Kyrill Kondraschin and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks: what had been planned as a happy relationship between the significant representative of the Russian conducting school and the first class Munich ensemble ended tragically with the sudden death of the conductor before he could assume the position of Chief Conductor of the orchestra. All the more significant is thus this sound document. The live recording made at concerts in Munich’s Herkulessaal comprises an exciting program that juxtaposes two late romantic works from different symphonic cultures: Rimsky Korsakov’s “Russian Easter” Overture and César Franck’s only symphony, in D minor.

Classical Music

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Recorded at the Philharmonie am Gasteig, Munich, 2016. As an artist in residence with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the American cellist Yo-Yo Ma had the opportunity to do what is perhaps the second thing he loves the most after playing: sharing his love of music with others. Yo-Yo Ma doesn’t fade away into the music, nor does he take a worshipful attitude towards the pieces he performs. From the moment he walks onto the stage, he exudes charisma that immediately confirms his truly exceptional status as the “best cellist in the world”. With its ten variations on a theme of knightly character for full orchestra, Richard Strauss’ tone poem “Don Quixote” not only depicts the colourful adventures of Cervantes’ chivalrous hero, but also functions as a virtuoso display of glorious solo melodies embedded in stunning orchestral passages. It is, in a way, a second Strauss cello concerto that can take it up with any other late-19th century piece of this kind. Joining “the Don” later is a viola solo that personifies the faithful Sancho Panza and is played by Wen Xiao Zheng.

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Recorded at the Philharmonie am Gasteig, Munich, 2016. As an artist in residence with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the American cellist Yo-Yo Ma had the opportunity to do what is perhaps the second thing he loves the most after playing: sharing his love of music with others. Yo-Yo Ma doesn’t fade away into the music, nor does he take a worshipful attitude towards the pieces he performs. From the moment he walks onto the stage, he exudes charisma that immediately confirms his truly exceptional status as the “best cellist in the world”. With its ten variations on a theme of knightly character for full orchestra, Richard Strauss’ tone poem “Don Quixote” not only depicts the colourful adventures of Cervantes’ chivalrous hero, but also functions as a virtuoso display of glorious solo melodies embedded in stunning orchestral passages. It is, in a way, a second Strauss cello concerto that can take it up with any other late-19th century piece of this kind. Joining “the Don” later is a viola solo that personifies the faithful Sancho Panza and is played by Wen Xiao Zheng.

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Celebrating his 75th birthday with a programme of Stravinsky, Hummel and Beethoven, “everything about Mariss Jansons exudes joy and sovereignty,” wrote Süddeutsche Zeitung. This thrilling, varied concert was recorded in January 2018, with Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra demonstrating the close relationship which has developed between them over the past 18 years. This recording also features a stellar quartet of soloists partnering with one of this fine orchestra, playing under the conductor who, even at 75, continues to inspire them to great artistic heights. Born in 1943 in the Latvian capital of Riga, Mariss Jansons grew up in the Soviet Union as the son of conductor Arvid Jansons, studying violin, viola and piano and completing his musical education in conducting with high honours at the Leningrad Conservatory. Further studies followed with Hans Swarovsky in Vienna and Herbert von Karajan in Salzburg. In 1971 he won the conducting competition sponsored by the Karajan Foundation in Berlin. His work was also significantly influenced by the legendary Russian conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky, who engaged Mariss Jansons as his assistant at the Leningrad Philharmonic in 1972. Over the succeeding years Mariss Jansons remained loyal to this orchestra, today renamed the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, as a regular conductor until 1999, conducting the orchestra during that period on tours throughout the world. Since 2003 Jansons has been Chief Conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.

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REVIEW:

Beethoven insisted that the keynotes of his Mass were cheerfulness and gentleness, and these qualities are evident in a tenderly shaped Sanctus and Benedictus.

– Gramophone

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Celebrating his 75th birthday with a programme of Stravinsky, Hummel and Beethoven, “everything about Mariss Jansons exudes joy and sovereignty,” wrote Süddeutsche Zeitung. This thrilling, varied concert was recorded in January 2018, with Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra demonstrating the close relationship which has developed between them over the past 18 years. This recording also features a stellar quartet of soloists partnering with one of this fine orchestra, playing under the conductor who, even at 75, continues to inspire them to great artistic heights. Born in 1943 in the Latvian capital of Riga, Mariss Jansons grew up in the Soviet Union as the son of conductor Arvid Jansons, studying violin, viola and piano and completing his musical education in conducting with high honours at the Leningrad Conservatory. Further studies followed with Hans Swarovsky in Vienna and Herbert von Karajan in Salzburg. In 1971 he won the conducting competition sponsored by the Karajan Foundation in Berlin. His work was also significantly influenced by the legendary Russian conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky, who engaged Mariss Jansons as his assistant at the Leningrad Philharmonic in 1972. Over the succeeding years Mariss Jansons remained loyal to this orchestra, today renamed the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, as a regular conductor until 1999, conducting the orchestra during that period on tours throughout the world. Since 2003 Jansons has been Chief Conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.

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REVIEW:

Beethoven insisted that the keynotes of his Mass were cheerfulness and gentleness, and these qualities are evident in a tenderly shaped Sanctus and Benedictus.

– Gramophone

For today’s musicologists, performers and concert-going audiences, Mozart’s final symphonies are still a veritable miracle. Why they were written remains a mystery, and no-one knows whether Mozart ever heard them performed during his lifetime. One thing is certain: Mozart created three individual, distinctive and unique works here, which complement each other despite their extreme diversity. The symphonies in E Major, K 543 (no. 39), G minor, K. 550 (no. 40), and C Major, K. 551 (no. 41, also known as “The Jupiter”) are the ones that most represent Mozart’s symphonic legacy to later generations of musicians. With its slow introduction, the Symphony in E flat major also opens the entire cycle, already giving the listener a sense of its highs and lows. As early as 1800, the popular "Great" G minor Symphony was praised as the “painting of a passion-stricken soul”. Like its big sister, the "Jupiter" Symphony in C Major, it numbers among the most-played works in classical music and has been immortalized in countless recordings. Nevertheless, these symphonies - probably the most profound ones before Beethoven - reveal themselves as something quite new in every interpretation.

"Mozart placed all the dark sides of human existence into his G minor Symphony", says Herbert Blomstedt, adding that its “passion” continues to fascinate him. The eminent Swedish conductor Herbert Blomstedt, a close associate and regular guest conductor of the BRSO, conducted the E Major Symphony on December 18 and 19, 2019 in the Philharmonie at the Munich Gasteig, the G minor Symphony in concerts on January 31 and February 1, 2013 and the "Jupiter" Symphony on December 21 and 22, 2017 in the Herkulessaal of Munich’s Residenz. The new 2-CD set from BR-KLASSIK now presents these great cornerstones of Mozart's symphonic oeuvre –in the very best sound quality.

What made Mariss Jansons different from many of his colleagues? What was the key to his success? And most importantly, after all his artistic experiences, what brought about his maturity and artistic completion In addition to his own willpower and his work ethic, his extraordinary musical life was determined by many factors; they included an open-minded and supportive environment, and an orchestra of outstanding musicians. One important aspect was certainly the fact that Jansons despised any kind of routine. Even when rehearsing Beethoven's Eroica for the umpteenth time, he was always inspired anew by the work - discovering the as yet undiscovered. Routine would have prevented any change in his perspective, and hampered his enthusiasm. Moreover there was Jansons' meticulous and analytical approach to his work, which started long before he mounted the podium. He began by reading biographical information on the composer, scholarly information on the work, texts about its era and its milieu - everything he could lay his hands on. During rehearsals, he then passed on his profound knowledge and his resulting interpretive approach to the musicians. Jansons considered it his task, as early as the first rehearsal, to bring all the musicians up to the same level of knowledge. He wanted them to understand his thought processes, to recognise the explained concept behind the work and, ideally, to be able to feel the same way during their performance as he did on the podium. In the concerts, this synchronous implementation by one hundred musicians of the musical content of a work and of the concept inherent in it duly brought about that incredible pull that almost all of Janson's interpretations exert(ed) on his listeners. In addition to this collective aspect of everyone pulling together, Jansons also worked on the sound that is genuine for each composer. In this regard, for instance, he condemned accusations of kitsch where Tchaikovsky's music was concerned. He was aware of the danger of music being played too sweetly. For him, it was simply Tchaikovsky played wrongly, and was like pouring "sugar into honey". It meant a lot to Jansons to bring out the emotions in Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony, of course - the emotional drama, the tragedy, the depression - but he would never force, exaggerate or emphasise them merely for the sake of effect. When the Sixth is performed as sensitively as it is by Jansons, Tchaikovsky's music acquires its true depth of meaning. "A conductor," said Mariss Jansons, "is like a director on the podium" – he analyses, stages and interprets the work. This principle, resulting from his opera conducting, was one that he transferred to the many levels of meaning in symphonic music, and here he developed a kind of directorial concept with precise approaches to interpretation. Works such as Stravinsky's Petrushka or Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique were primarily suited to this, because as programme music they sparked the visual imagination and demanded a certain musical "realism". He wanted the fairground music in Petrushka to sound shrill and out of tune, and asked the musicians to have the courage to articulate their part in just the same manner, rather than trimming it to the expectations of high culture. The contrabassoon was to play roughly, even vulgarly. Jansons was against any attempt to make the music sound pleasant here – he wanted the orchestral barrel-organ to sound out of tune, and the symphonically portrayed drunken passer-by to sound very drunk indeed. Similarly, in Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, the March to the Scaffold passes us by as a musically realistic nightmare, gripping right to the end – when the head of the executed man, severed by the guillotine, falls very audibly to the ground. Jansons also worked especially intensively on modifying the sound of the strings, above all when a phrase had to assume a subtle and psychologically important function. He differentiated playing styles very precisely in individual passages - rough, melancholy, brisk, cynical, gloating, whispering, giggling or radiant – and here he particularly influenced the bow stroke, the pressure on the string and the stroke length.

Two famous orchestral works that were written in the 20th century but breathe the spirit of nineteenth-century music can be heard on this new album from BR-KLASSIK: the ballet music "Carmen Suite", based on the famous melodies from George Bizet's eponymous opera and masterfully arranged and adapted by the composer Rodion Shchedrin in 1968, and Ottorino Respighi's well-known symphonic poem "Pini di Roma" (The Pines of Rome), written in 1924. The name of the Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin is primarily associated in the West with his "Carmen Suite", which has been highly popular ever since its first performance. The thirteen movements of this ballet music are based on Bizet's opera “Carmen”, and carefully adapted to the musical language of the present day. After Shchedrin's wife Maya Plisetskaya, long-time prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Theatre, had vainly asked both Shostakovich and Khachaturian to compose a "Carmen" ballet especially for her, her husband decided to do so instead – a decision that was rewarded with international success. The rousing music in Shchedrin's interpretation sounds very familiar, yet in many ways, entirely new! The Italian composer Ottorino Respighi is especially admired for his masterly instrumentation. The symphonic poems in his "Roman Trilogy", which deal with the fountains, pine trees and festivals of his adopted home city of Rome, made his name immortal. In his “Pines of Rome” he describes four locations in the Eternal City, each with a different historical background. Children play under the pines in the gardens of the Villa Borghese; a solemn hymn can be heard from inside an ancient catacomb; in the pines on Rome’s Janiculum Hill we hear a nightingale singing; and finally, in the morning mists on the Appian Way, we hear a consul leading his army in triumph up the Capitoline Hill.

To follow the release of its November 2015 recording of "Das Rheingold" – the “preliminary evening” of Richard Wagner's cycle "Der Ring des Nibelungen" - BR-KLASSIK is now continuing the cycle with "The Valkyrie". The concert performances were recorded on February 8 and 10, 2019 in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz. With his "Rheingold", Sir Simon Rattle has already decisively disproved the longstanding claim that he and Wagner were unsuited to one another. This next collaboration between the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and the British conductor – with his white curls, wisdom, and confident pose on the cover – not only features a team of first-rate Wagner singers but also reveals once again how well Rattle understands and interprets Wagner's music. Only a few months after the live event, this mighty music drama – a huge success with the public – is being released for the first time on four very fine albums.

Reasons why "The Valkyrie" has become the most popular part of the tetralogy include the heart-rending encounters between the two Wälsungs Siegmund and Sieglinde, the all-too-human gods – and, of course, such musical highlights as Siegmund's "Winter Storms" monologue, “The Ride of the Valkyries”, or "Wotan's Farewell and Magic Fire Music”. Wotan, the father of the gods, is sung by the English bass-baritone James Rutherford; Elisabeth Kulman is back as his argumentative wife Fricka; Eric Halvarson, who was the giant Fafner in Rattle's "Rheingold", now sings the part of the evil Hunding. New additions to the star-studded ensemble of soloists include Irène Theorin as Wotan's favorite daughter Brunnhilde, and Stuart Skelton and Eva-Maria Westbroek as the incestuous twins Siegmund and Sieglinde.

Since its premiere in Prague in 1890, Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony has become one of the composer’s most-performed works. Josef Suk, Dvořák’s son-in-law and student-is obviously influenced by Dvořák, but displays his compositional skills in his own right in his Serenade for Strings. Consistently praised for his interpretation of Slavic music, Mariss Jansons conducts the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks in this live recording.

REVIEW

This disc contains three very fine performances and I thoroughly enjoyed it all. The BR Klassik recording is very good indeed. I’ve come to expect clarity and very pleasing, natural sound from this label and this latest disc is another excellent example of their work.

--MusicWeb International (John Quinn)

Born in Prague in 1979, the composer, conductor and chorus master Ondrej Adámek, who studied in his Czech hometown and in Paris, has already won numerous prestigious awards for his orchestral, chamber, vocal and electro-acoustic music. In his musical language, which also repeatedly incorporates elements of distant cultures, he creates unusual musical narratives. He seeks the authenticity of his interpretations by combining voices and movements, gestures and theatricality, phonetic and semantic aspects, and his own specially developed musical instruments. The premieres of Ondrej Adámek's "Where are You?" and "Follow me" were distinctive for their excellent casts, featuring stars such as Magdalena Kožená, Isabelle Faust and Simon Rattle. In Adámek’s "Follow me", a three-movement concerto for violin and orchestra, the melodies are divided between the soloist and the orchestra along the lines of the late medieval hocket technique, whereby the composer seeks to connect a single individual with a (human) crowd. The first performance of Adámek’s "Where are You?" for mezzo-soprano and orchestra was an outstanding event in Munich's concert programme this year. In the eleven-part, approximately 35-minute-long kaleidoscope of sound, dominated by constant motoric movement – ranging from everyday sounds such as the monotonous ticking of a clock to the sweeping, electrifyingly rhythmic pounding of the orchestra tutti – the composer embarks on a search for the human ("Where do we come from and where are we going?") and the divine.

Review

This is music that grabs the listener by the ears and doesn’t let go. I found it completely exhilarating.

Nothing about either score included on this recording is remotely derivative or even predictable. If I were to say that it is as if Adámek had smashed up all previous music into tiny pieces and then reconstructed them into something marvellous and new, that might give the impression that he is some kind of arch post modernist. He is nothing of the sort. Almost miraculously he manages to be both uncompromisingly modernist and yet intensely communicative. Try his setting of what, in effect amounts to St Theresa’s ecstatic, religious orgasm in the seventh song of Where Are You? and what you’ll get is music that verges on the demented but which manages to be deeply spiritual and very sexy! Both scores are full of such wild, rude, exultant moments.

Follow Me is simultaneously a violin concerto and someone having a lot of fun with what a violin concerto might mean. I am not aware of another concerto that concludes with what amounts to a musical lynching of the soloist by the orchestra. One of the characteristics of Adámek’s writing is his absolute command of even the most outré material. Every note delivers an aural punch. He is of course capable of writing music of great delicacy, as in the concerto’s Bach derived slow movement but even here every note makes its point.

The opening movement features orchestral soloists echoing the opening phrases by the solo violin (the ‘follow me’ of the work’s title), phrases the composer explains in his joyous, quixotic note that were inspired by the exaggerated vibrato of a singer in Japanese Noh theatre. The orchestra, in a sense, gathers round the soloist, repeating her phrases. Isabelle Faust is at her imperious best here. This then subsides into silence before the soloist starts again with more seductive phrases. As Adámek puts it, these phrases provoke the orchestra “eventually driving them mad”. This builds and builds as the various motifs combine and recombine. The tension generated by the gradually gathering of tempo and volume is quite ferocious before Adámek pulls the rug from under the expected eruption and the movement ends with weird whistlings and scrapings out of which the slow movement evolves. A great strength of Adámek’s music is to unsettle the listener whilst keeping them on the edge of their seat.

One of the unifying techniques across all three movements of this concerto is what Adámek likens to a kind of musical ping pong where melodies are split, in alternate notes, between soloist and members of the orchestra. This effect plus an extreme elongation of material taken from Bach is most noticeable in this slow movement. It is a strange and mysterious movement that subsides into the uneasy calm from it emerged.

On a purely technical level, the finale combines all the elements of the previous two movements but that scarcely does justice to the effect it has on the listener. The shadowing of the soloist which gives the work its title is allowed finally to work its way from a hushed, fugitive opening all the way to the mighty climax that the opening movement was robbed of. As in that movement, the following of the soloist by the orchestra becomes more combative- a wry nod I think to the lion taming tradition of the 19^th century virtuoso concerto – and the music, dominated by a rogue trombone, constantly threatens to swamp the soloist whose final phrases are delivered off stage before a final thrilling orchestral stampede rounds things off. Is that a tongue in cheek reference to the final sacrificial dance of the Rite of Spring I hear in this final passage? What this description may not capture is that this is all immensely diverting and colossal fun. The world of Adámek’s music may be capable of great seriousness but it never takes itself too seriously.

Follow Me is, in many ways, the curtain raiser for the even more remarkable Where Are You? My earlier comments have probably already given some indication of what it is like. Written for mezzo soprano and orchestra, it is a song cycle on spiritual themes with texts from the Bible, the Gita and the autobiography of St Theresa. None of this is handled in a conventional manner. The opening section revels in the vowel sounds of the opening line of the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic. A later movement sets possible Czech translations of those Aramaic words. It’s that sort of piece! The theme that unites these disparate elements is the way in which the spiritual quest for the divine however how high it can raise us comes down to earth with the question ‘Where are you?’ left unanswered. It has to be said that the piece celebrates the quest as much as it illustrates its ultimate failure and it does so with affection and good humour as well as profundity and anguish.

The vocalist is required to adopt a huge range of singing styles from breaths and rolled r’s to folk singing to outrageous coloratura. As in most of his other scores that I’ve heard, Adámek can find music in almost anything and make no mistake – this is a musical event above all else. The composer isn’t advancing some obscure musicological idea but making maddening, frenzied, bewildering, exuberant music. Ultimately, like the spiritual quest it describes, words fail to do justice to this piece. You are just going to have to listen to it.

--MusicWeb International (David McDade)

For the last seventeen years of his life – from 2003 to 2019 – Mariss Jansons was chief conductor of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and the Bavarian Radio Chorus. Both ensembles and their conductor appreciated each other deeply on an artistic as well as a human level, and this resulted in numerous unforgettable concerts. Jansons’ unrelenting demands on himself and his musicians, his always respectful treatment of his colleagues, and his great devotion to music all played a lead role in their work together. Mariss Jansons occupies a place of honor in the orchestra’s history, and its players will always revere and cherish his memory. With the death of Mariss Jansons one year ago, the music world lost one of its greatest artistic personalities.

Born the son of conductor Arvids Jansons in Riga in 1943, the young Mariss studied at the Leningrad Conservatory before completing his studies with Hans Swarowsky in Vienna and Herbert von Karajan in Salzburg. In 1971 he was a prizewinner at the Karajan Conducting Competition and began his close collaboration with today's St. Petersburg Philharmonic. From 1979 to 2000, Jansons was Music Director of the Oslo Philharmonic; from 1997 to 2004 he conducted the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra; and in the 2003/04 season he became Chief Conductor of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and the Bavarian Radio Chorus. The 2004/05 season marked the start of his tenure at the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, which ended in 2015. As a guest conductor, he worked with all the leading orchestras of Europe and the USA, and his discography includes many award-winning recordings.

In the complete edition compiled by BR-KLASSIK, the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under the direction of its long-time principal conductor Mariss Jansons explores Mahler's symphonic œuvre. This complete recording of Mahler's impressive symphonies is further enhanced by revealing rehearsal recordings and interesting interviews. In his nine symphonies, Gustav Mahler built up an entire world for himself and his listeners. More than almost any other composer, he tried in his symphonic works to get to the very bottom of the cycle of life, that eternal process of becoming and expiring – so what better complete set of symphonies to express the finest qualities of a modern-day conductor and the unique sound of a leading orchestra?

Mariss Jansons found simple and clear words to express what it was that so fascinated and moved him about Mahler's music throughout his life. He said that the composer’s work always related to what was universal and contained absolutely everything that exists in the world. In his symphonies, said Jansons, Mahler captured nature, faith, love, death, pain, tragedy, happiness, humor, utopia, irony, sarcasm - everything that makes up human existence. Jansons regarded his music as posing questions that ultimately every thinking person has to ask, and everyone can find something in it where they recognize themselves as if in a mirror. There are nevertheless no definitive answers in Mahler, "nothing triumphant that is at one with itself." When he first encountered Mahler’s music, this experience struck Jansons like a bolt from the blue. Gradually, he developed into one of the leading Mahler conductors of his era. The fact that he had the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks as a partner here – an orchestra that can look back on a long Mahler tradition - was certainly a very fortunate coincidence.

Wolfgang Rihm is one of the most important contemporary composers of our time. The musician, professor of composition and author from Karlsruhe, Germany is a larger-than-life personality, and the contemporary music scene is impossible to imagine without him. His knowledge of music is all-encompassing, as is his mastery of the arts, literature and philosophy - all of which serve as sources of inspiration for his composing. With more than 400 compositions, he has created a universe that cannot easily be defined. Rihm has written New Music - the titles of his compositions have come to symbolize the musical history of recent decades. Other works by him refer to music history – they include, for example, oratorios inspired by Bach, orchestral works based on Brahms, or chamber music inspired by Schumann. With this release and a further one of instrumental and vocal chamber music, BR-KLASSIK and musica viva are celebrating the 70th birthday of this influential composer. The album features the large-scale symphonic work Jagden und Formen (2008), which received its world premiere in November 2001 in Basel by the Ensemble Modern. Of the original version, which was created between 1995 and 2001, Rihm composed a new version between 2007 and 2008 that was staged for the first time with a choreography by Sasha Waltz at the Schauspiel Frankfurt, again with the Ensemble Modern playing. - Rihm's orchestral work is so instantly gripping in its urgency and relentlessly motor-like power that it already ranks as a modern classic. In its 2008 state, the "work in progress" that grew over the years reached its final form. What begins as a courtship dance between two violins soon escalates into breathless music that is irresistibly captivating: virtuosic, intoxicating and overflowing with ideas, without ever losing its tension and urgency.

Named Gramophone Magazine Editor's Choice for December 2022!

For the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the performances on November 26 and 27, 2021 in the Isarphilharmonie marked the beginning of a new chapter in its Mahler interpretation: with its designated new principal conductor Simon Rattle, the orchestra is now headed by a Mahler admirer every bit as ardent as his predecessors Mariss Jansons, Lorin Maazel, and Rafael Kubelík. The musicians dedicated the benefit concert on November 26 to the memory of conductor Bernard Haitink, who died in October 2021 and was associated with the renowned orchestra for 61 years. The very long silence after the final chord was one of those “goosebumps moments” that one goes to concerts for – and for which music is made in the first place.

Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, in particular, is understood as the composer’s reaction to a heart ailment that was diagnosed shortly before he wrote the first drafts in the summer of 1908. He was in deep despair, but still scarcely aware of how few years he actually had left to live. With Mahler, it was always in and through music that he tried to come to terms with his life experiences and such topics as farewell, the meaning of existence, death, redemption, life after death and love. He wrote his Ninth Symphony in Dobbiaco, in a kind of creative frenzy, between 1909 and 1910. Its premiere took place in Vienna on June 26, 1912, when the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra performed the work under Bruno Walter. Mahler did not witness the premiere of his last completed work – he had already died on May 18, 1911.

REVIEW:

I would rank Rattle's performance here with the best of the competition and would add that even the classic recordings of Bernstein, Giulini, and Karajan have no significant advantage over Rattle's. In the end Rattle would be my top choice among newer versions and probably the equal of the classic performances on disc.

-- MusicWeb International (Robert Cummings)

If he has always shown very sensitive affinities with Symphony No. 9, Simon Rattle delivers his most accomplished recording to the Bavarian Radio. Recorded live between November 24 and 27, 2021, at the Isarphilharmonie im Gasteig in Munich by Winfried Messmer, [this] powerful orchestral mass presents both great volume and precise definition of timbre and range.

-- Diapason (citation for a Diapason d'or)

The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and its designated principal conductor dedicated one of the two concerts used for this recording to the conductor Bernard Haitink, who died in October 2021. It is a great tribute to this outstanding Mahler conductor, and Rattle once again proves what a major Mahler interpreter he is as well.

Right in the first movement, he succeeds in drawing the whole Mahler world in its gripping originality with magnificent breath. Rising and collapse are always close together, and the exciting alternation between tension and release is maintained throughout the symphony. At the same time, this reading is not lacking in sensuality. There is both lyrical beauty, full of abyss, and the light-hearted (and artfully illuminated) play of sound and movement. The three-movement back-and-forth of emotions leads to the Adagio finale, which Rattle conducts thoughtfully and in moderate tempo. The music dies away in a deeply moving 24 minutes with nostalgia, sadness and also some thoughts of hope.

The orchestra is brilliantly disposed and fascinates with both differentiated coloration and the greatest possible transparency. Under Rattle’s direction, Mahler, the orchestral musicians, and he himself merge into a single instrument.

-- Pizzicato

Superbly played and recorded, from November last year (Isarphilharmonie im Gasteig), a memorial concert for Bernard Haitink, Sir Simon’s third recording (following Birmingham and Vienna, both EMI/Warner) of Mahler Nine sports a first movement, if not without a few cosmetic touches, that is a flowing and feisty affair, defiant, better to be alive than not, with impassioned fortissimos, and only in the concluding few minutes does the music issue calmness as well as bittersweet sentiments, although it seems too sudden as well as much too soon – bearing in mind how the Symphony will end, spare and fading to nothingness. The second movement, with its competing waltz and ländler, has its tempo contrasts well-managed, but is perhaps a little too manicured – it needs to be rougher, more rustic and pesante. Poker-faced sophistication suits the ensuing ‘Rondo-Burleske’, its counterpoint wonderfully clear (antiphonal violins swirl either side of the podium) albeit greater bite is sometimes required, and it’s a surprise that Rattle doesn’t linger more in the central section (his is a tempo-related ‘trio’), and the conclusion is thrillingly fast and rendered with A+ virtuosity – the abyss awaits. The final Adagio follows more or less attacca (I can vouch for such a joining from an LSO concert years ago) and is a dignified if intense leave-taking, powerful (vibrant strings, eloquent woodwinds) and ethereal, with a cathartic climax and a hypnotically controlled paring down of resources as expression becomes more and more off the radar.

-- Colin's Column

Increasingly, Shostakovich's music is captivating people all over the world and appealing to their deepest emotions. Almost like no other, it bears witness to a traumatic political epoch while remaining a timeless expression of existential human feeling and experience. For me personally, said conductor Mariss Jansons, who died two years ago, "Shostakovich is one of the most serious and sincere composers of them all." Shostakovich's (first) piano concerto features impressive pianistic virtuosity, bold experimentation, satire, and caricatures of different musical styles. The composer wrote it in the summer of 1933, only a few weeks after the completion of his opera " Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk". He himself called it a "mocking challenge to the conservative-serious character of the classical concert attitude". This concerto in particular demonstrates the immense versatility and magnificent talent of the still carefree 26-year-old Shostakovich. He blends a wealth of musical thoughts and ideas into a colorful and fascinating kaleidoscope. Despite the wealth of different stimuli, the concerto does not seem chaotic or overloaded: the young composer effortlessly maintains the balance.

Shostakovich performed a similar balancing act between creative work and conformity to the state in his Ninth Symphony, which premiered on November 3, 1945. Instead of the expected heroic, regime-conformist orchestral thunder along the lines of his Seventh Symphony, the "Leningrad”, the music heard here was playful, without pathos, somewhat witty, full of allusions – yet something did not seem quite right. This musical conundrum, full of ironic refractions and caricatures of melodramatic and triumphant music, was recognized by the censors as a masquerade, yet one that was not easily decipherable. Shostakovich had mocked Stalin without the latter noticing.

Admittedly, Franz Schubert's biography offers little in the way of great adventures, love affairs, glamour and long journeys. Jörg Handstein – in what is now his tenth audio biography in the successful BR-KLASSIK series - devotes himself here to a composer with an altogether quieter life. Schubert's story still remains an exciting one: no famous composer before him had ever chosen to lead a life in which his musical activities were supported solely by a private circle of friends. This did not succeed without resistance, setbacks, great disappointments and personal tragedies. Schubert's unhappiness in love, his terrible illness, and probably also his early death were, ultimately, the price he paid for this unconventional life. He bravely stood his ground, however, countering an age of cultural and political paralysis with his great and bold art. In this audio biography, Schubert’s creative path can be followed in around 130 musical examples – something impossible in any biography in book form. Alongside Udo Wachtveitl (narrator) and Robert Stadlober (Schubert), many other voices bring the composer’s world and his circle of friends to life. Schubert’s conventional image is encumbered by two clichés. On the one hand, we have the warm-hearted, sentimental man, known to his friends familiarly as Schwammerl (“mushroom”), churning out endless songs and beautiful melodies, and on the other, the incessantly tortured outsider, with music primarily conveying a sense of “brokenness” and “alienation”. This audio biography allows Schubert to speak for himself as often as possible. Despite the sparse documentation, a far more nuanced picture emerges – and the well-known Austrian actor and rock musician Robert Stadlober finds richly contrasting colors for it. We discover a different Schubert here: single-minded, argumentative, philosophical, reflective, and with a wide range of interests. That is also what makes his life story so exciting.

Anton Bruckner's symphonies were a constant part of the repertoire for Mariss Jansons and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. The existing recordings - almost all the great Bruckner symphonies – are important documents of Jansons’ deep understanding of the works, and the high musical quality of the recordings also testifies to the long Bruckner tradition at the BRSO. Jansons followed Bruckner’s notes and markings with painstaking precision, and listening to a recording with the score reveals again and again how closely the conductor studied these works with the musicians of his orchestra. Bruckner's symphonies form the backbone of Late Romantic symphonic music. To a certain extent, Bruckner reinvented the symphony – something that not even Liszt or Wagner had dared to do in the wake of the groundbreaking masterpieces of Beethoven, which until then had been considered the culmination and conclusion of the genre. It was Bruckner and, somewhat later, Brahms who sought and found new methods of reviving the symphonic genre and developing it further. In this regard, Bruckner's approach was entirely new. From the outset, he relied on the sound of the large orchestra and, rather than mixing the individual groups of instruments, he tended to either separate them from each other or couple them together like organ registers (with which, as an organist, he was very familiar). Terraced dynamics, that is, the immediate juxtaposition of piano and forte without transition, was also something Bruckner derived from organ music. As a church musician, he had close contact with these and other elements of Baroque music, and they flowed into his symphonies. As far as dramaturgical development was concerned, he tended to favor Schubert; indeed, it was the organic continuation and alternating interconnection of themes Bruckner had learned from Schubert that also explains the unprecedented performance length of his symphonies.

“Increasingly, Shostakovich's music is captivating people all over the world and appealing to their deepest emotions. Almost like no other, it bears witness to a traumatic political epoch while remaining a timeless expression of existential human feeling and experience. For me personally,” said conductor Mariss Jansons, who died last year, “Shostakovich is one of the most serious and sincere composers of them all.” After the Sixth, Seventh, and Tenth Symphonies, BR-KLASSIK is now also releasing the Fifth Symphony by this important composer – performed live by the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under its long-time chief conductor Mariss Jansons. After accusations of formalism directed against Shostakovich in a critical Pravda article had forced the composer to withdraw his Fourth Symphony (it remained shelved until after Stalin's death), the Fifth, written in 1937, was a phenomenal success. It premiered on November 21, 1937 under the young conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky in the Great Hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic. During the applause, which it seemed would never end, Mravinsky waved the score above his head for a good half hour - making it quite clear that the applause was for Shostakovich alone. Officially, the work was interpreted as the return of a prodigal son to the guidelines of Stalinist cultural policy. To this day the music has lost none of its fascination, and the Fifth Symphony ranks as one of Shostakovich’s best-known works.

The portrait of the British composer Rebecca Saunders, who lives in Germany, begins with her 2011 two-part violin concerto Still written in 2011. It was premiered at the Beethoven Festival in Bonn (with Carolin Widmann as soloist). The chamber music composition Aether for two bass clarinets was composed in 2015/16; and Albacame from a composition commission in 2014 by Bayerischer Rundfunk’s "musica viva" and BBC Radio 3 for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. The album edition of the “musica viva” series, founded in June 2000 to document the concert series that has existed since 1945, contains selected live recordings of “musica viva” concerts. An integral part of the edition is made up of concerts by the ensembles of the Bayerischer Rundfunk, guest recordings by international orchestras and ensembles, and also historical recordings. With two or three new releases per year, the main focus of the edition -which sees itself primarily as a series for composers –is mainly on portrait albums.

On November 8, 2019, at Carnegie Hall, New York, during a tour with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and only a few weeks before his unexpected death, Mariss Jansons conducted his final concert. On the programme was Johannes Brahms’ Fourth Symphony and the latter’s famous Hungarian Dance No. 5 was played as an encore. The live recording in Carnegie Hall, released here for the first time on Vinyl by BR-KLASSIK, is the great conductor’s musical legacy. For the last seventeen years of his life – from 2003 to 2019 – Mariss Jansons was chief conductor of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and the Bavarian Radio Chorus. Both ensembles and their conductor appreciated each other deeply on an artistic as well as a human level, and this resulted in numerous unforgettable concerts. Jansons’ unrelenting demands on himself and his musicians, his always respectful treatment of his colleagues, and his great devotion to music all played a lead role in their work together. Mariss Jansons occupies a place of honor in the orchestra’s history, and its players will always revere and cherish his memory. With the death of Mariss Jansons one year ago, the music world lost one of its greatest artistic personalities.

For the first time, the successful series of BR-KLASSIK audio biographies is devoting itself to a 20th-century composer: Dmitri Shostakovich. His symphonies are still highlights in the concert hall, and his fate has inspired great novels. But what do we really know about his life? He liked to play his cards close to his chest – and had good reason to do so... Dmitri Shostakovich himself claimed that his life was “rather grey and colorless". In reality, it was the most exciting composer's life of the 20th century. Revolution and civil war, Stalin's murderous terror, then the Second World War, the "thaw" under Khrushchev and finally Brezhnev's brutalist socialism: the whole tragic history of the Soviet Union runs like a thread through his work. As a functionary who seemed to be loyal to the party line, he played along - but his music spoke against the regime and in favor of its victims and of the freedom of art. "This is a game that can end badly," Stalin threatened, probably in person. Shostakovich was thus obliged to fight his own fears as well. He was playing a double game - and knew it was dangerous. This audio biography draws on many sources, some of them still little-known in Germany. The result is a comprehensive, colorful and detailed picture of the composer’s life, and contains several surprises – also with regard to his private life, which should not pale behind the historical panorama. Like every great composer, Shostakovich had his crises and affairs, his great sufferings and small joys.

“In the Czech generation of composers after Antonín Dvorák, Josef Suk was probably the one who travelled the furthest in terms of style, and certainly, next to Leoš Janácek, the one who retains the highest claim to international standing,” wrote the musicologist Ludwig Finscher in the classic encyclopedia “Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart”. The music of Suk – violinist, composer and one of the most important Bohemian symphonists - is still relatively rarely heard in Western European concert halls, a situation that should definitely change. With this recording of his second symphony, “Asrael”, BR-KLASSIK makes a strong case for Suk’s impressive and compelling music. In 1891, Josef Suk, having started out as a violinist, became a master student of the world-famous Dvorák. He was regularly invited to the composer’s country house, where he fell in love with his teacher's daughter and married her. - The “Asrael” symphony was written after Dvorák's death, and the death soon afterwards of Suk’s own wife gave the work a new direction – it is dedicated to both of them. The title of Asrael refers to the angel of death from Islamic-Persian mythology: he is a mysterious companion of the human soul from this world to the next. - Suk developed his own musical language in which the solo violin is often involved (as here in the gentle central section of the Andante): The violin was indeed his instrument, and until 1933 he played in the “Bohemian String Quartet”. With the “Asrael” symphony he consciously took up the tradition of a “fate symphony” – associated since Beethoven's Fifth with the key of C minor moving at the end into radiant C major. Ever since its premiere on February 3, 1907 at the Prague National Theatre, “Asrael” has ranked as Suk's most important symphonic work - and as a visionary glimpse into the future.

Born in Heidelberg in 1968, Arnulf Herrmann is considered one of the most renowned German composers of contemporary music. He studied piano, music theory and composition in Munich, Dresden, Paris and Berlin, where he completed his studies in 2002. In 2003, he was entrusted with a teaching position for theory, analysis and aural training at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin; from 2004, he was the main teacher for composition there and, from 2006, also lectured on instrumentation and analysis. Since 2014, he has held the chair of composition at the Hochschule für Musik Saar. Herrmann mainly composes ensemble and chamber music, but also pieces for orchestra and the stage. In 2012, his opera "Wasser" (“Water”) premiered at the Munich Biennale; excerpts from it had already been heard in 2011 as part of the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik. In 2017, his opera "Der Mieter" (“The Tenant”) premiered with great success at the Frankfurt Opera, which had commissioned the work. Numerous international contemporary music ensembles perform his works at music festivals such as the Donaueschinger Musiktage, the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, and Wien Modern.

"Drei Gesänge am offenen Fenster" (“Three Songs at the Open Window”) for soprano and large orchestra, based on texts by Händl Klaus and Arnulf Herrmann, was commissioned by musica viva/BR. This release documents the live recording of its premiere on October 24, 2014. The performers are Anja Petersen (soprano) and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks conducted by Stefan Asbury. "Tour de Trance" for soprano and piano, on a text by Monika Rinck, was commissioned by the Musiktage Hitzacker, and premiered in 2017. This studio recording from September 19, 2022 is one of the new versions of the song cycle from the year 2022. Anja Petersen sings, with Björn Lehmann accompanying on the piano.

Taken from the 2012 Japan tour that performed the complete Beethoven cycle in various cities across Japan garnering much acclaim for the Chor and Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and now available in single editions, this live recording of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 from Tokyo's Suntory Hall also includes noted vocal soloists, Christiane Karg, Mihoko Fujimura, Michael Schade and Michael Volle, all frequent collaborators with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks.

What does the work of a conductor actually involve? He moves his hands, arms, his whole body, he makes use of his eyes and facial expressions - and he also sings and speaks, but only during rehearsals, of course. Being able to follow a conductor's interpretation makes for an exciting process, and conveys the basic idea behind a work far more vividly at the same time. "Conductors in Rehearsal" is a BR-KLASSIK series that takes a closer look at the “orchestral workshop”. One can experience first-hand how the conductor's wishes and instructions are implemented, how his explanations and his temperament change the resulting sound, and what concepts lie behind the interpretation of the work. Thanks to this series - which also now being released on album - the special collaboration between Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra can be documented. The first set presented by BR-KLASSIK documents four rehearsals for concerts in the Munich Philharmonie im Gasteig, taken from different phases of the collaboration between Mariss Jansons’ work with the BRSO.

What does the work of a conductor actually involve? They move their hands, arms, and whole body; they make use of their eyes and facial expressions - and they also sing and speak (only during rehearsals, of course). Being able to follow a conductor's interpretation makes for an exciting process, and conveys the basic idea behind a work far more vividly at the same time.

"Conductors in Rehearsal" is a BR-KLASSIK series that takes a closer look at the “orchestral workshop”. One can experience first-hand how the conductor's wishes and instructions are implemented, how their explanations and temperament change the resulting sound, and what concepts lie behind the interpretation of the work. Thanks to this series - which also now being released on album - the special collaboration between Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra can be documented. The second box set presented by BR-KLASSIK documents four rehearsals for concerts in the Munich Philharmonie im Gasteig and the Herkulessaal der Residenz in Munich, taken from different phases of the collaboration between Mariss Jansons’ work with the BRSO.

Together with narrator Rufus Beck, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin presents "The Five Thieves and the Secret in the Sack". Inspired by the Thousand and One Nights, it is a magical story about the power of friendship. Author Katharina Neuschaefer and illustrator Martin Fengel captivate their young audience with this exotic tale, set amid the vastness of the desert – and musically illustrated by the colorful sounds of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade".

Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia