Leonard Bernstein conducted regularly in Munich from the 1980s onwards. It was during this time that he came to appreciate and love the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in particular. In October 1976, Bernstein had appeared with an all-Beethoven program, and in 1983 he began a series of annual concerts with the orchestra. In 1987, he rehearsed Franz Schubert's Great C Major Symphony, which was performed in the Congress Hall of the Deutsches Museum in Munich. This BR-KLASSIK CD features not only the live recording of this concert event but also a rehearsal recording on a bonus CD, "Conductors in Rehearsal," which has been preserved in the sound archives of Bavarian Radio. Bernstein's warmth and friendliness, as well as his astonishingly good German, are most impressive.

Franz Schubert most probably composed his Great C Major Symphony in Bad Gastein in the summer of 1825. Chronologically speaking, it is his eighth symphony, although it is still sometimes referred to as his ninth. It can be assumed that Schubert, who had witnessed the first performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Vienna in 1824, wanted to be on an artistic level with his much older colleague. He dedicated his work to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, in whose archives the score can be traced back to the end of 1826. However, it was not until 1839—after Schubert's death—that the history of its performance began, after Robert Schumann became aware of the work and organized its publication. In 1840, after the posthumous first performance by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy on March 21, 1839, Schumann formulated one of the most famous quotations about Schubert’s symphony, that of its "heavenly length." Because of the value the composer himself attached to it, and to distinguish it from the much shorter Sixth Symphony in the same key (therefore often referred to as the "Little C Major"), it was titled "The Great.

"The live recording was made on June 13 and 14, 1987, in the Congress Hall of the Deutsches Museum in Munich. In the rehearsal recording “Conductors in Rehearsal – Leonard Bernstein Rehearses with the BRSO in German,” Friedrich Schloffer (narrator) and Johannes Ritzkowsky (horn) can be heard alongside Bernstein.

Andrew Lloyd Webber is world-famous as the composer of the musicals Cats and The Phantom of the Opera, but his Requiem has also achieved international acclaim. Winner of a Grammy Award, this grand-sounding masterpiece of contemporary classical music, written in 1985, is dedicated to the memory of Webber's late father. The recording of a concert by the Munchner Rundfunkorchester on June 15, 2023, a tribute to the British composer who celebrated his 75th birthday in March 2023, is now presented on CD by BR-KLASSIK. This live recording from the Herz-Jesu Church in Munich features the Bavarian Radio Chorus accompanied by a select ensemble of soloists, under the baton of principal guest conductor Patrick Hahn. There was much surprise when Andrew Lloyd Webber presented his Requiem to the public in 1985. Although classical composers had repeatedly ventured into the spheres of the so-called "light muse", hardly any path led in the other direction - from musicals or operettas to the sublime heights of sacred music. The fact that a composer like Franz von Suppe also wrote a requiem as well as operettas is a rarity. Lloyd Webber's career in the "serious" genre, however, was laid in his cradle: his father, William Lloyd Webber (1914-1982), had worked his way up from humble beginnings to become one of the leading church musicians of his day. He encouraged the classical training of his sons Andrew (b. 1948) and Julian (b. 1951), an excellent cellist. Andrew found his niche in the entertainment industry. His song "Try it and see", written for the 1969 Eurovision Song Contest, was not yet a hit, but from a pop cantata he developed his first successful piece Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1968), and from the concept album Jesus Christ Superstar, in which "Try it and see" also found a new home, he created the rock musical of the same name (1971). With Evita (1976), Cats (1981), Starlight Express (1984) and The Phantom of the Opera (1986), Lloyd Webber repeatedly demonstrated his flair for contemporary material that lent itself to a new kind of treatment and appealed to a wide audience. By the mid-1980s, he was the most commercially successful composer of musicals. As Requiem Masses had been abolished in Anglican England since the Reformation, the composer did not have to consider liturgical functionality or ecclesiastical suitability. Verdi had demonstrated that the texts of the Latin Requiem Mass provided an excellent model for grand opera. And Lloyd Webber found inspiration for the lyrical dimension with hit potential in composers such as Gabriel Faure. The texts of the Requiem were rearranged with a sense of dramaturgy. The repeated insertion of the pithy lines "Requiem aeternam" and "Dies irae" gave them a fundamental, leitmotif-like character. The theatrical potential of the sequence ("Dies irae") was expanded, as it had been with Verdi, into a kaleidoscope of human emotions in the face of death and the Last Judgement. In a poll conducted by BBC Radio 4 a few years ago, listeners voted Barber's Adagio for Strings the "saddest piece in the world". There is no doubt that it's broad musical lines have an elegiac, almost religious tone - something the composer himself emphasised in the choral version, written as an Agnus Dei. However, the Adagio's association with farewell and mourning was not intended by Barber, who conceived of his work as purely instrumental. It has however been used on repeated occasions to mark the deaths of prominent Americans, including Alfred Einstein, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy. As funeral music, the Adagio has also been a feature of several films since the 1980s, and two lines of tradition have emerged. On the one hand, the Adagio is often associated with the death of a main character, as in the final transfiguration of the Elephant Man in David Lynch's film of the same name (1980) or, in a light-hearted alienation of the theme, in The Fabulous World of Amelie (2001), where the heroine imagines her own death being televised. On the other hand, the austere serenity of the Adagio is contrasted with images of violence and suffering, most emphatically in Oliver Stone's anti-war film Platoon (1986). All these traditions came together in the days after September 11, 2001, when Barber's Adagio was played over and over again by American radio and television stations - both as a tribute to the victims of the attacks and as a musical expression of American patriotism. Particularly memorable was the live performance on September 15, 2001, when the American conductor Leonard Slatkin conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Last Night of the Proms in London, leaving the hushed audience deeply moved. Thanks to it's melancholic yet comforting sound, the Adagio for Strings was often the piece of choice internationally during the Covid-19 pandemic to commemorate the many victims - online or "open air", on radio and television, and at concerts and other events.

For Nikolaus Brass, the "concrete confrontation with the existential fragility of human existence, with new beginnings and happiness, but also pain, infirmity and death" acted "like a compass in the search for expression." He refers to his music as characterised by "flowing time processes, questions of order and disturbance, the scanning of the acoustic outer surface for what it harbours as an echo, as well as aspects of human existence, " within a "permanent circle of losing and finding again." This musica viva CD features three of his compositions, created between 2012 and 2023. Nikolaus Brass studied medicine and composition in Munich and Berlin, and with Helmut Lachenmann in Hanover. He took part in the Darmstadt Summer Course from 1980 to 1986. His works have been regularly performed at festivals since 1981. In addition to his profession as a medical doctor, which he practised for many years, he has composed numerous works, including several commissioned by the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (as part of the musica viva series), the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Donaueschingen Music Days and the Wittener Tage fur neue Kammermusik. In 2009, Brass was awarded the Music Prize of the City of Munich. He has been a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts since 2014. Brass' composition "In der Farbe von Erde" ("In the colour of earth") - music for viola, 44 strings and two percussionists" was first performed on February 17, 2023, with Tabea Zimmermann and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vimbayi Kaziboni. The work was commissioned by musica viva of Bayerischer Rundfunk. The title of the composition refers to a short text by the French-speaking Swiss poet Philippe Jaccottet (1925-2021). "Der goldene Steig" ("The Golden Path") - A narrative for soprano and orchestra" is based on a text by Peter Kurzeck. The fourth part of his novel cycle "Das alte Jahrhundert" has an impressionistic feel to it - and served as a mood painting for Brass' sound fantasies. In addition to the richly scored percussion, the entire orchestra also contributes to the sound development with meticulously prescribed tapping and rattling instructions. The work was commissioned by musica viva of Bayerischer Rundfunk and first performed on December 16, 2016, with Sarah Maria Sun and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Peter Rundel. Brass' "Der Garten" ("The Garden") - music for orchestra with four obbligato male voices (vocalises)" was also commissioned by musica viva of Bayerischer Rundfunk. The first performance, with the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Peter Eotvos, took place on June 16, 2012. The new BR-KLASSIK CD documents the live recordings of each of the three first performances, recorded in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz.

BR-KLASSIK is dedicating a second portrait edition to the eminent Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink, containing a total of 9 CDs. Bernard Haitink died in October 2021; he would have turned 95 in March 2024.

These exceptional live recordings document the long-standing and intensive collaboration between Bernard Haitink, the Bavarian Radio Chorus, and the BRSO. Since Haitink conducted a subscription concert for the first time in 1958, he repeatedly led the BRSO for over six decades—sometimes in the Herkulessaal of the Residenz, sometimes in the Philharmonie im Gasteig. The orchestras’ musicians and singers were just as happy to work with him as the Bayerischer Rundfunk’s sound engineers.

The box set includes complete recordings of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 (CD 1) from 2019, Bruckner‘s Symphonies No. 4 (CD 2) from 2012, No. 7 (CD 3) from 1981, and No. 8 (CD 4 / CD 5) from 1993, as well as his Te Deum (CD 4) from 2010. Also featured are Dvořák‘s Symphony No. 7 from 1981 and his Scherzo Capriccioso (CD 6) from 1981, Mahler‘s Symphony No. 7 (CD 7) from 2011, and Shostakovich's Symphonies No. 8 (CD 8) from 2006 and No. 15 (CD 9) from 2015.

There are many biographies of Robert Schumann, but none that gives a real voice to his music - and the life and the music of this great Romantic composer were connected in a particularly subtle way. This new release in the successful series of BR-KLASSIK audio biographies contains approximately 150 excerpts from Schumann's works; carefully interwoven into his life story, they give voice to his inner world. The mysterious "inner voice" that Schumann noted down in the score of his Humoreske op. 20 thus becomes the motto of this audio biography. "Unknown songs I had never heard flowed through my heart - songs that sounded to me like ghostly voices." It was this passage from ETA Hoffmann's Kreisleriana that inspired Schumann to write his own Kreisleriana op 16. In February 1854, the composer himself heard such voices - and this marked the start of a journey that would culminate in the mental asylum. Schumann's "inner voice" thus represents not only his romantic sensitivity but also his fragile and volatile psyche. Of course, this ten-part audio biography also devotes a lot of room to the relationship between Robert and Clara - probably the greatest "romantic novel" of music history. Nothing is exaggerated, however; it is all based on the original sources, which are dramatic and touching enough in themselves. Outstanding actors including Udo Wachtveitl (narrator), Matthias Brandt (Schumann) and Brigitte Hobmeier (Clara) contribute, alongside further narrators, to all the fascinating sounds and colours of this audio biography. Performers such as John Eliot Gardiner, Eric Le Sage and Christian Gerhaher guarantee the highest quality in the musical excerpts, which also feature several rarities. The audio biography is rounded off by a new live recording of the "Spring Symphony" with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, conducted by Mariss Jansons.

The music of composer Milica Djordjevic, born in Belgrade in 1984, is based on an exuberant and imaginative use of sound. She has full command of the entire arsenal of contemporary sound and performance techniques, which never cease to surprise. She began her composition studies in her native city of Belgrade, where she was already working with electronic music, then went on to Strasbourg and IRCAM in Paris before completing her studies from 2011-2013 in Berlin with Hanspeter Kyburz at the Hochschule fur Musik Hanns Eisler. Her already extensive oeuvre, which is performed by leading international soloists and ensembles, includes pieces for solo instruments, chamber music works in a wide variety of formations, vocal works, and large-scale orchestral compositions. The diversity of her work highlights her versatility and technical virtuosity. Djordjevic has received numerous prestigious prizes and awards for her compositions, including the Belmont Prize for Contemporary Music (2015), the Composition Prize of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation (2016) and the Claudio Abbado Composition Prize of the Berlin Philharmonic (2020). In Milica Djordjevic's short orchestral work Mali svitac, �estoko ozaren i prestravljen nesnosljivom lepotom (Little firefly, brightly lit and shocked by unbearable beauty), commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic in 2023, the composer is concerned with "the immense energy it takes to make things glow". Her extended orchestral work Quicksilver was commissioned by musica viva of Bayerischer Rundfunk and premiered on December 16, 2016 by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Peter Rundel in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz. It is precisely the strict limitation of the melodic movement to very few, narrow interval steps that makes it "all the richer and more colourful on the inside". Cvor (Knot) for winds, piano and percussion, a work commissioned for the Donaueschingen Music Festival, briefly but very intensively describes a knot that squeezes and twists and finally bursts. The fourth work on this BR-KLASSIK CD - Mit o ptici (Myth of the Bird) for choir and orchestra - was commissioned by musica viva in 2020 and premiered on October 28, 2022 with the Bavarian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra under the direction

Hermann Prey's performance of Papageno was historic, and turned him into the most popular opera singer in Germany. This CD includes a collection of previously unpublished recordings made during the legendary Sunday Concerts with the Menchner Rundfunk Orchester from 1966 to 1992. In a representative series of roles ranging from Bach to musicals, the great baritone shows US all his facets: From the sensitivity of the comic actor to the intense, inmost sincerity of the Lieder performer. At a time when the opera was still an integral part of Germany's media landscape, Hermann Prey made it impressively clear that a broad repertoire and depth of interpretation are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Hardly any other contemporary composer has succeeded in returning sacred music to such a firm position in the awareness of a larger audience, even outside the realm of religious services, as has Arvo Pärt from Estonia. To commemorate Arvo Pärt’s 80th birthday in the autumn of 2015, the Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks under the direction of Peter Dijsktra is releasing a cross-section of the Estonian composer’s sacred music.

***This is the 100th Release of the BR-KLASSIK Label!***

At the age of just fifteen, the budding composer Richard Strauss (1864-1949) lost his way during a summer hike on the Heimgarten in the Bavarian Alps, and ended up in a thunderstorm. The next day, he fantasized about the experience on the piano. - Twenty years later, that memory had matured into a concept describing a one-day hike in the form of a symphonic poem, and in 1915 – a further fifteen years later – Strauss finally completed his masterpiece. The hike begins in the darkness before dawn, and after sunrise the ascent goes through a forest, past a stream and a waterfall, through meadows and pastures, and up to a glacier. The hiker then loses his way, and after several risky moments arrives at the summit, where he also experiences a vision. The weather then suddenly worsens, and the descent is accompanied by heavy rain and fierce thunderstorms. The eventful day - summarized in just sixty minutes of music - ends with a sunset, and darkness returns. "An Alpine Symphony" is probably Strauss' most famous symphonic poem. Its content is easily understandable, and the work became especially well-known for its gigantic orchestra. The music is far from heavy-handed, however, with many of the passages orchestrated like chamber music. Like a kind of greeting from the Bavarian Alps, as it were, the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and its chief conductor Mariss Jansons have placed this masterpiece, and the music of Richard Strauss in general, on the programme of their forthcoming tour of Asia in late 2016. The live recording of “Alpine Symphony” concerts planned for October 2016 in Munich’s Philharmonie im Gasteig is enhanced on this latest release from BR-KLASSIK by the addition of Strauss’ symphonic poem "Death and Transfiguration", first performed in 1890; the recording here is of concerts performed in Munich in February 2014. – We thus have two very recent interpretations of two of this great German composer’s most important tone poems on one release.

Schumann: Symphony No. 1 - Schubert: Symphony No. 3 - The two orchestral works on this new album from BR-KLASSIK reflect early experiments with the symphonic genre by Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann, who would both later become such important Romantic composers. In his Third Symphony in D major, D. 200, written in the early summer of 1815 and probably first performed at a private concert, the eighteen-year-old Schubert emancipated himself from the style copies of his First and Second Symphonies and finally found his own musical expression. None of his symphonies would be heard in public during his lifetime, however; the Third was first performed as late as 1881 in London, where it was immediately received with great enthusiasm. Schumann's First Symphony in B flat major, op 38 (after an unfinished symphony he wrote in his youth) was an impressive success for the 31-year-old composer. Two months after it's completion, in January 1841, the work was premiered by Felix Mendelssohn at the Leipzig Gewandhaus to great public acclaim. Both works emanate youthful freshness and a profoundly positive attitude to life. Robert Schumann's "Spring Symphony", which he said was "born in a fiery hour", took him just four days to sketch out. Schubert's Third Symphony was composed in only nine days, and, with it's dance-like effervescence and enthusiasm, could equally well have been called a "Spring Symphony" by his contemporaries.

The "Great" C major Symphony was the last symphony that Schubert composed – a “Finished” to follow his "Unfinished", the first two movements of which he had just completed before discontinuing work on it (for reasons unknown). In contrast to his far shorter Sixth Symphony, also in C major, it was named "the Great" - and it is indeed a great and magnificent work, marking the culmination of his symphonic oeuvre. It is monumental and representative, and was written with large audiences very much in mind. Schubert began this composition in August 1824, or possibly even as late as March 1825. Most of the work on it took place in the summer of 1825, during the longest Journey of his life. It took him from Vienna via Linz, Steyr, Gmunden (where he found the scenery "truly heavenly"), Salzburg and then up to Bad Gastein, where he saw some magnificent alpine peaks. The first page of the score manuscript is dated "March 1828" – possibly the month in which he finally completed the work. On November 19 of that same year, Schubert died at the age of only thirty-one. The symphony was premiered posthumously on March 21, 1839 in the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and conducted by the Gewandhaus Kapellmeister at that time - the 30-year-old Felix Mendelssohn. This exciting live recording features the special acoustics of the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz.

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REVIEW:

Mariss Jansons presides over an uncommonly engaging performance of Schubert’s uplifting ‘Great’ C major symphony. This is great music-making of unshakable conviction.

– MusicWeb International

Directly after Johann Strauss the Younger, Franz von Supp� is one of the most famous Austrian composers of the 19th century to have paid special tribute to the so-called "light muse". His oeuvre includes nearly three dozen operettas and light operas as well as countless farces and comedies, which he loosened up by framing them with musical numbers. This was the typical repertoire of Old Viennese folk theatre, which he imaginatively enriched in his various capacities as Kapellmeister at the Theater in der Josefstadt and as "chief composer and conductor" at the Theater an der Wien, as well as on other stages of the Austrian capital later on. His most famous operettas are "The Beautiful Galatea" (1865), "Fatinitza" (1876) and "Boccaccio" (1879). Although most of his stage works have now been forgotten, his sparkling, animated, captivating and thrilling overtures are supremely vivacious, conveying this composer's skill, his imagination in inventing catchy melodies, and also his creative abilities where design or instrumentation are concerned. Overtures such as "Light Cavalry", "Poet and Peasant" or "Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna" were indispensable parts of Viennese operetta's "golden age" and have remained a regular feature of the city's musical life (e.g. The Vienna New Year's Concerts) to this day. As Chief Conductor of the M�nchner Rundfunkorchester, Ivan Repu�ic has selected some of Supp�'s best-known and most popular overtures for his new studio production. This album is paving the way for next year's 200th anniversary of the composer's birth.

Classical Music

"...frenetic, unending applause for his dramatically accented performance, his daredevil cadenza in the first movement, the eloquent large and the urgency of the concluding rondo. He had to take one bow after another.“ -Piano News Alexej Gorlatch was the winner in the piano category at the 60th annual ARD Music Competition in 2011. His interpretation of Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto not only convinced the high-ranking jury, but also the audience, bringing him both a first prize and the audience prize. At the age of twelve, Alexej Gorlatch became a junior student at the University of the Arts in Berlin where he studied with Martin Hughes; from 2002 to 2007 he studied with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling in Hanover. After graduating from secondary school, he now continues his music studies there

To follow the Christmas Oratorio, the Bavarian Radio Choir under its artistic director Peter Dijkstra again present a major work by J.S. Bach, in a live recording on CD and DVD: the St. Matthew Passion. The choir's partner is the renowned period instrument group Concerto Köln, already heard together with the choir on several BR-KLASSIK CDs. Julian Prégardien sings the part of the Evangelist. The DVD edition of this live recording features highly atmospheric lighting effect