Turandot, the late gem of Italian opera, is a celebration of the sounds and the mythical figures intimately associated with Chinese culture. The dramatic punch of the libretto inspired Giacomo Puccini to imagine a sound world of unusual splendor. The score is entrancing and unique, featuring original Chinese melodies, Asian pentatonic scales, and colorful orchestration with percussion writing that is strongly reminiscent of traditional Asian music. The NCPA’s production of this popular opera is a compelling feast for the senses. Chinese composer Hao Weiya gave this Turandot a new finale, performed for the first time in Beijing. In this captivating staging by director Chen Xinyi and under the musical direction of Daniel Oren an excellent cast offers a unique musical experience.

Gustav Mahler’s 8th Symphony breaks the boundaries of the symphonic form in a world-embracing gesture. Riccardo Chailly is one of the staunchest performers of this work, and therefore it seemed appropriate in many ways that he chose this work for his inaugural concert as Claudio Abbado’s successor and new music director of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. The artistic statement was combined with a deeply personal conviction: it should be a “tribute to Claudio,” the highly esteemed friend and colleague to whom Chailly, as he emphasizes, owes very much. On 12 August 2016, Claudio Abbado’s unfinished Mahler cycle with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra was completed in a breathtaking performance of the Mahler 8th, simultaneously heralding in a new era in Lucerne.

Gustav Mahler was already very close to the after-world when he ceased work on the 9th Symphony. So, the work is permeated by a permanent presentiment of death. At the same time, Mahler’s music vibrates full of vital energy, putting the listener in a melancholic, yet optimistic mood simultaneously. The result is a harrowing work with moving passages and violent explosions, mirroring Mahler’s personal drama between life and death. The present recording from the Essen Philharmonie (April 2018) is a perfect proof of all these facts. Tomas Netopil took up the position of General Music Director of the Aalto Theatre and Philharmonie Essen at the start of the 2013/14 season. Netopil made his debut with Sachsische Staatsoper Dresden in 2008. An inspirational force in Czech music, Tomas Netopil is one of the two Principal Guest Conductors of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.

The composition of magnificent symphonies was not exactly the domain of Italian composers of the nineteenth century. However, this became the calling of Giovanni Sgambati, a Liszt pupil very much qualifying as the most important composer of symphonic music in Italy during his century. He contributed more to the renaissance of Italian instrumental music than any other composer, paving the way for its new popularity during the second half of the nineteenth century. Liszt described Sgambati as an “extraordinary and genuine artist,” Richard Wagner recommended his works, and European heads of state decorated him with medals. Although the dates of this Rome native lay rather precisely between those of Verdi and Puccini, he did not compose a single opera and as a composer endeavored to develop a style that would blend the cantability of his fatherland into the structural landscapes of the German romanticists. The harmonic language of his symphonies is tonal but also nuanced with many chromatic means and dissonances. His second symphony was rediscovered only a few years ago and now is celebrating its world recording premiere on cpo.