Igor Markevitch enjoys a legendary reputation. He was successful both as a conductor of leading orchestras and as a composer and (university) lecturer. His pupils include Daniel Barenboim, Herbert Blomstedt and Wolfgang Sawallisch. In his autobiography Die Musik – mein Leben (music, my life) Barenboim recalls that Igor Markevitch had taught him “a personal, highly individual style of conducting”. In his Salzburg course he was “completely preoccupied with the clarity of the sound, the clarity of the rhythm and the clarity of the gesture”. In many ways it was these characteristics that Markevitch introduced to the collective consciousness of the orphaned late-60s Gewandhaus orchestra. 1968 had seen Václav Neumann resign his position as conductor in protest at the suppression of the “Prague Spring” and its echo in the publications of East Germany’s ruling Socialist Unity Party. Despite his short term of office, Neumann was able to advance from the Konwitschny era with a new approach to programming and a new style – by means of new or additional core repertoire and a leaner, more highly articulated sound. Markevitch was the ideal person to continue this task. Markevitch laid down his understanding of maintaining tradition through renewal with his 1973 Eterna recording of a work that is one of the world’s best known: Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition in Maurice Ravel’s orchestration. Ravel’s version has clearly acquired more of a patina than the original piano version written half a century earlier, as even a first hearing of Markevitch’s recording proves. His interpretation suggest an imagined reorchestration of Mussorgsky’s work – rough and angular rather than polished and elegant. Without any patina. There is another work which was recorded for this production – Mussorgsky‘s symphonic poem Night on Bald Mountain.

It’s the Roaring Twenties. That musical jack-of-all-trades, Sergei Koussevitsky, Director of Music with the Boston Symphony Orchestra for twenty-five years, commissions the orchestration of two world-famous works: Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky and the Études-Tableaux by Sergey Rachmaninoff. And who does Koussevitsky choose for this task? Why, none other than the two great composers Maurice Ravel and Ottorino Respighi. Their orchestrations lay the foundations for numerous other arrangements of those works. More than 80 years later, Dirk Mommertz, a member of and pianist with the Fauré Quartett, has arranged both of these works anew – this time for piano quartet. “A chamber-music ensemble, with piano and strings, is ideally suited to present the entire tonal spectrum,” explains Dirk Mommertz. Violinist Erika Geldsetzer, violist Sascha Frömbling, cellist Konstantin Heidrich and Mommertz at the piano have been an entity for over 25 years now and are justifiably acknowledged as one of the most influential piano quartets in the world. They are renowned for branching out into new territory; they are not afraid of leaving the well-trodden path, so it comes as no surprise that the Fauré Quartett have recorded for the first time their own arrange-ments of these works on one album. The mesh of relationships which binds Mussorgsky’s composition of 1874 and Rachmaninoff’s of 1911-1918 with Koussevitsky’s commissions to Ravel and Respighi, now ends 150 years later with the Fauré Quartett in the 21st century.

Most of Suitner’s Mozart recordings with the Dresden Staatskapelle were made after his time as conductor there had come to an end, in the summer of 1964, when he moved to direct the State Opera in Berlin, where he was offered better working conditions. “I have been in charge of many recordings, and the execution was seldom so smooth. It was all so relaxed and easy-going. We always felt the joy of music-making,” producer Heinz Wegner remembers. At the same time, Suitner’s Mozart was stylistically anything but arbitrary: “He naturally had a concept and he knew how to implement it, so that his interpretations – as if influenced by some enigmatic powers – always generated a specially ‘natural’ listening experience. I never experienced that in Mozart with any other conductor.” Otmar Suitner’s great success as Principal Conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden remains a fascinating phenomenon to this day. That said, the cultural, political and economic work environment of this orchestra, so steeped in tradition, was far from auspicious, which meant that the qualities of the new man on the rostrum and his musicians faced more than the usual challenges. Seldom has a young conductor fulfilled expectations of him in such a brilliant manner. When, in 1960 at just 38 years of age, he took up his new post, few people would have believed that fifty years later memories would still regularly be re-awakened of his Mozart recordings. Producer Heinz Wegner explains: “What we hear on this recording seemed to emerge as if by magic. When he conducted Mozart, something seemed to happen to the music to the extent that it just seemed he had captured the quintessence of the composer.”

Classical Music

Classical Music

Kurt Sanderling’s three late Mahler recordings represent an outstanding testament to a first-class artist. They are decidedly “Germanic:” sober, serious, never theatrical or gratuitously showy, but this does not mean that they are not powerfully expressive or exciting. They are uniformly excellently played by the Berlin Symphony. The climax of the Ninth’s first movement, for example, is thrilling, and while Sanderling doesn’t race through the Rondo: Burleske as many other do, he captures the music’s bite and bitterness very well indeed–rather like Klemperer or Ancerl than Solti or Bernstein. The finale too isn’t dragged out to the last possible moment: the music sings with unsentimental clarity.

The same observations also characterize this superb rendition of the Deryck Cooke version of the Tenth Symphony. Sanderling prepared what is essentially his own edition, using Cooke as a basis, restoring some of the more heavily scored passages, adding extra percussion (very effectively), and generally producing a score that sounds more like Mahler than most other versions. Once again Sanderling achieves intensity through balance and rhythmic clarity. Listen to the dissonant pileup of sonority at the climax of the opening Adagio. Has it ever sounded less cluttered, but at the same time so painful? Sanderling’s use of string portamento just afterwards is also just plain right, stylistically–echt Mahler. This surely the reference recording for the Tenth Symphony, and no serious Mahlerian can afford to miss it.

Sanderling’s Das Lied von der Erde is a grossly underrated performance. The orchestral playing is superb throughout, the entire piece ideally paced. Peter Schreier is, as we all know, an excellent Lieder singer, his timbre a bit light for the opening song, but the recording is well balanced and he’s very comfortable in “Of Youth” and “The Drunkard in Spring.” Birgit Finnilä may not have the most alluring tone among the alto or mezzo soprano soloists who have taken on the part, but she sings with warmth and conviction, always sensitive to the text, and with firm sonority. Her concluding “Abschied” is very moving, if only because she shares Sanderling’s darkly honest but unsentimental approach.

So by all means do try to acquire these performances in some incarnation. The present set, prepared as a 100th birthday tribute to Sanderling, does not include the texts for Das Lied, but it does have a very well written essay by Dirk Stöve about both the music and the performances. The sonics, also, always were very good, and remain so.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Track List:
1 Nun lasst uns Gott, dem Herren
2 Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme
3 Befiehl du deine Wege
4 Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott
5 Du meine Seele, singe
6 Gott des Himmels und der Erden
7 O Gott, du frommer Gott
8 O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß
9 Christ ist erstanden
10 Nun bitten wir den Heiligen Geist
11 Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten
12 Großer Gott, wir loben dich
13 Jesus, meine Zuversicht
14 Schönster Herr Jesu
15 O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden
16 Auf, auf, mein Herz, mit Freuden
17 In dir ist Freude
18 O Heiland, reiß die Himmel auf
19 Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her
20 Herr Christ, der einig Gotts Sohn
21 Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern
22 Nun danket alle Gott
23 Wie lieblich ist der Maien
24 Geh aus, mein Herz, und suche Freud
25 Der Mond ist aufgegangen

Classical Music

The trigger for this unique album was actually the realization that "there are very few works in the music literature in which one can experience such a concentrated sound," explains Matthias Höfs. And when one of Germany's most renowned trumpet virtuosos speaks of concentrated sound, then you can be sure he means a really phenomenal sound. Matthias Höfs has brought together current and former students from his trumpet class at the Hamburg Music College for this project. This gathering of colleagues, companions and friends who play for a number of the big German orchestras, make this album into something of a student reunion. Matthias Höfs thrills audiences, both alone and in various ensembles, playing works that are rarely given a hearing: be it Janácek's Sokol Fanfare from the Sinfonietta, Strauss's Festival Music for the City of Vienna (featuring 10 trumpets, 7 trombones, 2 tubas and timpani), two fanfares by Stravinsky or the Sinfonia & Caprice by the Japanese composer Itaru Sakai. The central focus is on Wolf Kerschek's "The Trumpets Shall Sound" for solo trumpet, nine trumpets and orchestra – a large-scale work which Kerschek, who is most at home in the fields of jazz and film music, wrote specially for Matthias Höfs. "What work calls for so many trumpets? As a composer, I had to come up with something special," says the composer, who also teaches at the College of Music and Drama in Hamburg. That is why his composition features a whole raft of different influences and approaches to the instrument. From trumpet signals and fanfares from a military context, echoes of ethereal, celestial heavenly realms and the trumpets of Judgment Day that brought down the walls of Jericho – all of them intellectual points of departure for the composer who has found in Matthias Höfs the perfect musical partner.

This complete Brahms cycle from the year 1978 does more than consolidate a chapter in the recording history of the Eterna classical music label. It also returns to the original sound of the (former) Berlin Symphony Orchestra, for which the conductor of this recording - G�nther Herbig - had so much regard. In a time-consuming process, the analogue Eterna master tapes have been newly processed and remastered for the first time in over 20 years. G�nther Herbig's time as principal conductor of the orchestra ended in 1983 after a dispute with the leading political organs of the GDR. His move to the USA fast-tracked his international career. He was appointed head of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and later directed the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Tours to Japan, South America and Australia and conducting commissions with major European and American orchestras added lustre to his international reputation. G�nther Herbig celebrates his 85th birthday on November 30, 2016. Today's Berlin Konzerthaus Orchestra was founded in 1952 as the Berlin Symphony Orchestra in East Berlin (the Soviet sector of the city) and won international recognition under the direction of Kurt Sanderling in the 1960s and 1970s. Sanderling faced significant hurdles to the development of the orchestra - once the Berlin Wall went up on August 13, 1961, about two thirds of it's musicians were no longer available, as they lived in West Berlin - making his achievement all the greater. The orchestra will mark it's 65th anniversary in 2017. The Brahms cycle thus provides ample reason to celebrate - as a document of the teamwork between the Berlin Konzerthaus Orchestra and as proof of the excellence of it's former principal conductor - and because, for the first time, it's original sound has been faithfully renewed.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music