More than 200 years after its premiere at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras and Martin Helmchen have congenially mastered the artistic challenge of Beethoven’s gemstone. Under Herbert Blomstedt's sensitive direction, the soloists unite chamber musical intimacy together with virtuoso sophistication – and prove once again that the Triple Concerto is an unduly underestimated, much too rarely programmed masterpiece. With the composer's 5th Symphony, Blomstedt succeeds in achieving an entirely new perspective of this work. In the culmination of his three-year, intensive reenactment of Beethoven’s cosmos, the impressive sound that characterizes the Swedish grand seigneur's conducting is heralded by transparency rather than showmanship, relevance instead of pathos, and tenderness in place of sentimentality.

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This box set contains three extraordinary ballet choreographies by the successful German choreographer Christian Spuck for the Ballett Zürich whose ballet director he has been since the 2012/13 season: Verdi’s Messa da Requiem conducted by Fabio Luisi, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker and Mouse King, conducted by Paul Connelly, and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet conducted by Michail Jurowski. Christian Spuck comes from Marburg and was trained at the John Cranko School in Stuttgart. He began his dance career with Jan Lauwers’ Needcompany and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s Ensemble Rosas. In 1995 he became a member of the Stuttgart Ballet and served as the company’s resident choreographer from 2001 to 2012. In Stuttgart he created fifteen world premieres, including the story ballet Lulu. Eine Monstretragödie after Frank Wedekind, Der Sandmann and Das Fräulein von S. after E.T.A. Hoffmann. Since the 2012/13 season, Christian Spuck has been director of Ballett Zürich.

“In this work,” says Zhu Xiao-Mei, “Bach gave musical expression to life in all of its infinite facets.” The Chinese pianist’s name is inextricably linked to that of Johann Sebastian Bach. For Zhu Xiao-Mei the special quality of the Goldberg Variations lies in the fact that all human emotions and feelings find expression here. “I love them above all else, each day a little more, and I have always wanted to share this love with others...” Since her first pioneering recording of the Goldberg Variations more than twenty years ago, Zhu Xiao-Mei has played the work several hundred times at recitals all over the world. Through the encounter with her audiences she has evolved a new vision of the work, which she is now presenting to listeners in the form of this new recording. “It is the cyclical character of the work that I believe affects listeners the most. It begins and ends in the same way. And when we again hear the Aria, we have the impression that we have understood something. It is about life and death. The Chinese will quote Lao Tzu: “The return is the movement of Tao.” Christians will talk about eternal life. It is also about the idea that there is no ending. And so there is hope.“

Franz Schubert’s Winterreise, a cycle of 24 songs for voice and piano set to poems by Wilhelm Müller, is not only regarded as the zenith of Schubert’s song composition, but as the pinnacle of German art song in its entirety. German composer Hans Zender arranged the cycle in 1993 with the title: “Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’ – a composed interpretation“. Zender’s version for tenor and chamber orchestra reveals the cycle’s potential to disturb, and approaches Wilhelm Müller’s poems in its own way. Zender pushes into the darkest regions of human existence. With his interpretation, he brings to light emotions that pulsate just beneath the surface in Schubert’s work, uncovering the uncanny layers in the depths of the music. Like Hans Zender, Christian Spuck’s production, which was awarded the renowned Prix Benois de la Danse in 2019, concerns itself less with illustrating the external stations of the traveler’s journey. Instead, it approaches the cycle with thoroughly comprehensive abstraction. Using a mixture of large ensemble scenes and intimate solo images, Christian Spuck undertakes a journey into the innermost self. As he does so, he explores such timeless themes as love, longing, alienation, and abandonment, allowing the medium of dance to provide new perspectives on one of the greatest works of classical music.

With 22 symphonies, 17 string quartets, 9 concertos, and 7 operas, the composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg left behind an extensive oeuvre. Musically, one can hear the composer's close friendship with Dmitri Shostakovich, although Weinberg's music is more lyrical and romantic in nature. Nevertheless, the composer was long forgotten and his music has only been rediscovered in the last ten years. Gidon Kremer has dedicated himself to the rediscovery and cultivation of Weinberg's music. In February 2020, he performed Weinberg's Violin Concerto op. 67 with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig under the musical direction of Daniele Gatti as part of a series of concerts in honor of the composer's 100th birthday at the Leipzig Gewandhaus. Weinberg completed the concerto in 1959, the culmination of one of his most creative and successful phases of the 1950s. The work captivates with its large symphonic structure and its four movements, which are rather atypical for a concerto. Also in 1959, Weinberg composed the Sonata for Two Violins op. 69, which Kremer recorded with the Latvian violinist Madara Petersone, concert master of the Kremerata Baltica.

REVIEW:

The live performance of the Concerto crackles with excitement as Kremer traces the unusual quasi-dramatic structure, quite unlike anything Shostakovich ever wrote. It is a passionate work, immensely appealing in Kremer’s hands. The concerto has been recorded from time to time before on small labels, but this feels like a performance that will carve out a permanent place for it in the repertory. Bringing down the curtain is a Sonata for two violins, Op. 69, of the same period, in which Kremer is ably joined by Kremerata Baltica violinist Madara Petersone, offers him opportunities to display his purring top register and is compelling and tight. This work has rarely been recorded. Accentus cleanly renders the Gewandhaus sound in the concerto, and the sonata was recorded at Lithuania’s ideal Paliesiaus dvaras. An exciting release that continues to advance Weinberg’s reputation.

– AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

Charles Ives 150 (1874-1954)

“In case I don’t get to finishing this, somebody might like to try to work out the idea, and the sketch that I’ve already done would make more sense to anybody looking at it with this explanation.” (Charles Ives)

Inspired by these enticing words, director Christoph Marthaler, conductor Titus Engel, and stage designer Anna Viebrock developed their own highly individual take on an unfinished project by the American composer Charles Ives: the Universe Symphony, one of the great utopian works of the 20th century. Based on the musical work initially intended for 4250 musicians, the stage production Universe, Incomplete, mounted at the Ruhrtriennale 2018, incorporates elements and music from Charles Ives’ entire oeuvre. The production is complemented by the documentary film The Unanswered Ives, which takes the viewer back to the composer’s hometown in Danbury, Connecticut and retraces Ives’ New England heritage. Presented like a collage, the film reveals a man who was far ahead of his time – a solitary radical in music and pioneer in polytonal harmony and multiple rhythms who was able to draw from the rich tradition of American music.

REVIEW:

A performance from the Ruhrtriennale 2018 on the one and a film about the composer Charles Ives on the other DVD present the incomplete universe of the unanswered Ives. The performance is based on fragments of the Universe Symphony. Ives planned a happening in a mountainous landscape with more than 4,000 participants, to which the audience would wander during the performance. From these fragments, the two longest parts were combined with other early works by Ives into a two-hour event. The quite spacious Jahrhunderthalle in Bochum virtually replaces the mountains. The result is a performance that is at first glance as inexplicable as it is fascinating. The performers move back and forth between reality and dream and tell a compelling story that shows both the complicated and the deterrent as well as the folk-related aspect of the composer Ives.

In the almost one-hour film The Unanswered Ives musical recordings as well as statements from musicians and residents from Ives’ birthplace in Danbury, Connecticut, give in brief sketches a friendly but not exaggerated look at this enfant terrible of the US American music scene.

– Pizzicato

Intrigue, family tragedies, power struggles - these words aptly describe Verdi's opera "Simon Boccanegra". The composer himself once said "The piece is dark because it has to be, but it is gripping." And the opera, in which it is primarily the men who guide the story and in which there is only one female role, has been experiencing a renaissance at the world's great opera houses in recent years. In December 2020, Andreas Homoki's new production premiered at the Opernhaus Zürich. Christian Gerhaher made his celebrated role debut as "Simon Boccanegra" - due to the pandemic, only in front of 50 people in the hall and with the orchestra placed in the rehearsal room at Kreuzplatz, 1km away. But the opera was also broadcast live on TV, directed by Michael Beyer. The critics raved: "One experiences facial expressions and gestures almost up close, realizing only in the close-up how involved the protagonists are in the action down to every blink of an eye." (FAZ)

Intrigue, family tragedies, power struggles - these words aptly describe Verdi's opera "Simon Boccanegra". The composer himself once said "The piece is dark because it has to be, but it is gripping." And the opera, in which it is primarily the men who guide the story and in which there is only one female role, has been experiencing a renaissance at the world's great opera houses in recent years. In December 2020, Andreas Homoki's new production premiered at the Opernhaus Zürich. Christian Gerhaher made his celebrated role debut as "Simon Boccanegra" - due to the pandemic, only in front of 50 people in the hall and with the orchestra placed in the rehearsal room at Kreuzplatz, 1km away. But the opera was also broadcast live on TV, directed by Michael Beyer. The critics raved: "One experiences facial expressions and gestures almost up close, realizing only in the close-up how involved the protagonists are in the action down to every blink of an eye." (FAZ)

Franz Schubert’s Winterreise, a cycle of 24 songs for voice and piano set to poems by Wilhelm Müller, is not only regarded as the zenith of Schubert’s song composition, but as the pinnacle of German art song in its entirety. German composer Hans Zender arranged the cycle in 1993 with the title: “Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’ – a composed interpretation“. Zender’s version for tenor and chamber orchestra reveals the cycle’s potential to disturb, and approaches Wilhelm Müller’s poems in its own way. Zender pushes into the darkest regions of human existence. With his interpretation, he brings to light emotions that pulsate just beneath the surface in Schubert’s work, uncovering the uncanny layers in the depths of the music. Like Hans Zender, Christian Spuck’s production, which was awarded the renowned Prix Benois de la Danse in 2019, concerns itself less with illustrating the external stations of the traveler’s journey. Instead, it approaches the cycle with thoroughly comprehensive abstraction. Using a mixture of large ensemble scenes and intimate solo images, Christian Spuck undertakes a journey into the innermost self. As he does so, he explores such timeless themes as love, longing, alienation, and abandonment, allowing the medium of dance to provide new perspectives on one of the greatest works of classical music.

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Mieczyslaw Weinberg's Trumpet Concerto op. 94 was composed in his most productive creative phase and premiered in Moscow on 6 January 1968. Shostakovich once described it as a "symphony for trumpet and orchestra" - no wonder, since it showcases the whole variety of Weinberg's compositions: from the bitingly humorous first and sumptuously colorfully orchestrated second movement to the wonderfully collage-like finale, fabulously interpreted by Hakan Hardenberger to celebrate the composer’s 100th anniversary. After the Sixth and Fifth Symphonies, Andris Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig add Tchaikovsky’s Fourth to their cycle featuring the symphonic works of this outstanding composer.

Mieczyslaw Weinberg composed his 24 solo cello Preludes in the late 1960s for Mstislav Rostropovich. The pieces are terse, aphoristic, and unpredictable, redolent of Shostakovich’s late-period chamber works, or the miniatures of Kurtag. Although Rostropovich never played the Preludes, something of this cellist’s exuberant spirit can be found in Josef Feigelson’s emotive, large-scale performance on Naxos. The same holds true for Gidon Kremer, who has transcribed the Preludes for violin.

Although one loses the the cello’s bass-to-treble-register tessitura, Kremer compensates by intensifying dynamic contrasts and articulations. As a result, the repeated phrases of Nos. 2 and 19 sound fascinatingly quirky and obsessive here, rather than merely playful. On the other hand, the violin arguably lends itself better to No. 7’s rapidly spinning figurations. On violin, the Sarabande (No. 18) takes on a stentorian character quite different from the cello’s warmer resonant overtones. The elegant concluding Menuet (No. 24) falls within the cello’s tenor and mezzo-soprano ranges in such a way that the long lines suggest a seamless conversation between two singers. By contrast, the music’s high-lying range on the violin conveys a completely different impression: ethereal, otherworldly.

I wouldn’t want to be without Feigelson’s standard-setting recording of Weinberg’s original cello versions, yet Kremer’s effective arrangements and fiercely focused interpretations deserve equal consideration. Allow these pieces to grow on you over time; they’re well worth your attention.

– ClassicsToday (Jed Distler)

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Recorded live at the Gwandhaus in 2018, this excellent program from the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and their conductor Andris Nelsons features Tchaikovsky’s Symphonies Nos. 4, 5, and 6, as well as works by Mozart, Mussorgsky, Shostakovich, and Weinberg, making for a thrilling and well-rounded programme. Andris Nelsons is Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. These two positions, in addition to his leadership of a pioneering alliance between both institutions, have firmly established Grammy Award-winning Nelsons as one of the most renowned and innovative conductors on the international scene today. “Andris Nelsons conducted with concise focus and vigor and elicited the orchestra both tonal beauty and technical precision and visible enthusiasm.” (THE BOSTON GLOBE)

REVIEW:

Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” shows a dynamic use of tempo: In general, the fast music is very fast, the slow music quite slow, and Nelsons speeds up and slows down as the mood of the music changes. The first movement has lovely woodwind solos, particularly the important ones for clarinet. There is fine attention to dynamics, particularly in the second and fourth movements. The ending disappears into silence, and the hall remains silent for what seems like an impossible length of time before finally erupting into applause.

– Fanfare

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Christian Spuck puts the literary origin at the heart of his choreography of “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King”, emphasizing the fantastical nature of the original rather than the delightful Christmas fairytale and bringing back the tale of princess Pirlipat, who turns into a nut monster, as told by E.T.A. Hoffmann. On stage, Drosselmeier’s workshop turns into an old revue-theater, where the ballet’s characters come to life. Spuck’s choreography plays with the richness of characters in Hoffmann’s narrative cosmos, the absurdity and overwrought humor that inhabit them, while at the same time looking down into the dark abyss of Romanticism. This production was recorded at the Opernhaus Zürich April 2018

Two cantatas written by Johann Sebastian Bach for Michaelmas in 1726 and 1728/29 respectively build the framework of this recording. They tell of the Archangel Michael‘s victory over Satan. At the center of the cantata “Es erhub sich ein Streit“ is the tenor aria “Bleibt, ihr Engel“ (Stay, ye angels), which gives this recording its name. Embedded in these two magnificent, dramatic works with timpani and trumpets are two more intimate cantatas that sing the song of peace. In the introductory Sinfonia and the two alto arias of “Gott soll allein mein Herze haben“, the organ is highlighted as a virtuoso solo instrument - perfect for the Hildebrandt organ in the Naumburg Wenceslas Church, which lends a special color to this recording. The final chorale contains a message that can also be found in the subsequent solo cantata “Friede sei mit Dir“ and can be regarded as a statement of the entire program: “So that we love one another from our hearts and remain with one mind in peace.”

 

REVIEW:

 

The Cantorey has four voices on each part, and it retains the rich, plummy sound of German choirs. However, the instruments have a considerably spikier texture that brings out Bach’s responses to the text. These are mostly solo cantatas, and your mileage may vary with the soloists, some of whom follow the early-music pruning of vibrato, while others do not.  Another attraction is the work of organist David Franke, playing the small and very distinctive organ at the Stadtkirche St. Wenzel in Naumburg, which has an almost ringing sound. In all, if you’re thinking this is just another Bach cantata recording, you would be wrong.

 

– AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

With the violin concertos by Jean Sibelius and Igor Stravinsky, Zhi-Jong Wang and the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Thomas Sanderling, dedicate themselves to two works from the beginning of the twentieth century. Although the two works were composed only thirty years apart from one another, they could not be any more contrasting: minor against major, dark, mystical and introverted against exciting, suspenseful and sometimes ironic. And yet, in the contrasts of these two concertos, the virtuoso and inspiring interpretation of the Chinese violinist reveals something amazingly unifying. Noticed by Yehudi Menuhin at a young age, Zhi-Jong Wang is considered one of the most promising violinists of her generation and continues to receive increasing international attention. She currently studies with Maestro Kolja Blacher at the Hochschule fur Musik “Hanns Eisler” Berlin, and holds the position of the youngest faculty member at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.