When the First World War broke out in 1914, the music world did not remain unaffected. Artists inevitably became involved, either as soldiers at the front or as composers of patriotic music or musical memorials to a lost world. The three-part documentary series investigates the (un)known, overt and hidden connections between music, power, war and revolution. Beginning with what led to this great human tragedy, each episode addresses different perspectives of the relationship between music and politics. While Parts One and Two explore both the hopeful and subsequently tragic entanglements of art and politics to which so many artists fell victim during the First World War and the October Revolution, Part Three embarks on a search for the political aspects of music up to this day. Featuring Daniel Barenboim, Valery Gergiev, Ivan Fisher, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Steffen Schleiermacher, Julia Sophie Wagner, Vladimir Stoupel, and many more, this release is a production of Accentus Music in co-production with WDR, in co-operation with Arte and supported by Mitteldeutsche Medienf�rderung.

Unlike any other composer Giuseppe Verdi illuminates the great emotions and opulent melodies of the Italian opera. Created exclusively for the occasion of the celebrated composer's 200th birthday, Beijing's most important opera house, the National Centre for the Performing Arts, presents an exceptional gala: Viva Verdi. It features stars from the opera world such as Dilb�r or Roberto Scandiuzzi as they perform the best moments from Verdi's operas and his Messa da Requiem in a visually stunning production by director Hugo de Ana. As the moderator of Viva Verdi actor Zhang Guoli sheds more light on the composer behind the brilliant music. An international festival for opera fans, which once again gives emphasis to the reputation of the National Centre for the Performing Arts as "the most prestigious venue of it's kind in China"

Classical Music

Bruckner’s famous “Romantic” Symphony No. 4 forms the prelude to a spectacular DVD series from Accentus Music and Unitel Classica, exploring Bruckner’s symphonic cosmos. Recorded live at Philharmonie Berlin on 20 June 2010, Der Tagesspiegel describes Barenboim’s Bruckner as ‘… conceived and performed very theatrically, like an opera without words.”

Sunwook Kim came to international recognition when he won the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition in 2006, aged just 18, becoming the competition's youngest winner for 40 years as well as it's first Asian winner. He has appeared as a concert soloist with some of the world's leading orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and many more. On this release, Sunwook Kim performs Beethoven's Waldstein and Hammerklavier piano sonatas. Beethoven's piano sonatas came to be seen as the first cycle of major piano pieces suited to concert hall performance.

On this new release, violinist Judith Ingolfsson and pianist Vladimir Stoupel present a lovely program of works by Poulenc, Ferroud, and Ravel. Judith Ingolfsson and Vladimir Stoupel are both soloists with strong profiles, who search passionately for new paths in the intimate atmosphere of the chamber music recital. Their dedication and musical curiosity leads to performances and recordings of repertoire ranging from the traditional to the unjustly forgotten or neglected. With a special focus on music of the 20th Century, the Duo Ingolfsson-Stoupel presents dynamic programs that explore the countless fascinating connections between composers, history and the power of musical communication. A recent world premiere performance of the Sonata for Violin and Piano by Paul Arma at the Konzerthaus Berlin was hailed as the “sensation of the evening” by Deutschlandfunk - “there was an intensity in the performance that no one in the audience could escape."

Both accomplished soloists with impressive international careers, violinist Judith Ingolfsson and pianist Vladimir Stoupel began their successful collaboration in 2006. The duo devotes themselves to the discovery and performance of uncommon repertoire. The music of French composer Gabriel Faure (1845-1924) is marked by lyrical lines and flowing harmonies. His elegant music is transparent and virtuosic. These two pieces were written more than four decades apart, and show turning points in the composer’s artistic life. The first sonata was the composer’s breakthrough hit. The success of this work unleashed an interest in his pieces across France. The second sonata is the first piece from the composer’s final period, when he wrote primarily chamber music.

Under the direction of its Chief Conductor Alexander Liebreich, the National Symphony Orchestra of Polish Radio (NOSPR) is the leading ensemble in the country and is one of Europe’s major radio orchestras. As cultural ambassadors with a rich tradition, the orchestra has made its mark through performances of Polish composers, as it is impressively seen on this release that features works by Karol Szymanowski and Witold Lutoslawski. It is the final recording of a three-part cycle of works by these influential Polish composers. The first two releases were unanimously praised by international reviews. Next to the ecstatic Concert Overture in E major, Op. 12, an early work by Szymanowski, the NOSPR performs Lutoslawski's contemplative and yet excessive 4th Symphony, a work that the composer finished shortly before his death in 1994. Gautier Capuçon, one of the leading cellists of his generation, is the impressive soloist in the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, probably the most famous work of Lutoslawski.

In Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1, the violin does not allow itself a break, continually tells it's dark story, revolves around the same thoughts, jokes and mocks, stutters, gets into the vicious circle of ostinato Passacaglia bass lines, loses itself in the loneliness of the extended cadenza and again and again falls into beguilingly beautiful singing. The Stalin regime would not have missed the fact that although a great many things run in small circles here, nothing "runs smoothly", which is why the premiere did not take place until 1955, after Stalin's death. Peter Tchaikovsky initially thought his "Symphony of Fate" was a failure and believed himself to be at the end of his creative powers. The audience's enthusiasm for the work grew with each performance. It was probably the composer's nature, plagued by self-doubt, that made it almost impossible for him to develop a self-confident attitude to his own creative power. This recording of the 5th Symphony is another milestone in Andris Nelson's Tchaikovsky cycle with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig.

Anyone familiar with Bruckner, his symphonic architectures reaching for the stars as well as his later Missas from the 1860s, may well be amazed at how deep his Missa Solemnis is still rooted in the solid tradition of Viennese Classicism. In this recording, this rarely heard and recently re-edited and newly published gem is put into the context of the inauguration service of collegiate provost Friedrich Mayr on 14 September 1854 in St. Florian, for which it was written. It is interspersed with the original Proper settings by Robert Fuhrer, Joseph Eybler, and Johann Baptist Gansbacher. This brilliantly mastered album was recorded at the Konzerthaus Berlin in June 2017 as a coproduction with Deutschlandfunk Kultur.

For Gustav Mahler, composing his early symphonies meant "building a world”. His Ninth, however, seems more concerned with the deconstruction of this world – a look back, a long farewell. In the draft of his score, he noted words like "O youth! Vanished! O love! Blown away! ". In 1909, his idyllic world was destroyed, having been diagnosed with a heart valve defect two years earlier – a disease that would ultimately lead to his death. While his last completed symphony still contains some folksy elements, Mahler composed a heartbreaking Adagio as its Finale. Herbert Blomstedt, Honorary Conductor of the Bamberger Symphoniker, guides the orchestra through this rollercoaster of emotions, ranging between deep sadness, comfort and melancholia. This exceptional recording is the first album release with the Bamberger Symphoniker and their honorary conductor Herbert Blomstedt.

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REVIEW:

It’s not an ideal performance overall, perhaps, but it is a distinctive one in mostly positive ways. It also proves to be an important addition to the Blomstedt discography, an artist whose unassuming but musically exalted presence has graced our concert halls for something like seven decades. Beautiful, clear sonics and two discs for the price of one make this a release that most Mahlerians should hear.

– ClassicsToday

The St. Matthew Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the greatest works in the history of music. Whenever I study this epochal composition, I always ask myself the question: How can a work of music, which is performed each year in thousands of performances, has been scientifically and artistically interpreted for decades, and worshiped for centuries, remain a new, contemporary, and at the same time universal and supreme idea? It can be achieved if that which is defined as established and comprehensive, and appears or is accepted as unshakeable, is set in motion without capping the connections to the work itself and it's musical- historical, intellectual and theological foundations. Says Hans-Christoph Rademann about one of the monumental sacred works of music history. In November 2020, Rademann and the Gaechinger Cantorey ensemble and chorus, together with an extraordinary group of soloists, set out to lend a new and fresh perspective to Bach's timeless masterpiece of raging choirs, intimate chorales, and emotionally charged arias, which, with it's drama and pictorial quality, allows the listener to experience the well-known Passion story again and again as something completely new and unheard-of.

Classical Music

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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 his Sixth Symphony, the “Pastoral”, Ludwig van Beethoven conveys his musical message in such a way that lets the listener literally “see” images of beautiful nature, tempestuous storms, and shepherds singing in the fields, whereas in his Seventh Symphony, Beethoven lets the music speak for itself. The performances of these works by the Gewandhausorchester give the uplifting feeling that the intentions of both composer and performers are united in serving the musical message. The humanist and musician Herbert Blomstedt embodies this truth in a unique way, creating an atmosphere where the wonders of music all become true. Ludwig van Beethoven's 9th Symphony and the musical city of Leipzig are closely intertwined with each other: Felix Mendelssohn, Kapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester, made the work an indispensable part of the concert hall repertoire and Arthur Nikisch, one of his successors, established in 1918 the worldwide tradition of performing this groundbreaking and pioneering work at the end of the year. Herbert Blomstedt once again conducted Beethoven's Ninth in Leipzig for the 2016 New Year celebrations. With his former orchestra, of which he has been Conductor Laureate since 2005 and with whom he enjoys a close friendship, he achieves a gripping interpretation of this monumental work.

The 24 preludes for cello solo by Mieczyslaw Weinberg have a particular history. Composed in the late sixties for Mstislav Rostropovich, he never actually played them. Their musical language is aphoristic, often brutal, provocative in it's inner conflict. It contains many different gestures and is very intense. To perform these preludes might have been problematic in the Soviet Union back then. Gidon Kremer has adapted the Preludes for solo violin and this is the world premiere recording of his adaptation. In his concerts, Kremer often plays them to projections of works by the Lithuanian photographer Antanas Sutkus in the background. This album was recorded at Paliesiaus Dvaras in Lithuania in December 2017.