Classical
Mariss Jansons
Mariss Jansons (1943-2019) - Latvian conductor.
3 products
New Year's Concert 2016 / Mariss Jansons, Vienna Philharmonic

Since 1939, the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concert has become a tradition and the world’s most famous classical music event. The list of names of leading conductors who have led the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concerts reads like a veritable who’s who of great maestros: Herbert von Karajan, Lorin Maazel, Claudio Abbado and Riccardo Muti to name a few. For the New Year’s Concert 2016 world-renowned conductor Mariss Jansons returns to the podium for the third time for this extraordinary event. Ever since their first concert together in 1992, Mariss Jansons has belonged to the circle of conductors with whom the Vienna Philharmonic feels a special bond. His first New Year’s Concert in 2006 was widely acclaimed by both audiences and the media. Jansons won a Grammy Award® in 2006 for Best Orchestral Performance and ECHO Klassik honored him in 2007 as Conductor of the Year.
The Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concert is unique and has often been imitated, but not equaled, with a live broadcast on television in over 90 countries around the world with over 40 million viewers. PBS aired the 2015 concert on over 181 stations and will broadcast the 2016 concert nationally. The repertoire for the New Year’s Concert features works by members of the Strauss Family – Johann Strauss, father and son, as well as Eduard and Josef Strauss. Old favorites from their works are played alongside others that have never been recorded or are rarely heard. All of them programmed around two fixed points in the concert, The Blue Danube Waltz and the Radetzky March.
Shostakovich: Concerto for Piano, Trumpet, & Strings; Symphony no. 9 / Läubin, Bronfman, Jansons, BRSO
"Increasingly, Shostakovich's music is captivating people all over the world and appealing to their deepest emotions. Almost like no other, it bears witness to a traumatic political epoch while remaining a timeless expression of existential human feeling and experience. For me personally," said conductor Mariss Jansons, who died two years ago, "Shostakovich is one of the most serious and sincere composers of them all." Now BR-KLASSIK is releasing two more outstanding performances by this important Soviet-Russian composer: his impressive Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and String Orchestra, and his Ninth Symphony - performed live by the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under its long-time principal conductor Mariss Jansons.
Shostakovich's (first) piano concerto features impressive pianistic virtuosity, bold experimentation, satire, and caricatures of different musical styles. The composer wrote it in the summer of 1933, only a few weeks after the completion of his opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk". This concerto in particular demonstrates the immense versatility and magnificent talent of the still carefree 26-year-old Shostakovich. He blends a wealth of musical thoughts and ideas into a colorful and fascinating kaleidoscope. Despite the wealth of different stimuli, the concerto does not seem chaotic or overloaded: the young composer effortlessly maintains the balance. Shostakovich performed a similar balancing act between creative work and conformity to the state in his Ninth Symphony, which premiered on November 3, 1945. Instead of the expected heroic, regime-conformist orchestral thunder along the lines of his Seventh Symphony, the "Leningrad”, the music heard here was playful, without pathos, somewhat witty, full of allusions – yet something did not seem quite right. This musical conundrum, full of ironic refractions and caricatures of melodramatic and triumphant music, was recognized by the censors as a masquerade, yet one that was not easily decipherable.
REVIEW:
I don’t think of any first-rate recording as needless, and this release, despite its short timing, features two excellent performances, even though Yefim Bronfman already has a recording of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 on Sony. That version, from 1999 with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the LA Phil, is nimble and quick, and it finds Bronfman more scintillating than he is in Munich in 2012.
The new Symphony No. 9, BRSO version is a live account from Vienna’s Musikverein in 2011, and in every way it is splendid. Superb recorded sound captures every detail and instrumental color in the score, and the orchestra shows off its world-class status. Jansons’s touch is light and lively, giving the symphony an irresistible buoyancy.
Thanks to some highly individual solo playing from the BRSO’s first desks, which expressively ranges from soulful melancholy to dizzying brilliance, this concert performance displays great emotional variety, including wit and suspense. I can warmly recommend it as one of Jansons’s best efforts in Shostakovich, and you can bypass the stingy timing of the CD by resorting to digital downloads and streams.
This CD is extracted from BR Klassik’s 68-disc Jansons Edition. Final applause is briefly included.
-- Fanfare
