Germany’s oldest Mozart festival celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2021. The present jubilee boxed set presents previously unpublished treasures from the archive of the Bavarian Broadcasting. All live recordings from the Baroque Imperial Hall at Würzburg Residence are digital remasters.
In a nearly unmatchable seven decades-plus of public exposure as a conductor of more than 150 orchestras that included nearly every major American orchestra, more than 5,000 concert appearances and 300 official recordings, Lorin Maazel can be said to have been one of the most important figures in 20th and early 21st c. music. His recordings of symphonic cycles of composer’s complete orchestral works include those of Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and Richard Strauss, for which he won an astonishing ten Grands Prix du Disques. Another composer who figures prominently and importantly in his discography and concert performances is Gustav Mahler, to which this last of three issued sets of symphonies, recorded live with the Philharmonia Orchestra at London’s Royal Festival Hall, concluding a much-lauded symphony cycle, sees release on Signum Classics. “... it’s wonderfully stylish: that hesitant Viennese-style playing-around and a lovely warm string sound ...” (BBC Radio 3) “This second volume, along with the first, is a treasured set on my shelves. I cannot wait for the final volume, Symphonies 7-9.” (ClassicalSource)
"[T]he first three symphonies are treated to exuberant readings, with lots of Haydnesque brio, except in the slow movements, where Schubert’s lyricism comes to the fore. Maazel and company change gears very comfortably, shifting in the Second Symphony from the boisterous ebullience of the first movement to the tender naïveté of the following Andante. And back again, in the propulsive Menuetto and Presto vivace finale. I’m happy that my favorite among the first six, No. 3, receives a model performance, from the hushed, feathery violin figures in the Adagio maestoso introduction to the breakneck Presto vivace finale. Maazel makes all the right moves as far as I’m concerned, and I’m as happy with this performance as with any on disc...
Schubert’s last two symphonies, with their grander gestures and grander orchestral palette, actually sound just a bit small-scale in these performances, and I think that reflects an interpretive trend rather than any outright lack on the part of conductor or orchestra. Basically, these are excellent readings, fully idiomatic, without an ounce of extraneous rubato or other grandstanding gestures that conductors often impose on this music, especially the Great C Major. The comparative lightness of texture in Maazel’s interpretation recalls recent performances I’ve heard by the likes of the Northern Sinfonia under Thomas Zehetmair (Avie) and the Budapest Festival Orchestra under Ivan Fischer (Channel Classics). A far cry from one of my favorites of another era, Georg Solti leading a hefty Vienna Philharmonic (Decca). Both approaches seem valid to me. Certainly, Maazel brings great nobility to this score; the sense of momentum with which he invests the last movement makes this the worthy high point of the set.
The Bavarian orchestra plays with expected fervor but with great discipline as well; in fact, you could be forgiven if in a blind test you thought these performances were set down in a studio—at least before you heard the applause at the end of each symphony. And except for the usual balance problem here and there, the recordings are quite good. There are a number of fine recordings of the eight Schubert symphonies available; I now count Maazel’s among them.
Lorin Maazel leads the Philharmonia Orchestra and a star-studded ensemble of performers in Mahler's first three symphonies. This is the first set in a series that will encompass Mahler's nine symphonies, featuring live orchestral recordings from London's Royal Festival Hall of Maazel and the Philharmonia's much-lauded Mahler cycle.
Puccini: Le villi / Scotto, Domingo, Maazel, National Philharmonic
Sony Masterworks
CD
$11.98Aug 26, 2016
Review of a prior CD issue of this recording:
Both Scotto and Domingo, and Scotto especially, sing with real conviction and affection, and to have Tito Gobbi, no less, so obviously relishing the preposterous text of his spoken role is a considerable bonus. In all the score's more interesting passages Maazel too makes it clear that this score has as much of accomplishment to it as promise.
Lorin Maazel and the Philharmonia Orchestra perform Mahler’s Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Symphonies.
This four-disc box is the second set in a series that will encompass Mahler’s Nine Symphonies, featuring live orchestral recordings from London’s Royal Festival Hall of Maazel and the Philharmonia’s much-lauded Mahler Cycle.
A new treasure from the archives of the Southwest German Radio! Hänssler Classic is proud to present a rare historical recording of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra with Lorin Maazel from 1958. Lorin Maazel is one of the most famous conductors in the world. Born in 1930, he received early lessons on the piano and violin at the age of seven and soon thereafter began to conduct. His program includes Beethoven's often neglected Second Symphony, which has always been in the shadow of it's "bigger brothers", especially the "Eroica" Symphony. Also included is the Coriolan Overture and Bartók's "Concerto for Orchestra". It is an extraordinary experience to hear how Maazel builds the suspense and consistency in these interpretations from early in his career. An important recording both for Maazel fans and those who want to become one. - Hanssler Classic
Bruckner's symphonies form the backbone of Late Romantic symphonic music. Indeed, he can be said to have reinvented the symphony – something that not even Liszt or Wagner had dared to do in the wake of the groundbreaking masterpieces by Beethoven that until then had ranked as the climax and end-point of the genre. It was Bruckner and, somewhat later, Brahms who sought and found new methods of reviving the symphonic genre and developing it further. In this regard, Bruckner's approach was entirely new.
From the outset, he relied on the sound of the large orchestra, and rather than mixing the individual groups of instruments he tended to either separate them from each other or couple them together like organ registers. Terraced dynamics, that is, the immediate juxtaposition of piano and forte without transition, was also something Bruckner derived from the organ. As a church musician, he had close contact with these and other elements of Baroque music, and they flowed into his symphonies.
As far as dramaturgical development was concerned, he tended to favor Schubert; indeed, it was the organic continuation and alternating interconnection of themes Bruckner had learned from Schubert that also explains the unprecedented performance length of his symphonies.
Bruckner's Nine Symphonies are a constant in the repertoire of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, as in those of all major orchestras. The special feature of the release being presented here by BR KLASSIK is that the recordings are conducted by not only one but a total of four conductors closely associated with the orchestra, all of them proven international Bruckner experts. More than in any other compilation, common features in interpretation (also due to the same orchestra) as well as fascinating differences due to the various interpretive approaches of the respective conductors can all be detected. In these recordings it also becomes clear what brilliant contributions Herbert Blomstedt, Bernard Haitink, Mariss Jansons and Lorin Maazel have made over the decades to Bruckner’s symphonic oeuvre.
REVIEW:
Here we have a marvelous collection of Anton Bruckner’s symphonies Nos. 1-9 played by the Bavarian Radio Symphony under the baton of four outstanding conductors. Lorin Maazel recorded the first two symphonies in 1999. He does not provide any new insights, but the performances are thrilling nevertheless. The fifth and sixth symphonies with Haitink are also wonderful interpretations, but Blomstedt’s Ninth and the recordings with Jansons are more fluent and warmer than the other performances. Blomstedt offers an interpretation aimed at salvation, without any fear of death. This positive view is good for the music, but also enables profound moments of contemplation. For Jansons one could summarize and say that Jansons inspires his orchestra to a breathtakingly intense playing. From the very beginning one feels the strong lyrical and luminous power providing an eloquent, rhetoric performance.
Lorin Maazel (1930–2014) was perhaps the most interesting musician of his time. The very number of his engagements as Principal Conductor made him exceptional. After studying piano, violin, harmony, counterpoint and composition, and making his first appearances as a youthful conductor in the USA, where his family had moved from France in 1932, he played the violin in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and studied philosophy, economics, literature, French and Russian in his spare time. He went to Italy on a scholarship in the early 1950s, was repeatedly engaged – often by broadcasting stations – as a conductor, was the first American and at the same time the youngest conductor at the Bayreuth Festival when he conducted Lohengrin there in 1960, made his BBC concert debut with Mahler’s Second Symphony in London and directed the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Berlin as its Principal Conductor (1964-75), was appointed General Music Director of the city’s Deutsche Oper (1965-71), then headed the Cleveland Orchestra (1972-82), the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (1988-96), Orchestre National de France (1988-90) and finally from 1993 the Symphony Orchestra of Bavarian Radio. He made his New York Met debut with Don Giovanni (1962) and debuted at the Salzburg Festival with The Marriage of Figaro (1963). He made a memorable appearance in London in 1988 when in a single day he performed all nine Beethoven symphonies with three different orchestras in aid of charity.
Drawn from the worldwide catalog holdings of Sony Classical, which includes both the Columbia/CBS and RCA Victor label imprints, the SONY Classical Originals, SONY Classical Masters Singles and Box Sets, and SONY Opera House series offer an extensive selection of highly desirable and collectible EU (Germany) pressed import editions, smartly-designed and graphically-pleasing, featuring the most sought-after recordings by the world’s preeminent, legendary artists both past and present, with many titles newly re-mastered in 24bit High Resolution Audio.
