Following acclaimed performances around the globe, John Relyea’s interpretation of Duke Bluebeard now appears on record, with Michelle DeYoung as Judit and Edward Gardner leading his Bergen forces with aplomb. John Relyea continues to distinguish himself as one of today's finest basses. Mr. Relyea has appeared in many of the world’s most celebrated opera houses including the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera (where he is an alumnus of the Merola Opera Program and a former Adler Fellow), Lyric Opera of Chicago, Seattle Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Paris Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Vienna State Opera, Theater an der Wien, and the Mariinsky Theater.
Each recording in this 40-disc set has been selected by Chandos Managing Director, Ralph Couzens, son of the label founder, because it represents a turning point, or ‘Landmark’, in the development of the label.
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Founded by Brian Couzens in 1979, Chandos quickly established itself as one of the world’s leading classical labels. The ‘Chandos Sound’ has become a benchmark for quality, renowned alike among artists and critics around the globe.
From its inception, Chandos has specialised in recording British music, and in bringing lesser-known (and unknown) music to public attention. Released to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the label, this handsomely packaged 40-disc set comprises 40 complete recordings from Chandos’ extensive catalogue.
Each of the four decades is represented, and each recording has been hand-picked by the Managing Director, Ralph Couzens, because it represents a turning point, or ‘Landmark’, in the development of the label.
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Excerpts from select reviews of previously released volumes included in this set:
Prokofiev: Symphony No 6, Waltzes Suite, Etc. / Järvi, Royal Scottish National Orchestra - NLA
This 1984 recording put the somewhat neglected Sixth Symphony of Prokofiev back on the musical map; it remains on balance the finest available.
– ClassicsToday.com
Vaughan Williams: London Symphony; Butterworth: Banks of Green Willow / Hickox, LSO
Conductor and orchestra respond with an unquenchable spirit, generous flexibility and tender affection that suit VW’s admirably ambitious inspiration to a T, and Chandos’s sound is big and bold to match. Quite simply, an essential purchase for anyone remotely interested in British music.
– Gramophone
Ravel, Debussy & Massenet / Bavouzet, Tortelier, BBC Symphony Bavouzet gets the tempo changes in Ravel's G Major Concerto absolutely right, following up with one of the most songfully flowing and elegantly shaped accounts of the Adagio on disc, and concluding with an absolutely scorching finale. The Massenet encores are both novel and delightful.
Recorded live on SACD in the sumptuous acoustic of Grieghallen in Bergen, this mind-blowing interpretation of Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder involves 350 performers: large choral forces, six exceptional soloists, and the legendary Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra- extended for the occasion- all conducted by Edward Gardner. Marking the pinnacle of the Orchestra’s 250th anniversary celebrations, the same forces offered two evening concerts that met with unanimous acclaim in the press, including a five-star review from The Daily Telegraph praising the ‘sweep of Gardner’s conducting, by turns luminous and incisive.’ It added, ‘He unleashed the piece’s volcanic passions while never becoming mired in its high-calorific density, and somehow avoided drowning the singers’, and also congratulated the ‘heroic’ Stuart Skelton, ‘warm’ Alwyn Mellor, ‘ethereal’ Anna Larsson, and ‘powerful’ Thomas Allen.
Szymanowski: Stabat Mater & Harnasie (Muzyka Polska, Vol. 7)
Chandos
CD
$21.99Sep 24, 2013
With this new release Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra continue their critically acclaimed series exploring Polish music for Chandos. It features two large scale works by Karol Szymanowski, the expressive Stabat Mater and the vigorous and colorful ballet Harnasie. The Stabat Mater, recorded here in its 1965 revised version, features a cast of internationally acclaimed soloists: Lucy Crowe, Pamela Helen Stephen, Robert Murray and Gabor Bretz.
Berio had an abiding fascination with reconciling the past and the present, which can be seen in his orchestral realisations of works by Mahler and Brahms, and most notably, in Rendering (1990), his typically creative completion of unfinished symphonic sketches by Schubert. In Rendering, Berio - in his own words - sets himself the target of 'following those modern restoration criteria that aim at reviving the old colours without, however, trying to disguise the damage that time has caused, often leaving inevitable empty patches in the composition'. In the 'restoration', Schubert's sketches have been beautifully orchestrated in period style, and the 'empty patches' have been filled with music composed by Berio himself, in his own voice - thereby successfully combining the musical worlds of the early nineteenth and late twentieth centuries into one convincing whole. The Clarinet Sonata by Brahms embodies the composer's taut and concentrated compositional style. In transcribing the work, Berio felt that, when experienced in the less intimate surroundings of today's concert halls, the extreme compression of Brahms's late chamber music style was in need of some additional support, and his version, recorded here, includes a fourteen-bar orchestral introduction to the first movement, leading into Brahms's own, much shorter opening phrase, as well as five additional bars at the beginning of the second movement. Berio completed his orchestration of six early songs by Gustav Mahler in 1987, and conducted the first performance with the Toscanini Orchestra on 7 December that year,with Thomas Hampson the baritone soloist. The six songs in this orchestrated set are 'Hans und Grete', 'Phantasie', 'Scheiden und Meiden', 'Erinnerung', 'Frühlingsmorgen', and 'Ich ging mit Lust durch einen grünen Wald'. The Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra is conducted by Edward Gardner, with Roderick Williams the baritone soloist in the songs by Mahler and Michael Collins the soloist in Brahms's Clarinet Sonata.
Edward Gardner and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra present Volume 2 in their series Mendelssohn in Birmingham; this time they perform Symphonies Nos 1 and 3 and the Overture to Ruy Blas. The impressive first volume was roundly praised, International Record Review commending the ‘powerfully engaging and alert performances’, while The Sunday Times made it their ‘Album of the Week’.
Among the fruits of his prodigiously gifted youth were thirteen string symphonies, which Mendelssohn composed privately as ‘practice’ pieces. At age fifteen he returned to the last of these, expanded the orchestration, and published it as the first of his mature numbered symphonies. As heard here, this energetic work, bursting with youthful high spirits, shows the influence of Mozart, Beethoven, and Weber, but that influence is always absorbed in a personal way.
Although numbered as the third of five, the ‘Scottish’ Symphony was actually the last which Mendelssohn composed. Inspiration for it had come while Mendelssohn was visiting Edinburgh in 1829. He was immediately moved to compose the brooding melody that begins and ends the work, but not until 1842 did he actually finish this masterpiece.
No such time span was needed to complete the Overture to Victor Hugo’s tragedy Ruy Blas, which was commissioned only three days before the production’s opening night. Mendelssohn loathed Hugo’s drama and though the opening is suitably sombre, the rest of the overture disregards the play’s form and character, concluding in celebration where Hugo’s story culminates in murder and suicide.
Review:
Gardner conducts these pieces with a highly satisfying blend of freedom and discipline. In some of Mendelssohn's more lyrical moments you need a metronome to judge his rhythmic flexibility, so naturally does he apply it, and throughout the disc the strings articulate with splendid vigor.
Schoenberg: Erwartung & Pelleas und Melisande /Jakubiak, Gardner, Bergen Philharmonic
Chandos
SACD
$21.99May 01, 2020
Written only six years apart, these two works share a common narrative of frustrated love, and the concept of the forest as a metaphor for the subconscious mind. Musically they are wildly different, however; Pelleas, which Schoenberg wrote in his late twenties, is the epitome of his late romantic style, indebted to Richard Strauss. Erwartung (his first work for the stage) was written after his conversion to atonality. Maurice Maeterlinck’s play Pelleas et Melisande fired the imaginations of several of the greatest composers of the time. Debussy began writing his opera almost immediately after its publication in 1892, and within a decade or so Faure and Sibelius had created elaborate incidental scores for different stage productions of the play. Schoenberg composed his tone poem in 1902 – 03, for a large-scale (Straussian) orchestra. Schoenberg seems to have put himself into a state of free association to write Erwartung, which he completed in just seventeen days in August 1909. ‘In Erwartung, the aim is to represent in slow motion everything that occurs during a single second of maximum spiritual excitement, stretching it out to half an hour’, he wrote. Not only the first solo opera, this is perhaps also the first cinematic one.
REVIEW:
Gardner keeps the music’s sumptuousness on a tight rein, favouring faster tempi than most other interpreters. But he makes sure the shape of the huge musical structure is never compromised, and there’s no lack of tonal weight when required from the Bergen Philharmonic. Jakubiak is a compelling soprano soloist too, far less histrionic and squally than some.
This is the fourth volume in Chandos’ series devoted to the music of the Polish composer Witold Lutosławski. Described by Gramophone as a ‘veritable dream team’, Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra perform Symphony No. 2 and the Little Suite, and are joined by Paul Watkins as the soloist in the Cello Concerto and Grave.
Hot on the heels of their acclaimed recording of Britten’s Peter Grimes, Stuart Skelton and Edward Gardner join forces with Christine Rice and the BBC Symphony Orchestra for this fascinating programme of early twentieth-century works. Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht needs no introduction, but far rarer is Oscar Fried’s contemporaneous setting of the same poem. Composed in 1901 for soloists and orchestra, Fried’s version is a true setting of (as opposed to Schoenberg’s reflection on) the text by Richard Dehmel. Lehár wrote Fieber in 1915 as the closing part of his song cycle Aus eiserner Zeit – he then made the orchestral setting a year later. Korngold’s Lieder des Abschieds (Songs of Farewell) date from the early 1920s, whilst he was still in Vienna, and shortly after he had completed the opera Die tote Stadt. Setting poetry by Christina Rossetti, Edith Ronsperger, and Ernst Lothar, the cycle is a poignant reflection on the Great War.
Tying in with the 100-year anniversary in 2013 of the composer’s birth, we here present two such works, performed by the BBC Philharmonic under Edward Gardner with Chandos stars Tasmin Little and Howard Shelley. The Violin Concerto, here performed dazzlingly by Little, is essentially tragic and weighty in tone, perhaps reflecting his growing concern with the escalation of war-related hostilities. Under Shelley’s fingers the Piano Concerto – in a rare recording with the original third movement, “Recitative and Aria” – is generally lighter and brighter, more transparent and simpler in style.
First performed in Dresden in 1909, Elektra was Strauss's first collaboration (of many) with the librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and is the most modernist of all of his operas. Based on the (heavily reworked) play by Sophocles, Hofmannsthal's version concentrates on the inner thoughts and feelings of Elektra as she holds individual conversations with other members of her family. Strauss's score is exceptionally adventurous harmonically, and famously features the Elektra Chord (a simultaneous combination of E major and C sharp major). The orchestration is exceptionally lavish - even by Strauss's standards - featuring eight horns, six trumpets, double timpani, and two harps. The performance was recorded live in Bergen in December 2023, Edward Gardner conducting a cast led by the great Swedish dramatic soprano Iréne Theorin, one of the finest Elektras of our time.
Oscar Wilde's play Salome was conceived for the actress Sarah Bernhardt and was originally planned for performance in London, in 1892. The play was blocked by the sensor (it was forbidden at the time to depict biblical characters on stage) and so first given in Paris instead, in 1896. Wilde never saw his play performed, as he was serving a prison sentence for homosexual acts whilst the only two performances in his lifetime occurred. Subsequently the play gained popularity in Germany, and having attended a performance in Berlin in 1902, Strauss determined that this would be the subject for his third opera. First performed in 1905, Strauss's Salome has gone on to become much better-known than Wilde's play, and is regularly performed at opera houses around the world. This live recording was made at a performance at the Usher Hall, in Edinburgh, as part of the Edinburgh International Festival in August 2022. Edward Gardner and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra are joined by an outstanding cast of soloists, led by Malin Bystrom in the title role, Gerhard Siegel as Herod, Katarina Dalayman as Herodias, and Johan Reuter as John the Baptist.
Edward Gardner's series of Nielsen symphonies with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra continues with this recording of No. 5, complemented with the overture Helios and the Clarinet Concerto, featuring Alessandro Carbonare as soloist. Nielsen composed Helios in 1903 on a trip to Greece, as his wife, Anne Marie, a sculptor, had won a grant to copy sculptures on the Acropolis. Over it's ten-twelve-minute duration, the work depicts sunrise, noontime, and then sunset over the Aegean Sea, and is one of the composer's most performed works. The Clarinet Concerto dates from 1928 and is cast in one long movement falling into four sections. It is dedicated to Nielsen's friend Aage Oxenvad who gave the first performance. Composed between 1920 and 1922, the Fifth Symphony is unusually laid out in just two movements - the only piece by Nielsen to adopt this structure. Unlike his other mature symphonies, the fifth lacks a subtitle, and so could be considered to be more 'pure music' compared to the descriptive nature of the others. Nielsen described the symphony as 'the division of dark and light, the battle between evil and good' and the opposition between 'Dreams and Deeds'. Considered by many as a "war symphony", Nielsen insisted that he had not been thinking of World War I whilst he was composing the work, but also commented "not one of us is the same as we were before the war".
Grieg’s four Symphonic Dances are a late work, completed in 1898. Grieg takes his inspiration (as in so much of his output) from traditional Norwegian folk tunes, and the four movements together deliver a symphonic unity in their overall effect. Both Bergliot and Before a Southern Convent are written on texts by Grieg’s good friend the author Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, who was also a theatre manager in Oslo. Bjørnson is considered one of the four great Norwegian authors alongside Ibsen, Lie, and Kielland, received the 1903 Nobel Prize for literature, and wrote the words for the Norwegian national anthem. Bergliot – a declamation with orchestra – tells the story of a dramatic episode involving the chieftain Einar Tambarskjelve and his son Eindride, killed by King Harald Hårdråde. Before a Southern Convent is a more traditional setting – requiring two vocal soloists, female choir, and orchestra rather than the narrator of Bergliot – of the story of the folk-hero and barbarian Arnljot Gelline. In the course of his wild escapades, he killed a chieftain, but allowed the chieftain’s daughter, Ingigerd, to live. This daughter left the homestead and wandered southwards in poverty – through Europe. At long last she arrived at a convent which granted her admittance. The album is completed by the Funeral March for Rikard Nordraak – a friend of Grieg’s, who died of tuberculosis in 1866. Grieg conceived it first for solo piano, but whilst travelling by train to Bergen to attend Grieg’s funeral, Johan Halvorsen made the orchestral arrangement heard in this recording.
Born in Bergen in 1985, the Norwegian saxophonist and composer Marius Neset has earned countless nominations and awards for his performances and recordings, and has performed with jazz musicians all over the world. He is increasingly in demand as a composer of works for the concert hall; these range over a wide spectrum of performing forces, many featuring the saxophone. This album features four world première recordings, three of which feature the composer as saxophone soloist. MANMADE is a concerto for saxophone and symphony orchestra in which the form and the structure are inspired by the climate change which our times are experiencing. The work is divided into five movements which concern themselves with man-made historical innovations that have contributed to the development of society, but that in many ways have also brought us step by step to the great global challenges facing the world today. Originally scored for flute, string quartet, and piano, Windless is a piece that Neset was keen to re-score for saxophone and orchestra. Similarly, A Day in the Sparrow’s Life started out as a piece for solo saxophone that has grown (via saxophone and string quartet) to the full orchestral score recorded here. Every Little Step was composed during lockdown when we all had to maintain a distance, and spend time by ourselves. It was also a period when we had to stand together in making all the small but crucial changes that would get us to the finish line. To Neset, it also offered the possibility of spending a lot of time with his new-born daughter and following her development from day to day.
Composed between 1865 and 1868, Brahms's Ein deutsches Requiem has become a repertoire staple for choirs around the world, amateur and professional alike, possibly because it relies so much more on the choir than it's soloists to convey the texts than other works. Brahms chose not to set the Requiem Mass, but rather a collection of biblical texts of his own selection, taken from the Lutheran Bible (hence the 'deutsches'). Rather than a prayer for the dead, Brahms's concern is much more with offering comfort to the bereaved, still on earth. When challenged about the lack of a single reference to Christ in the entire work, Brahms responded, 'I would gladly omit even the word German and simply put Human'. This adds credence to the view that he saw the work in an entirely humanist way, and that the religious overtones of the title and text selection are much more a result of the avowedly Christian culture of his times than a specific decision to express personal belief. Edward Gardner and his Bergen forces are joined by the soloists Johanna Wallroth and Brian Mulligan in this exciting new recording.
Schubert: Symphonies nos. 1 & 4 [Vol. 3] / Gardner, City of Birmingham Symphony Orch.
Chandos
SACD
$21.99Apr 14, 2023
For the third volume in their cycle of Schubert’s symphonies, Edward Gardner and the CBSO turn to the first and fourth symphonies. Composed in 1813, when Schubert was just sixteen, the First Symphony admirably demonstrates the young composer’s grasp of symphonic form and technique, and whilst the influences of Haydn, Mozart and early Beethoven are clearly audible, the spirit of Schubert’s own distinctive voice is certainly in evidence.
Composed three years later, in 1816, the ‘Tragic’ Fourth Symphony is scored for larger forces and is much more ambitious in outlook – Schubert seemingly anxious to create a more substantial work. He took more trouble to unify his thematic material across the four movements, and the symphony is clearly closer to the style of his later works. The Overture to his opera ‘Fierrabras’ completes the album, which was recorded in Birmingham Town Hall
His First Symphony famously took Brahms twenty-one years from conception to first performance - a marker of both his own highly self-critical assessment of his output, combined with the expectation of everyone around him that his symphonic output would naturally pick up where Beethoven had left off. Astonishingly, his Second Symphony was begun in June 1877 and received it's first performance just six months later, by the Vienna Philharmonic and Hans Richter. It's cheerful nature and pastoral mood are also a stark contrast to the first symphony. Following a gap of some six years, Brahms returned to the form in 1883, and composed his third and then fourth symphonies in quick succession. Begun in 1884, the Fourth Symphony was premièred by Brahms and the Meiningen court orchestra in October 1885. The work is especially notable for it's last movement, which takes the form of a passacaglia (an extremely rare occurrence) and is the only one of Brahms's symphonies to end in a minor key.
Nordheim: The Tempest - Suite from the Ballet / Gardner, Bergen Philharmonic
LAWO Classics
CD
$18.99Feb 03, 2023
The Bergen Philharmonic and Chief Conductor Edward Gardner present Arne Nordheim's "The Tempest" (Suite from the Ballet). Arne Nordheim was Norway’s most significant and respected composer until his death in 2010, and one of the few figures in contemporary western music who proved himself able to move beyond traditional harmonic relationships while maintaining a distinct ability to communicate widely through his striking, physical music.
![Schubert: Symphonies nos. 1 & 4 [Vol. 3] / Gardner, City of Birmingham Symphony Orch.](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/4190955-3139262.jpg?v=1786679062&width=800)
![Schubert: Symphonies nos. 1 & 4 [Vol. 3] / Gardner, City of Birmingham Symphony Orch.](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/0095115526521.pt01.jpg?v=1786679062&width=800)
![Schubert: Symphonies nos. 1 & 4 [Vol. 3] / Gardner, City of Birmingham Symphony Orch.](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/4190955-3139262.jpg?v=1786679062&width=400)
