BERNARD HAITINK conducts: SHOSTAKOVICH: SYMPHONY No. 15 in A major op. 141. The Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra enjoyed a long and intensive artistic collaboration, which came to an abrupt end with Haitink's death in October 2021. BR-KLASSIK now presents outstanding and previously unreleased live recordings of their concerts from past years. This recording of Shostakovich's Fifteenth Symphony documents a concert given in February 2015 in Munich's Philharmonie i'm Gasteig. Haitink first conducted a Munich subscription concert in 1958, and from then on was a regular guest with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra - either in the Herkulessaal of the Residenz or in the Philharmonie i'm Gasteig. This congenial collaboration lasted for more than six decades. The orchestra musicians and singers enjoyed working with him just as much as the BR sound engineers. As an interpreter of the symphonic repertoire, and especially that of the German-Austrian Late Romantic period, Haitink was held in high esteem throughout the world. With him, the symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich were always in the best of hands. Haitink's driving principle was to make the sound architecture of a musical composition, with it's complex interweaving, transparently audible; extreme sensitivity of sound was combined with a clearly structured interpretation of the score. As the last symphony in the oeuvre of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, the Fifteenth is a kind of symphonic conclusion. Although the composer set out to write a "happy symphony" and this epithet has since become commonplace, everything cheerful in it has a dimension that is exaggerated into the bizarre and grotesque. The work also contains musical references, for example to Rossini's "William Tell" overture, Wagner's "The Ring of the Nibelung" (the so-called "fate motif") and "Tristan and Isolde", and Alban Berg's "Wozzeck". Quotations from Shostakovich's own earlier works also appear. The symphony was composed in 1971 in Repino, a suburb of St Petersburg. The world premiere took place on January 8, 1972, under the baton of the composer's son Maxim.

For his ''Occasional Oratorio'', composed in 1746 in an age of personal and political upheaval, Handel made generous use of much of his own earlier material, and this resulted in something quite close to an anthology: a choice collection of his most beautiful and most famous pieces - as it were, a ''Best Of''. The ''Messiah'' librettist Charles Jennens complained loudly that the oratorio was ''a triumph for a victory not yet gain'd'', and that its libretto, by a certain Newburgh Hamilton, was an ''inconcevable jumble of John Milton and Edmund Spenser''. Nevertheless, the ''Occasional Oratorio'' offers the modern listener magnificent and largely familiar melodies, highly virtuosic Baroque arias, moving choruses and, above all, a magnificent Late Baroque sound that, in this extremely compact score, is quite unique. Audiences at the time probably considered this to be ''Handel at his best'', and today's public doubtlessly shares that opinion. This virtuoso and colorful interpretation, recorded recently on February 11, 2017 in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz, was an exemplary success, delighting the audience and the trade press alike. Howard Arman conducted the Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, teh Akademie fur Alte Music Berlin with its historically informed performance practice, and a line-up of highly talented English soloists.

Telling the story of Christmas from the Nativity to the visit of the Three Wise Men, J.S. Bach's "Christmas Oratorio" and comprised of six cantatas, this piece remains for many, ubiquitous to the holiday season. What elevates this December 2010 live recording from the Herkulessaal in the Munich Residenz is the spirited collaboration between the young and excellent vocalists including Rachel Harnisch, Anke Vondung and more, along with the fine Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks under the direction of Peter Dijkstra with the transcendental period instrument ensemble, the Akademie f�r Alte Musik Berlin all of whom provide a stunningly fresh take on this baroque masterpiece.

The Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks has already performed Beethoven symphony cycles on several occasions. Mariss Jansons has now extended the cycle concept in two respects: with works specially commissioned from contemporary composers, who have contributed their own musical reflections on Beethoven symphonies, and by presenting these outstanding concert events on the record market as a series of live recordings. Following the excellent response from critics and audiences for the award-winning Complete Edition (BR-KLASSIK, 900119), BR-KLASSIK now also presents Beethoven's symphonies on individual CDs. In addition to the live recording of the "Pastorale" by Ludwig van Beethoven from Munich's Herkulessaal in 2012, the production includes a contribution from the Georgian composer Giya Kancheli (born 1935), whose work "Dixi" ("I have spoken") for choir and orchestra is oriented towards Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and was first performed in 2009.

Long considered one of the seminal works in the classical oratorio tradition, St. Matthew Passion by J.S. Bach also holds a strong connection with many to the Passion weeks. A part of the BR-KLASSIK WISSE/N (BR-Klassik Knowledge) audio book/music insight series, author Wieland Schmid gives us an introduction to the St. Matthew Passion, which clearly illustrates both the basic structural principles as well as looking over the composer's shoulder as he writes, instantly illuminating the way Bach used such a wide variety of means to translate the Biblical texts into music. A thrilling journey through the St. Matthew Passion, which will appeal both to audio book and music fans. The musical examples are presented by the Choir and Symphony as well as the famed and history Regensburg Cathedral Sparrows boys' choir and led by Peter Dijkstra. The narrator Christian Bruckner, is known for being the regular German dubbing voice for Robert de Niro, as well as dubbing for a number of other film roles and participating in a large collection of talking books.

One of the most popular symphonic poems by Richard Strauss -actually one of the most famous tone poems ever -is his "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" op. 30, from 1896. The distinctive theme, followed by timpani blows and powerful, surging chords in the brass, was well-known long before it was used for a film score (Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey"). Fifty years ago, this work went far beyond the limits of classical music -and is now familiar to all. The cumbersome title, along with the fact that the composition tackles Friedrich Nietzsche's eponymous poetic and philosophical work may even have initially hampered its overwhelming popularity. Nietzsche himself fittingly commented: "To which genre does this 'Zarathustra' belong, I wonder? I am rather inclined to think it is 'symphonies'. "Strauss’s "Burleske" for Piano and Orchestra sounds completely different. It was composed a decade earlier in 1885/86, when the 21-year-old composer had just begun his first job as Capellmeister of the Meiningen Court Orchestra and as the assistant of Hans von Bülow. Originally referred to as "Scherzo" (Strauss also called it a "piano concerto" ina letter to his mother), the work was dedicated to Strauss’s mentor, Bülow. It was first performed in Eisenach in 1890 by the piano soloist Eugen d'Albert. The themes are cheerful and "burlesque", and the solo instrument and the orchestra perform together in the best sense. The music shows us Strauss in an early phase –he had not yet linked his compositional technique to that of Liszt and Wagner. In the year the work was premiered, Strauss himself referred to the "Burleske" as a work that "he had left far behind him". Only rarely performed for many years, the work regained popularity over the past two decades, thanks not least to Glenn Gould.

During the Weimar Republic era, alongside Richard Strauss, the then oft-performed composer Walter Braunfels was considered an important exponent of a moderate modernism. Despite his Jewish roots, his works are characterized by a deep Christian humanism. Written in 1933, Verkündigung ("The Annunciation"), set in medieval times, reflects on the major issues of that time, including a search for meaning behind undeserved suffering. Ulf Schirmer leads the Münchner Rundfunkorchester with renowned soprano Juliane Banse and rising tenor Matthias Klink in the main roles.

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.

Classical Music

“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.

In November 2021, even before taking up his post as chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Simon Rattle began a cycle of Mahler symphonies with a performance of the Ninth (BR-KLASSIK 900205). The Sixth followed in September 2023 (BR-KLASSIK 900217), and the conductor is now tackling the composer’s Seventh Symphony. This cycle marks the beginning of a new chapter in Mahler interpretation, as Rattle is just as passionate a Mahler admirer at the helm of the orchestra as his predecessors Jansons, Maazel, and Kubelík.

Simon Rattle gained his international reputation during his 18 years as Principal Conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (1980–1998), which he made world famous. In 2002 he was appointed to succeed Claudio Abbado as Chief Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, a position he retained until June 2018. In March 2015 the London Symphony Orchestra elected him as their new Chief Conductor for the 2017-2018 season, a position he retained until summer 2023. Simon Rattle also maintains close ties with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, and Philadelphia Orchestras, as well as the Vienna Philharmonic.

Joseph Haydn's The Creation - a musical masterpiece that was celebrated from the very beginning. For Simon Rattle there is no question that Haydn's Creation contains everything. The whole world. It looks both towards the past and far into the future of everything music can be. It is balance and revolution at the same time - a true work of the Enlightenment. "Magnificent choruses, graceful melodies, the finest polyphony, all firmly anchored in an optimistic view of humanity - anyone who doesn't automatically feel better after hearing it really needs help, " says Simon Rattle with a wink. "The Creation is healthy in a very honest way, " he adds. But health also includes a good dose of humour, and Haydn provides it, even in a setting as sacred as the Creation story. At the same time, a work radiating light also casts a few shadows on our own present. What has remained of the spirit of the Enlightenment? And what have we done with "this world, so great, so wonderful"? To mark his inauguration as Chief Conductor of the Bavarian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle chose Joseph Haydn's oratorio The Creation. After two concerts on September 21 and 22, 2023 in Munich's Herkulessaal, the work was performed on September 24 in the historic basilica of Ottobeuren in Upper Swabia, together with the three outstanding soloists Lucy Crowe, Benjamin Bruns and Christian Gerhaher. The Munich recording of the inaugural concerts is now being released on 2 CDs by BR-KLASSIK. With this late work, Joseph Haydn celebrated his greatest triumph: The acclaim he received for his oratorio The Creation placed all his previous successes firmly in the shade. He was already very famous as a symphonic composer, his string quartets had won him the adoration of countless nobles and amateur musicians, and his late masses had secured the unwavering approval of his Esterhazy prince. However, at it's first performance in 1798, "The Creation" caught the spirit of the age - and continues to do so today. The work unites Haydn's orchestral finesse with powerful choruses, combining the vivid account of the creation story with subtle musical interpretation and making it a musical manifesto, as it were, of the Age of Enlightenment. In this regard, the oratorio has enjoyed an unbroken performance tradition, and continues to pose a challenge to every world-class ensemble today. In 1946, one year after the end of the war, Haydn's masterpiece was the first oratorio ever to be performed in the basilica in Ottobeuren - at that time still in the organ loft. The 1986 performance by the Bavarian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra under Leonard Bernstein remains legendary to this day.

Leonard Bernstein conducted regularly in Munich from the 1980s onwards. It was then that he learned to appreciate and love the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in particular. In October 1976, Bernstein had appeared with an all-Beethoven programme, and in 1983 he began a series of annual concerts with the orchestra. This CD from BR-KLASSIK presents the live recording of the Beethoven concert on October 17, 1976, in which Bernstein conducted Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and the Leonore Overture No. 3. The programme of the Munich concert in October 1976 included Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which can be seen as stroke of liberation in the sense of "per aspera ad astra" ("through hardships to the stars" or "through darkness to light") and also a symphonic piece that he had written for his only opera "Fidelio": the Third Leonore Overture, with it's lone trumpet signal announcing the arrival of the minister Don Fernando - and thus the rescue of Florestan from arbitrary violence and imprisonment. Joachim Kaiser, Munich's leading music critic at the time, said: "Bernstein demonstrated to a spellbound Munich audience how much he is filled with Beethoven, the man is full of a freedom and fire that can be produced and reproduced. Even if Bernstein's leaps, crouches and crescendos may seem violent to anxious listeners, the inner rightness of the music - which sounds natural, powerful, wonderful and relaxed - is overwhelming." The live recording was made on October 17, 1976 at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

Following the conventions of the Paris Opera, Giuseppe Verdi was also obliged to compose ballet music for the French premieres or first performances of his stage works. Between 1847 and 1894, he wrote a total of seven so-called divertissements, some extensive, for Jerusalem, Les v�pres siciliennes, Le trouvere, MacBeth, Don Carlos, Aida and Otello. With catchy melodies, lively, accentuated rhythms, descriptive sound effects and vivid gestures, but above all with incredibly colourful instrumentation, he succeeded in giving new impetus to the ballet music of his day. While the ballet music was generally omitted from productions of Verdi's operas for a long time - with the exception of Aida - it has recently been performed increasingly often and linked to the dramaturgy of the respective work. These beautiful, well-crafted pieces of music should no longer be withheld from the public. On the new double CD from BR-KLASSIK, the Munich Radio Orchestra and it's chief conductor Ivan Repusic present Verdi's complete ballet music. In 19th-century Italian operas, a ballet was not part of the composition but was performed either between the acts or after the opera performance - and was usually a work created by a ballet composer who had little or no connection to the operatic work in question. The strict convention at the Paris Opera, however, was that an extensive dance interlude had to be included as a divertissement in the third act of a grand opera. So if an Italian opera composer wanted to have his works performed in Paris (and who would not, given the international importance of that great opera house in Europe's leading musical metropolis), ballet music had to be provided as well. In the case of works originally written for the Paris Opera, the ballet was included in the French-language libretto from the outset, and ballet music also had to be newly added to all existing works as well. Italian opera composers such as Rossini, Donizetti and Verdi were hardly ever enthusiastic about this French preference for extensive dance interludes in the third act, but they had to bow to convention. Verdi's ballet music for Les v�pres siciliennes (Les quatre saisons - The Four Seasons) and Jerusalem was the most extensive he created. In the dance sequence composed for Le trouvere, which utilises musical material from the gypsy scenes, he created a close musical and dramaturgical link with the stage action. He composed extensive ballet music for MacBeth to illustrate the Hecate scenes of Shakespeare's drama. In the third act of Don Carlos, a Ballet de la Reine entitled La Peregrina is performed in Queen Elisabeth's gardens to celebrate the coronation anniversary of the Spanish King Philip the following day. And for the premiere of Aida in Cairo, there were no obligations regarding the design of the dance interludes, which is why Verdi probably came closest to his ideal of linking the dances as directly as possible to the opera's plot. His shortest ballet music, with oriental-sounding dances, was composed for Otello.

Leonard Bernstein conducted regularly in Munich from the 1980s onwards. It was then that he learned to appreciate and love the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in particular. In October 1976, Bernstein appeared with an all-Beethoven programme, and in 1983 he began a series of annual concerts with the orchestra. In November of that year, he rehearsed Robert Schumann's Second Symphony and his own Divertimento (1980), which were performed in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz. This BR-KLASSIK CD presents the live recording of that concert event. Bernstein commendably championed Robert Schumann's Second Symphony - a work from 1845 that was repeatedly perceived as still immature and in need of improvement, and which Schumann himself confessed to having written in poor health. The critic Joachim Kaiser picked up on both facts in his concert review for the Suddeutsche Zeitung: "So what did Bernstein do differently to silence this scholarly talk, at least for all those who were lucky enough to listen to his Schumann? (...) Bernstein believed not only in Schumann's melodies - not difficult in itself - but also, and fervently, in the work's great symphonic developmental arcs. And because he was able to inspire the musicians of the superbly organised Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in such a natural, free and yet highly differentiated way, the power of Schumann emerged!" Bernstein's Divertimento, composed in 1980 for the 100th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, consists of eight miniatures developed from the semitone B-C. It begins with a fanfare and progresses through a waltz, a mazurka, a samba and a blues to a Radetzky-like march. The music is jazz-like, full of happy syncopation, unusual time signatures and dance-like verve. Bernstein also draws on memories of his first concerts - popular programmes that he attended as a child with his father in Boston's Symphony Hall.