This is a double-anniversary release, offering a rare collection of lively works to celebrate the ninetieth anniversary of the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra as well as the eightieth birthday of its principal conductor, Neeme Järvi. Cheerful marches and dances here trace the career of Johann Strauss II as it manifested itself in his much acclaimed seasons in St Petersburg, at the ‘Russian summer’ concerts in the Vauxhall pavilion in Pavlovsk, where he appeared for eleven seasons (1856 – 65 and 1869), ten of them consecutively. It is an unmissable start to a year-long celebration for Neeme Jarvi that will include concerts, promotions, and subsequent album releases.

Recorded with Estonian National Symphony Orchestra (ERSO), under the baton of Mihhail Gerts, Mihkel Poll's new album features the Everest of piano repertoire - Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No.3 along with the Concertino by pianist's compatriot, Eduard Tubin. The release follows the album featuring Artur Lemba's Piano Concerto No.1 recorded equally with ERSO under Neeme Jarvi. This is Mihkel Poll's third album released by DUX Records. Born in 1986 in Estonia, Mihkel Poll studied at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre with Prof Ivari Ilja, recently receiving the PhD in Music, and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Prof Ronan O'Hora. He has also attended the masterclasses by prof Eliso Virsaladze at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole in Italy. Mihkel Poll has won several prizes in important international competitions including 1st prize at the Rina Sala Gallo International Piano Competition in Italy, 1st prize at the Tallinn International Piano Competition in Estonia and 1st prize at the Ferrol International Piano Competition in Spain.

The nineteenth-century French opera overture was for many years looked down on by certain music critics (and musicians) - largely as the genre turned its back on the historical adherence to strict musical form (fugue, sonata form, etc.). Percy Scholes, in the 1955 Oxford Companion to Music, had the following to say: 'a cheap but not always ineffective type of opera overture is that of the pot-pourri or medley - little more than a string of tunes from the work to follow.' These overtures were incredibly popular in their time, and the revival of this repertoire is long overdue.

Daniel Auber composed more than fifty operas, some for the Paris Opera and some for the Opera Comique. His Grand Opera La Muette de Portici famously sparked the Belgian revolution in 1830, which led to the country's independence in 1839. Les Cloches de Corneville was by far the most successful of Planquette's twenty-four operas, receiving some 400 consecutive performances. Alexandre Lecocq's La Fille de Madame Angot was premiered in Brussels in 1872 and is set in post-revolutionary Paris. The Overture is followed here by numbers put together by Gordon Jacob, in his re-orchestration of material taken mainly from the opera, for Leonide Massine's ballet Mam'zelle Angot, which closely follows the action of the opera.

The legendary conductor Neeme Järvi celebrated his eighty-fifth birthday in the summer of 2022, in Tallinn, giving a series of concerts with his beloved Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. This album serves not just as a commemoration of those wonderful concerts, but also as a personal calling card for this remarkable musician. The concert overture Polonia, published in 1836, may well have been inspired by Wagner’s encounters with defeated Polish nationalists in Leipzig in 1832. Wagner wrote several concert overtures during this period – whilst plans for his revolutionary operatic output were developing – including Christoph Columbus and Rule Britannia!!

Max Reger composed the Serenade in G major in 1905 – 06; it demonstrates the style and talent of this too-little-heard composer. Brahms set Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny), a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin, in two movements with chorus, but then added a third, an orchestral postlude. Ave verum corpus, possibly Mozart’s best-known setting for chorus, rounds off the program.

REVIEWS:

The quality of choral singing of the Latvian State Choir is rightly celebrated, and this is a beautifully shaped performance [of the Schicksalslied], with vocal warmth and blend, and the orchestral postlude bringing a radiant conclusion.

-- BBC Music Magazine

This is a marvellous recording...Although Brahms’s Schicksalslied enjoys numerous recordings, Järvi’s is distinguished by the radiance and depth of the first and last sections as well as the vehemence of the central allegro.

-- Gramophone

As well as being a thoroughly attractive concert conducted with characteristic élan by Chandos star conductor Neeme Järvi, this program represents for collectors a very useful way of acquiring a variety of pieces, some unfamiliar, some less so… this is a very tempting disc.

-- CDChoice.co.uk

Almost forty years after his first recording on Chandos, this unique limited-edition release gathers some of the best and most-awarded recordings on the label by one of the most prolific conductors of all time: Neeme Järvi. It highlights a 200+ discography that explores an astonishingly wide repertoire, with selections from the legendary complete series of Prokofiev’s symphonies and Tchaikovsky’s ballets to the groundbreaking discoveries of composers such as Atterberg or Suchon. It features nearly a dozen of the numerous orchestras with which he has collaborated, including the RSNO, Chicago Symphony, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, all here celebrated at their best. Offered at a very special price and retaining the original covers, this product also includes very special notes by James Jolly, Editor in Chief of Gramophone, as well as exclusive photos and interviews with figures central to Järvi’s extraordinary musical life.

Past praise of previously released material included in this set:

Prokofiev: Symphony No 6, Waltzes Suite / Järvi, SNO

As in all of his Prokofiev symphony recordings–this was the first, by the way–Järvi really digs into the music. The engineering is as big and bold as the performances. This recording deserves classic status.

– ClassicsToday

Smetana: Má Vlast / Järvi, Detroit Symphony

Järvi and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra deliver an expansive reading of the complete work, and their feeling for the music's vivid imagery and richly Romantic expression is spot on.

– All Music Guide

Sergei Prokofiev was an adept composer of violin music. Nathan Milstein once described his first violin concerto as “indeed one of the best modern violin concertos… a brilliant piece, perhaps the finest of all Prokofiev’s works.” This work, along with Prokofiev’s second concerto is performed on this new release by Vadim Gluzman, who is critically acclaimed for his performances of the works of the virtuosos of the 19th and 20th centuries. Neeme Jarvi and the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra join Gluzman for this recording. The ensemble has been applauded for their interpretations of Prokofiev’s music.

Heino Eller (1887-1970) can be considered as one of the founders of Estonian professional music culture. Eller’s legacy is twofold – in his prolific instrumental compositions he forged an elaborate style that successfully combined both modern and national elements, and as a prominent professor of composition during half a century he influenced generations of Estonian composers. This new recording by the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Olari Elts and featuring violinist Baiba Skride includes some of the highlights from the composer’s catalogue of orchestral works and is a fitting tribute to the centenary of Estonia’s independence. Heino Eller’s Violin Concerto in B minor was the first in its genre in Estonian music. First written in the 1930s the one-movement work was scheduled to be performed in Tallinn on June 1940. For reasons unknown, the work was withdrawn until March 1965 when Neeme Järvi conducted the premiere. Another work for violin and orchestra, Fantasy, was first written in 1916 and orchestrated in 1964. Fantasy is one of the earliest compositions that bears the hallmarks Eller´s individual style, and its sensitive lyricism and charming simplicity give the work an enduring appeal. The Symphonic Legend is Eller’s largest score prior to the First Symphony (1936). It was premiered on June 1923 in Tartu, and Eller revised the score for performance in 1938. A work with a wealth of musical material and masterly orchestration, Symphonic Legend was next performed only in 2014 by Olari Elts with the Estonian NSO, and the current recording is the first. Heino Eller wrote three Symphonies between the 1930s and 1960s. Unlike his other two Symphonies, the 2nd Symphony has only one movement. The severe and at times tragic nature of the music was incompatible with the demands of the official Soviet cultural ideology.

For their latest album, Neeme Jaarvi and his Estonian National Symphony Orchestra present a delightful program of lesser-known stage music from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Overtures by Thomas, Auber, and Boieldieu were all composed for works staged at the Opera-Comique in Paris, and are wonderful examples of the period.

Within his extended discography, Neeme Järvi has explored the work of some magnificent Eastern European composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, recently including Suchon and Scharwenka. He here reveals the delightful, witty Hungarian style of Leó Weiner, who found inspiration in the music of Bartók, his near contemporary, and taught such great figures of the Hungarian musical scene as Solti and Doráti, but also Kurtág. Throughout these recordings of the five Divertimentos and the Serenade, some of the works new to the catalogue, the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra and their chief conductor encapsulate the freshness and fluidity of engaging, yet too rarely performed compositions.

Estonian violinist Kerem (b.Tallinn, 1981) is familiar as a performer in Britain as well as at home. He is also a prolific composer, with over 100 works to his credit, 3 symphonies among them. The three-movement 3rd Symphonny (2003) and the Lamento for viola and strings (2008–9) lie downstream from Shostakovich and Boris Tishchenko, and were inspired by the idea of the struggle of the individual voice against oppressive ideology.

It is difficult to overstate the breadth of contribution of Anton Rubinstein to the development of the Russian culture in the 19th century. His multifaceted genius can be divided into three areas- Rubinstein the composer, the pianist, and the educator. In this second release in the series of recordings of his works for piano and orchestra, we focus on Rubinstein’s role as a composer. Hailed by The New York Times as a pianist of “a fiery sensibility and warm touch,” Anna Shelest is an international award-winning pianist who has thrilled audiences throughout the world. Champion of esoteric repertoire, Anna is collaborating with legendary conductor Neeme Jarvi on this project, which will eventually record the complete works for piano and orchestra by Anton Rubinstein. The first album in the set was released in 2018 to critical acclaim.

The breadth of Anton Rubinstein’s contribution to the development of Russian culture in the 19th century cannot be overstated. His multifaceted genius can be divided into three areas: Rubinstein the composer, the pianist, and the educator. This third release in the series of recordings of his works for piano and orchestra focuses on Rubinstein’s role as a pianist. Hailed by The New York Times as a pianist of a fiery sensibility and warm touch, Anna Shelest is an international award-winning pianist who has thrilled audiences throughout the world. Champion of esoteric repertoire, Anna’s collaboration with the legendary conductor Neeme Järvi on a project of recording the complete works for piano and orchestra by Anton Rubinstein has been praised by Gramophone Magazine for “…power and agility… effortless effect… nuanced and incisive all around.”