CD · 1 disc
After the successful release of "Odyssey," pianist Danae Dörken presents her second album on Berlin Classics. Together with her sister - Kiveli Dörken - she invites the listener to embark on an emotional and psychological journey through a very personal selection of music that characterizes the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus. This unique journey aims to become aware of the characteristics represented in each of us and create a balance between them. The technical brilliance present in their playing and the insightful, sensitive interpretations already make this album a highlight. Their deep personal connection and the decades of playing together at the piano are audible in every moment of these recordings and set this album apart.
The premiere of the monumental Third Symphony Op.42 Ilya Murometz on 23rd March 1912 was a huge cultural and political event in Russia. A program symphony, the music depicts the life of Kievan Rus’ folk hero Ilya Muromets. The piece was dedicated to Alexander Glazunov, and won Reinhold Gliere his third Glinka Award. The work lasts between 70 and 80 minutes, and is divided into four sections, each of which depicts an episode from the epic. Gliere wrote a narrative in both Russian and French to accompany the score. On this recording Gabriel Feltz presents the remarkable work together with the orchestra Beogradska filharmonija and makes it clear that we should keep a closer eye on the works of this extremely interesting Russian late romantic.
The Glière Quartet was founded in 2017 in Vienna. It consists of excellent musicians who are passion-ate about chamber music, especially about quartet works: Polish-Austrian violinist Dominika Falger (leader of the 2nd violin section of the Wiener Symphoniker), German violist Martin Edelmann, since 2018 (Wiener Symphoniker), Hungarian cellist Endre F. Stankowsky (Solocello Budapest Opera), and Ukrainian-Austrian first violinist and founder of the ensemble Wladislaw Winokurow specializing in the interpretation of pieces by Ukrainian and Russian composers from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On this release, the Glière Quartet showcases their namesake’s String Quartets, Nos 1 and 2.
Leopold Stokowski was born in London of Polish/Irish ancestry in 1882 and showed such an early aptitude for music that he was able to enter the Royal College of Music at the tender age of 13, the youngest student at that time to do so. His first foreign tour took place in the spring of 1951 when, at the invitation of Sir Thomas Beecham, he took the Royal Philharmonic on a tour of England to coincide with the 'Festival of Britain' that year. It was during this tour that he also made his first appearance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a Royal Festival Hall concert that included Beethoven's 7th Symphony and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. During the next couple of years Stokowski performed many works with the BBC Symphony in a Maida Vale studio programme which included two full-length radio broadcasts. One such broadcast was on May 5, 1954, consisting of Malcolm Arnold's Beckus the Dandipratt, Glière's Concerto for Coloratura Soprano and Orchestra, and the Enescu Romanian Rhapsody No. 1. We must be grateful that Richard Itter recorded the three short works from the first concert, in particular in the case of the Arnold and Glière works, Stokowski was performing both of them for the only time in his life. It was Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony that he played the most, having conducted it for the first time in Cincinnati in 1910. The performance heard here has a certain historical interest as it was the very last time he conducted the work. A packed Royal Albert Hall responded with great enthusiasm to the nonagenarian maestro and indeed to the youthful band of players on the platform.
