Two well-known masterpieces of Russian music complement each other perfectly on the latest release of Mariss Jansons and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. Recorded November 2014 (Mussorgsky) and April 2015 (Stravinsky) at concerts in the intimate dimensions of Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz and in the Philharmonie im Gasteig. With the 1947 revised version of Stravinsky's “Petrushka”, a revision ultimately preferred by Stravinsky himself and here featuring the piano of the prolific Lukas Maria Kuen, along with the 1922 orchestral version of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" memorably and engagingly transcribed by Maurice Ravel elevating the piece to the pantheon of one of the most familiar of all classical works.

The 2007 recording that has now been reissued by BR-Klassik or Mahler’s First Symphony, with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under its chief conductor Mariss Jansons, can be regarded as an album premiere- in that this recording has only so far been available as a bonus release forming part of the audio biography of Gustav Mahler “World and Dream.” (BR Klassik)

Dmitri Shostakovich was one of the most important composers of the 20th century. With his works - most notably his fifteen symphonies, which took Late Romantic music and transferred it to the modern age – he has shaped the repertoire. His aesthetic is determined by the impact of the Second World War and also by the political conditions in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Forced to work for the dictator, he also had to make numerous concessions to him. It was in the war year of 1941 that Shostakovich composed his Symphony No. 7 in C major, opus 60. It comes in the approximate middle of his oeuvre and was named the “Leningrad” symphony because Shostakovich dedicated it to his native city (today’s St. Petersburg). The marching theme in the first movement was composed even before the outbreak of the German-Soviet war, in around 1939 or 1940. He wrote further movements in Leningrad, during its siege by German troops from September 8, 1941 onwards, and finally completed the symphony in Kuibyshev (Samara) on the Volga, having been evacuated from the war-torn city together with his family on October 1, 1941. It was there on March 5, 1942 that the symphony received its world premiere, performed by the similarly evacuated orchestra of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre under the direction of Samuil Samossud. The Moscow premiere on March 27 took place in perilous circumstances, but even an air raid alert could not convince the audience to go to the shelters, so captivated were they by the music. The music has retained its fascination to this day, and the Seventh Symphony is considered Shostakovich's best-known work. Mariss Jansons, who himself ranks as a specialist in the Slavic repertoire as well as the symphonic music of the 19th and 20th centuries, has tackled this masterpiece on numerous occasions. This performance, released for the first time, was recorded at concerts on February 11 and 12, 2016 at the Philharmonie in Munich’s Gasteig. Here, under Jansons' baton, the musicians of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks interpret Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony as a shattering testimony to the epoch in which it was written as well as a profound expression of our present age. The live recording of those concerts is now being released by BR-KLASSIK in an exemplary interpretation of one of the most important symphonic works of the 20th century.

Well what d’ya know? The old man’s got some piss and vinegar in him still. I’ve never quite forgiven Haitink for giving an interview in Gramophone magazine over a decade ago decrying the tendency of conductors to remake recordings of the same repertoire over and over, and then hypocritically becoming one of the very worst offenders. Perhaps the reason that this account of the Sixth is so fabulous is because it’s only his second “official” recording of the work (well, third if, as a reader kindly reminded me, you count a live Dresden version released on Profil). Anyway, the point is that it seems that he left it alone, relatively speaking, until he had something new to say.

Mind you, his earliest version, part of his very first Bruckner cycle in Amsterdam, was quite good, if perhaps a touch faceless, but here he retains all of those qualities of freshness and vitality that characterized the previous performance, while adding an extra bit of gravitas to the Adagio, and a trenchancy of rhythm everywhere else that elevates this recording to another level entirely. It’s particularly salutary to hear how Haitink zeros in on the music’s special, rambunctious character within Bruckner’s symphonic output as a whole. That means the first movement’s ostinato rhythm doesn’t just repeat: it really moves. The scherzo’s gossamer lightness floats over the bar lines as Bruckner intended, while the finale benefits from having vividly differentiated thematic material. Too often, the movement comes off as a disappointing, generalized trudge across the finish line.

Indeed, the whole performance acts as a tonic to the modern tendency to conduct Bruckner as an experiment in sluggishness: slow, slower, and as slow as humanly possible. The composer considered this work to be his “boldest” symphony, and Haitink clearly got the message. The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra plays magnificently, the warmly burnished brass riding a rich cushion of strings–noble, expressive, grand but never crude. It’s the genuine Bruckner sound, while the engineering does the interpretation full justice. A great release.

– ClassicsToday (10/10; David Hurwitz)

The tonal language of Beethoven’s Mass in C major, the first of his two Mass settings, is that of a personal confession, making the work very modern and forward-looking and opening up entirely new worlds of expression for the liturgical text. It is in no way to be seen as a precursor of the "Missa solemnis" but instead as a highly independent work that set new standards for the advancement of mass compositions in the 19th century. Beethoven himself was well aware of its innovative nature, and wrote as much in a letter to his publisher: “I am reluctant to say anything about my Mass, or indeed about myself, but I do believe that I have treated the text in a manner to which it has rarely been treated.” For people at the time, the Mass in C major, Op. 86 of 1807 provided unprecedented access to the Christian faith in a way that is still relevant today. This important work from the history of sacred music offers a devotional sound that is simultaneously heartfelt and beautiful. Beethoven's Mass in C major was recorded at two concerts that took place exactly one year ago at the Philharmonie in Gasteig in Munich, on January 11 and 12, 2018. The high-quality performers are Genia Kühmeier (soprano), Gerhild Romberger (alto), Maximilian Schmitt (tenor) and Luca Pisaroni (bass-baritone), together with the Bavarian Radio Chorus and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks conducted by Mariss Jansons. These concerts took place on the occasion of Maestro Jansons’ 75th birthday. The album also includes a recording of Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3, performed live in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz on January 29 and 30, 2004.

Gustav Mahler wanted his Second Symphony to exceed any known format - and he also wanted it to tackle the key questions of existence: "Why have you lived? Why have you suffered? Is everything just one enormous, terrible joke? We have to solve these questions in some way if we want to carry on living," said the composer. Similar questions preoccupied him throughout his life, and with a special intensity during his time as an opera conductor in Hamburg. The Second Symphony, also referred to as the "Resurrection Symphony", is a complete expression of Mahler’s existential struggle; both its form and its overpowering sound make this utterly clear. The symphony took several years to compose – it was written between 1888 and 1894. In September 1888, the first movement – which at this point still bore the title "Totenfeier” (“Funeral Rite”) – was already complete. The second and third movements were not written until 1893 and Mahler only completed the entire work in 1894. Like most of Mahler’s symphonies, the work follows a "Per aspera ad astra" pattern (“through difficulties to the stars”). Starting with a funeral march in the main theme of the opening movement - the passing of a life full of vigor, pain, blows of fate, and only a few brief and beautiful moments - the symphony concludes with a triumphant resurrection movement. The premiere of the complete symphony took place on December 13, 1895 in Berlin under Mahler's direction; previously (on March 4 of that year) he had already performed the first three movements. The premiere of the Second Symphony thus took place after that of the Third. The reactions were initially subdued, but today the work ranks as one of the most popular of Mahler’s symphonies.

The general consensus over the past few years among music critics and the public at large is that everything the conductor Sir Simon Rattle touches "turns to gold". Everything with the exception of the music dramas of Richard Wagner, that is! The oft-repeated assertion here is that Rattle and Wagner do not go together, even though no good reasons have been furnished to support this. The third collaboration between Rattle and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, together with a team of the very best Wagner singers, now conclusively proves the opposite. This concert performance of "Das Rheingold", the first opera in Wagner's mighty tetralogy "The Ring of the Nibelung", was performed live in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz on April 24 and 25, 2015, and has now been brought out by BR KLASSIK on two CDs only a few months after the event.

No question about it: Rattle is a master of the Rheingold score, which is certainly a tricky one due to its closely interwoven ensemble of soloists and to the fact that the orchestra does not accompany events and flow round them in a lofty manner, as in other Wagnerian music dramas, but is also sometimes quite openly rebellious! Rattle has already impressively proven his expertise at handling the music of Wagner on two occasions: in 2004 in London, together with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and in 2006 in Berlin with the Berlin Philharmonic. The fact that he is more inclined to conduct this "evil conversation piece, almost a black comedy" (as Robert Braunmüller described "Das Rheingold" in the Munich "Abendzeitung") with light and sometimes even dance-like inflections, and that he has the orchestra play with a great deal of colour and detail, shakes a little of the supercilious Wagnerian dust from this work, without in any way compromising the glittering brilliance of the musical sound. The soloists – all of them very good without exception - blend in completely with Rattle's fine interpretation, which is very much in the spirit of the drama.

Audiences and critics alike were unanimously delighted by the Munich concert performances. Even more than in the small Herkulessaal, which already enabled more intimate insights into the structures of the score and of the aesthetic created by Rattle, this listening experience on CD makes it clear "just how radically the avant-garde artist Richard Wagner composed in every single bar" (Reinhard J. Brembeck, "Sueddeutsche Zeitung").

Mahler’s "Das Lied von der Erde” (The Song of the Earth) is subtitled “A symphony for tenor, alto (or baritone) voice and orchestra". It examines the border between two different genres: the Lied, in its extended form as a song cycle, and the symphony. And as ever in Mahler’s music, that border is anything but black and white. The work certainly differs radically from a mere song cycle: the Lieder are permeated by symphonic techniques and some symphonic movements are built up from huge stanzas. Interludes expand to become development sections in which important things happen. Indeed, the thematic events take place in the orchestra, and, in a certain sense, the soloists also form a part of the interwoven orchestral texture. The sequence of movements also follows that of a symphony: In the weighty outer movements one clearly notices sonata form shining through the stanza structures, and symphonic processes are obviously taking place. Two inner movements take the place of the slow movement and sarcastic scherzo. The entire work is spanned by a taut arc, culminating – in accordance with the principle of intensification – in a huge final movement lasting as long as all the others together, and entitled Der Abschied (The Farewell). Here, Mahler is continuing the genre of the “Finale Symphony”, and the brightening of C minor to C major is even reminiscent of his usual apotheoses.

In this symphony, as in his others, Mahler wanted to "create a world using all existing technical means.” The formal design of the work is unique, and the demands it places on its performers are extreme. It requires two highly experienced Lied singers, who in combination with the huge orchestral apparatus have to be able to perform as soloists while blending into the symphonic structure as concert voices. An excellent and well-coordinated body of sound is needed here, and of course a highly competent conductor to ensure cohesion and to give spirit and soulfulness to such a large-scale work.

REVIEW

What is perhaps most immediately striking is the detail and brilliance of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra’s playing. Skelton makes a fine, handsome sound and offers something special in his moving reactions to the poetry. Kožená in her songs offers singing of supreme beauty. In fact, she sings almost too beautifully at times. Not a conventional Lied, perhaps, but a fascinating and beguiling one: highly recommended.

–Gramophone