•Gustav Mahler’s Sixth Symphony employs the largest orchestral apparatus he ever used. It is a work of extremes, from the Andante’s main, sweetly cantabile theme to the chordal agglomerations breaking out in triple forte “with raw force” at the centre of the Finale’s development section, to its final, inevitable catastrophic ending. This next-to-last release in the OehmsClassics Mahler SACDcycle presents a live recording from the Cologne Philharmonie made in November 2013.

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The Utah Symphony, celebrating its 75th anniversary in the 2015-2016 season, is one of America’s major symphony orchestras and a leading cultural organization in the Inter-mountain West. It is recognized internationally for its distinctive performances, commitment to music education programs, and recording legacy. Reference Recordings is pleased to announce the release of this new and fresh performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. This work was performed as part of the orchestra’s two-year Mahler Symphony Cycle.

Reviews:

This recording celebrates 75 years of superb orchestral work from the Utah Symphony and it is nice to see them back on record. It’s also nice to see an SACD from that bastion of audio excellence, Reference Recordings… Young conductor Thierry Fischer also proves himself a fine Mahlerian…this is a very competitive issue done by superb partners on each side of the microphone, and is easily recommended.

– Audiophile Audition ( Steven Ritter)

It is tempting to dismiss yet another Mahler First entering a crowded market as simply not needed. In this case it would be a mistake because this does offer something special in several respects. First and most important, a reminder that the Utah Symphony Orchestra is clearly still a splendid band for whom this complex work, with which they have a long recorded history, offers no terrors. Conducted briskly by their well established Music Director Thierry Fischer, these players respond with as rhythmically vital a performance as you could wish to hear. Tempi are a little faster than the norm but compared with some of the great Mahlerians like Abbado, Walter and Bernstein, Fischer is little different in terms of timings. He is different in approach, encouraging a dance-like quality from music where we are used to more pauses for introspection. One could support his upbeat view by reference to Mahler's own programmes but since the composer admitted these were often written after the music as a means for audiences to access it more easily, we will avoid such quotation. For whatever reason, Mahler's 'Titan' is often presented as positive. For example, the first movement has lots of characterful and very rhythmic woodwind playing, a sort of Mahlerian jam-session. It is a perfectly valid view. The second movement is in any case rhythmic, here it becomes more so, encouraged by Fischer's brisk tempi. It is an exciting virtuoso display. I have one small but significant criticism of the third movement. The double-bass solo is much too well played. There is none of the straining that Mahler must have expected. He could not have predicted how good modern players would become. As a result the theme gets a rather too sophisticated presentation. The explosive opening of the finale, helped by a very present bass drum and gong, pins one back in one's seat just as it should. The mystery and angst others find in this music is replaced by a lively and confident traversal through Mahler's teeming ideas ending with an eruption of sound that must have stimulated loud cheers from the Utah audiences but which the engineers have excluded for the home listener. Since the hall resonance has time to fade away this is either a 'patch' job, or the audience were asked for restraint.

The recording level is quite high but with digital media this doesn't matter. The Soundmirror engineers, long famous for their skill, have captured a convincing concert hall acoustic and though extra microphones were used beyond the five main ones, it does have a feeling of reality not often captured. Finally the notes are well written, detailed, extensive, give historic context and, thank you notes editor, printed in a readable size font.

– MusicWeb International (Dave Billinge)

� In 1888 Gustav Mahler composed a tone-poem called Totenfeier (Funeral Rites). This became the foundation for and the first movement of what would later be his Symphony #2. � As the complexity of this work grew, (it wasn't finished until sometime in 1894), it would eventually be known as the "Resurrection" Symphony, after the "moment of clarity" and inspiration he experienced at the funeral of Hans von Bulow, his friend and conducting mentor. � This massive musical composition containing five movements uses a full chorus, soprano and alto soloists, and a featured alto solo voice essential to the work's fourth movement. � Internationally renowned conductor Gerard Schwartz leads the Royal Philharmonic in this live performance of Mahler's "Resurrection" that features soprano Ailish Tynan and mezzo-soprano Catherine Wyn-Rogers. � "Mezzo-soprano Catherine Wyn-Rogers was sublime in the short fourth movement... Made a splendid contribution to the shattering, blistering finale." Glyn Mon Hughes, Liverpool Daily Post and Classical Source � AilishTynan, soprano, winner of the 2003 BBC CardoffSinger of the World Competition, has sung at the Royal Opera House, Scottish Opera, Covent Garden, Royal Swedish Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and all over Europe.

Francis Poulenc said ?in 1954, 'Music buffs believe that the greatest living conductor is Toscanini, musicians know that it is Hans Rosbaud.' This 'live' studio recording from 1951 is a new addition to the Rosbaud discography, released for the first time on ICA Classics. It has been regarded by a number of German musicologists as a truly legendary performance.

This is a new installment in the new series "SWR Century Classics." The recording gives testimony of Norrington's specific "Stuttgart Sound" and contains one of the best-known symphonies by Gustav Mahler. This is a re-release of a SWR bestseller, and is published on the occasion of Sir Roger Norrington's 85th birthday. Sir Roger Norrington was born in Oxford, and comes from a musical University family. He was a talented boy soprano, studying the violin from the age of ten and singing from the age of seventeen. He read English Literature at Cambridge University, and spent several years as an amateur violinist, tenor singer, and conductor, before attending the Royal College of Music as a postgraduate student of conducting, studying with Sir Adrian Boult. Norrington's work on scores, orchestral sound and size, seating and playing style has had a growing effect on the perception of 18th- and 19th- century orchestral music. He is in great demand as a guest conductor for symphony orchestras worldwide, working regularly with orchestras in Berlin, Vienna, Leipzig, Salzburg, Amsterdam, Paris, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and London. He is Chief Conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra and of the Camerata Salzburg, and is closely associated with the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment (which has taken over the work of the London Classical Players) and with the Philharmonia.

Fedoseyev/Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra.

Fedoseyev/Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra.

Fedoseyev/Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra.

Fedoseyev/Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra.

This Yarlung release features Gerard Schwarz conducting Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Maestro Schwarz’s celebrated tenures as music director of both the LA Chamber Orchestra and the Seattle Symphony included the making of over 100 recordings, many seeing re-release through Naxos. The Colburn Orchestra is the flagship ensemble of the Colburn Conservatory of Music, one of the nation’s leading conservatories for highly talented college-age students pursuing intensive instrumental performance training. “Without question, among the finest orchestras in the world.” – Gerard Schwarz

Classical Music

Classical Music

In contrast to Symphony No. 8, also known as the "Symphony of a Thousand", another of Gustav Mahler's vocal-instrumental pieces, Das Lied von der Erde, speaks in a highly intimate language, full of tenderness and deep sorrow, mirroring the very essence of the artist's soul towards the end of his days. The grief, reflecting the painful events in the composer's life and expressed in a variety of shades in all the six songs, seems to dissolve at the end of the work in the repeated, atoned "forever", a word opening up the infinite space following the life on earth. The internationally renowned Czech mezzo-soprano Dagmar Peckova has always cherished Mahler's music, as evinced by the highly acclaimed recordings she has made with Jiri Belohlavek, conducting the Prague Philharmonia. Her partners on the album are the tenor Richard Samek, whose voice is known to audiences at Europe's prominent opera houses, and a chamber ensemble, instead of a large Romantic orchestra, for which Mahler scored the piece. In order to emphasise the work's intimacy, Peckova opted for Schoenberg's chamber arrangement of Das Lied von der Erde. The recording has made the soloist's dream come true, and thus added the final piece in the mosaic of her feted Mahler discography.

The Ninth is an unusual symphony. The scheme of two slow outer movements and two fast ones in the middle is not in accordance with tradition. The keys of the four movements - D major, C major, A minor, D flat major - are at best vaguely related; nor did Mahler specify the key of the Ninth Symphony. The free, open form of the individual movements with their broadly arching structures is also confusing. Adorno once remarked that one must listen to this symphony "from the bottom to the top", ignoring formal expectations and concentrating on the individual motifs which develop, "as with a narrative when one does not know how it ends." Certain commentators have seen a novel-like structure in Mahler's symphonies, and a narrative model must be applied to the Ninth in particular - one that ends openly and uncertainly instead of affirmatively in a recapitulation