb....  ... the whole album is easy to enjoy."

"But like the Sultan’s wife who heads off her own death by telling her husband wondrous tales for 1,001 nights, Chen worked some enchantment of her own on the CSO Thursday night. Often performed as a mixture of overly perfumed lyricism and ersatz exoticism, Sheherazade became something much more powerful and intimate. Setting a deliberate rather than rhapsodic pace throughout the work, drawing pristine yet expressive phrasing from the orchestra, Chen transformed the story.
Without losing any of her mysterious aura, Sheherazade became a cool-headed beauty, a worthy adversary to the mighty sultan. Passions ran high in the stories she told. But this self-possessed young woman was smart enough to keep a tight rein on her own passions, which made her all but irresistible. ...Chen’s blending of orchestral forces was equally deft in Mendelssohn’s overture, which runs from sunny evocations of a dappled, free-flowing river to darker eruptions."