•Pianist Jura Margulis recorded the present Schubert CD on a modern grand piano equipped with the built-on “sordino pedal” extension. Around the mid-19th century, this possibility of altering and extending the sound had largely disappeared from the canon of various pedal functions, but it was retained in Vienna until the early 20th century. Composers call this function “sordino” because the sound modification is related to the mutes of the string instruments.

The Essen Philharmonic premiered Mahler’s Sixth Symphony on May 27, 1906. The composer conducted the performance himself. He only led it two subsequent times: in 1906 in Munich and in 1907 in Vienna. The common nickname “Tragic Symphony” was only officially used once (at the first performance in Vienna) and then never again; it did not make its way into published editions of the score.

Here, conductor Simone Young leads the Hamburg Philharmonic in a recording that The Classical Sentinel calls "one of the most beautifully expressive accounts [the critic had] ever heard [and] yet another fine 'live' recording from Oehms Classics."

REVIEW:

The performance gripped—and held—my attention from the outset. I like Simone Young’s basic tempo in I: it’s expertly judged and neither too fast nor too slow. That of itself makes an immediately favourable impression. The orchestra makes a good sound, which is well reported by the engineers. The exposition repeat is taken, as most conductors do nowadays, and the performance is characterised by good energy and rhythmic definition...The nostalgic cowbells passage that follows is very atmospheric, though perhaps taken just a fraction too slowly. However, the relaxed pacing gives us the chance to admire some excellent solo woodwind work. The principal horn also excels hereabouts and in many other solo passages during the work. Indeed, the whole horn section, so crucial in this symphony, is on tip-top form throughout. After this dreamy passage, when the tempo picks up again (15:47) the music fairly bounds along and from here until the end the performance is thrusting and dramatic.

The Andante moderato is beautifully sung. The passages of lyrical nostalgia come over very well but later on so, too, do the moments of ardour. The playing is excellent; the string tone is consistently pleasing and there is much fine woodwind work. I find Simone Young’s way with this movement very persuasive: there’s lots of gentle calm but when the temperature of the music rises (for example from 11:56) she brings out the passion—and the insecurity?—that Mahler put into those pages.

She invests the scherzo with just the right amount of weight; sufficient to bring out the dark side of the music but not so much as to compromise the sparkiness of the sardonic side of things. As in the first movement, there’s excellent rhythmic definition and good use is made of accents to characterise the music. One advantage of hearing the scherzo third is that as it reaches its end the music dissolves into fragments and eventually stutters to a halt in the depths. Thus it bridges to the sepulchral stirrings at the start of the finale.

In this last, massive movement Simone Young may not quite plumb the emotional depths that, say, Klaus Tennstedt explores but, then, his reading is wholly exceptional and may not be to all tastes. As it is, I think Ms. Young hands the enormous span of this movement very well indeed. Her tempi are well judged and she inspires the orchestra to play with huge commitment—and precision. The brass, in particular, seem tireless in the face of Mahler’s huge demands on them. The first two hammer blows (12:01 and 17:45) are the occasion of massive climaxes, as they should be, and the way in which the ground is prepared for each of them is very impressive. In the four or five minutes that lead up to the third hammer blow (27:54) the music seethes and boils yet the conductor clearly retains tight control. Yes, I did refer to a third hammer blow. Mahler excised that from the score after conducting the first performance, slightly re-orchestrating at that point...The coda (from 28:37) is bleak and gaunt, bringing to an end a very convincing reading of the finale and a very fine performance of the symphony as a whole.

The recording reproduced very well on my equipment and seemed to me to convey the orchestra’s sound with clarity, impact and atmosphere...

Simone Young’s Mahler Sixth enters a crowded field...It would be well-nigh impossible to nominate a “best” and I’m not even going to try, but this Simone Young recording can stand comparison with most. It’s a distinguished issue.

-- MusicWeb International

The Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra dedicates itself here to a “forgotten master”. In drastic, enigmatic images of the Apocalypse of St. John, Louis Spohr’s oratorio The Last Judgement deals with the fundamental questions of humanity: justice, responsibility and redemption. Shortly after its world premiere, one could say that this work was an international success. Since the Spohr Year of 2009 it has returned to concert stages all over the world, including in Salzburg on 6 June 2013. OehmsClassics presents a live recording here of this concert from the Mozarteum.

The first new opera production under the baton of Simone Young, director of the Hamburg State Opera and GMD of the Philharmonic State Orchestra, was a triumph. Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler requires a large opera house to use all of its resources; this is why it is very seldom staged.

This significant Hindemith opera is a rarity in CD catalogs as well – in contrast to the many available recordings of the “Mathis” symphony. OehmsClassics now releases a new complete recording, a live recording of the highly celebrated Hamburg premiere from September 25, 2005 with Falk Struckmann as Mathis.

REVIEWS:

Seventy years after its premiere, Mathis der Maler finally emerges here as one of the great operas of the 20th century. Wholeheartedly recommended to all!

Mathis is Matthias Grünewald, one of several names used by the painter of the Isenheim Altarpiece, but the opera is only incidentally about his painting. Rather it is about the artist’s place in, and conflicts with, a troubled society, subject matter that made it anathema to Nazi Germany (it was eventually premiered in Zurich in 1938). Mathis, at first content with his life as a painter, is drawn into the bloody Peasants’ War (1524–1526) between the common people and the nobility, for which Martin Luther’s challenge to the Catholic Church was also a driving force. After witnessing the horrific effects of war and gross inhumanity on both sides, the old painter withdraws completely from the world (seldom has such a vast, complex plot been so over-simplified). Other major figures are Hans Schwalb, the leader of the rebels, Albrecht von Brandenburg, a surprisingly freethinking Cardinal who employs Mathis, and Ursula, who loves him. This potentially tendentious opera is rescued by its wonderful music, Hindemith at his absolute peak. The climactic scene is a vocal/choral version of The Temptation of St. Anthony , the finale of the Symphony “Mathis der Maler,” and almost everything in the opera rises to a similar level.

...the Oehms [recording] boils along, teeming with life...the Hamburg Philharmonic is magnificent, realizing all of the music in a way that the Bavarians never did. The music and the drama are so powerful, so engrossing, that this listener was unaware of time passing. Getting up to change to CD 3, I thought, “Didn’t I just begin CD 2?” But the booklet insists that 67 minutes had passed. Kudos to Simone Young, general manager of the Hamburg State Opera and music director of the Hamburg Philharmonic!

The Oehms recording is worthy of this performance; everything is heard clearly, even in multi-voiced tutti passages. Producer Dirk Lüdemann and sound engineer Dominik Blech deserve star billing as well.

-- Fanfare

Classical Music

Classical Music

Every opera diva who thinks something of herself has a secret love – operetta. And this is completely justified, when one thinks of and listens to the immortal melodies of Johann Strauss, Karl Millöcker or Franz Lehár. And is not Dubarry the younger sister of Violetta from La Traviata, and Rosalinde from the Fledermaus the reincarnation of Mozart’s Countess Almaviva? They love, they suffer and they sing and dance through the great dreams of their audience, often with a substantial shot of irony added to the words and notes. And thus opera and operetta are two sides of the coin called life – the comic and tragic variants of human existence.

All these roles, selected with care, are included in the current repertoire of Noëmi Nadelmann. She has at her disposal all the attributes of a modern singer. Cosmopolitan simply by virtue of her half Russian ancestry, she was born in Switzerland, studied in America at Indiana University in Bloomington, where she allowed herself to become infected with the freedom to leave behind the boundary between serious and light music, between high art and that which the Americans so appropriately call entertainment, and simply to love and to present good music and powerful stage roles. Her biography reads like an oscillation between two poles: in Munich, she sang first at the Gärtnerplatz and later at the State Opera, in Berlin she has sung at all three opera houses, Hamburg, Cologne, Venice, Vienna, the Met, Paris, Chicago, Tokyo – she is in demand all over the world.

Her encounter with Harry Kupfer was determinative. He observed her carefully before he chose her as “his” Violetta, to conclusively win over the Berlin public. Inspirational success has come and continues to come from her collaborations with conductors such as Yakov Kreizberg, Gustav Kuhn, Christian Thielemann, Kurt Masur, Simone Young, René Jacobs, Nicolaus Harnoncourt and many others to whose hands she has trusted herself. Her repertoire is continuously being extended into the lyrical domain, and reaches from enchantresses from Handel´s operas such as Armida (Rinaldo) and the title role from Alcina, through Mozart’s Donna Anna and the Countess, to Lucia di Lammermoor and La Traviata. She always has many concerts and liederabends in her schedule as well – here also, in the broad palette from Schubert to Richard Strauss and Gershwin, whose wonderful songs she brought to CD in 1997.

After an aria CD under the direction of Gustav Kuhn and a recording with lieder by Franz Schreker, she has now turned her attention to operetta: the selection in this CD brings back the golden age of this genre. The two great phases of Vienna operetta – first Strauss, Zeller and Millöcker, then the somewhat later Kálmán, Lehár and Heuberger – also bring to expression with their glowing melodies and arrangements sides of life that we sometimes forget – passion, yearning, and an unbridled lust for life. From this point of view, we need operetta and its wonderful female characters more than ever – where else can one nowadays describe love as “Heaven on Earth” without being suspected of kitsch?

-- Andreas Richter

Classical Music

Classical Music

VIVA VERDI!

DIALOGUE: BAROQUE - MINIMAL

ANDREAS-SIBERMANN-ORGEL EBERSM

V 3: ROBERT SCHUMANN: PIANO WO

Classical Music

Classical Music