On Synergy, flautist Sharon Bezaly and her musician friends demonstrate that one plus one can be much greater than two. Featuring works that celebrate the coming together of like-minded musicians, this project is a reminder, after more than two years of a pandemic that has affected all of us, that true musical synergy can only be achieved 'face-to-face’, rather than ‘remotely’. With his Concerto for flute and recorder, Telemann not only creates a fusion of different musical styles of his time – namely Italian, German and French – but also shows a gift for borrowing elements from popular music. Saint-Saëns brings swirling colors and energy with a Tarentelle for flute, clarinet and orchestra, that at times displays obsessive, even threatening undertones. From the same period, Doppler’s Concerto for two flutes is not far from the world of opera, providing the two soloists with ample opportunity to shine like two singers in front of an orchestra. In addition to celebrating the synergy created between musicians, the last two works featured on this disc, Bachianas Brasileiras No. 6 and Suite from the Orchestral Works, are telling examples of synergy between composers: it is as if Villa-Lobos and Mahler were shaking hands with Johann Sebastian Bach across distances of thousands of miles and hundreds of years.

REVIEW:

The principal attraction of this SACD, as good as the performances are, is the uniqueness of the program. Sharon Bezaly, one of the outstanding flutists of our time, has brought together composers not particularly associated with each other, and from different eras. While each performance is enjoyable, the real success of the disc is how the imaginative program flows in such a lovely way.

On Telemann’s Concerto in E Minor for Recorder, Flute, and Strings with harpsichord continuo. Bezaly is joined by one of the world’s premier recordists, Michala Petri, and their interplay is delightful. The final Presto is particularly inventive and sparkling in the way the two soloists play off each other.

Michael Collins and Bezaly play Saint-Saëns’s Tarantelle with total communication, lingering lightly over lyrical passages while clearly enjoying their virtuoso moments as well.

The big surprise for me was the Concerto in D Minor for Two Flutes by the flute virtuoso and composer Franz Doppler (1821–1883). The music is almost vocal in its melodic shape, but the remarkable aspect of the score, surprisingly, are the passages where the two flutes must play in unison. Bezaly and Walter Auer come close to making us believe that they are a single flute.

Next comes the one work without orchestra, Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas brasileiras No. 6, scored for flute and bassoon. Bram van Sambeek is a brilliant technician, but more importantly he produces a rich sound from his bassoon and provides harmonic support for Bezaly’s flute.

Her combination of rich tone and rhythmic precision is just right for The Mahler-orchestrated selections from the Second and Third Orchestral Suites. While no one would mistake this for an historically informed performance, it is an extremely stylish one. Michael Collins and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra bring elegance to the Air and energy to the Gavotte from the Third Suite. As an encore Bezaly give us a repeat of the Badinerie from the Second Suite.

BIS’s usual high standards of engineering and informative program notes round out a truly lovely disc.

-- Fanfare (Henry Fogel)

Along with Vivaldi’s ‘Seasons’ or Beethoven’s ‘Fifth’, Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos belong to those works that are so well-known that we risk taking them for granted. In order to (re-)discover the special qualities that can inspire us today, in 2001 Thomas Dausgaard and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra decided to contact six contemporary composer, asking each of them to compose a companion piece to one of the concertos. Seventeen years later, in 2018, it was time to present the result, with a performance at the BBC Proms of all the works – new and old. Recorded over a period of 18 months leading up to this event, the present boxed set provides a unique opportunity to experience six very different musical minds and idioms entering into conversation with Bach: Mark-Anthony Turnage, Steven Mackey, Anders Hillborg, Olga Neuwirth, Uri Caine and Brett Dean. Bach’s concertos are remarkable in that they are all scored for different instrumental combinations, and part of the brief to the group of composers was to reflect this. In her Aello, Olga Neuwirth has for instance used several ‘instruments’ to stand in for Bach’s harpsichord, including a synthesizer, a milk frother and a typewriter. Brett Dean, on the other hand, has stayed very close to Bach’s instrumentation, but has chosen to write his work as a preparation for Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 – an Approach to Bach’s extremely tight canonic writing. In performing the twelve works the orchestra and Dausgaard are joined by leading soloists including Clare Chase, Mahan Esfahani, Håkan Hardenberger, Pekka Kuusisto and Tabea Zimmermann.

KRAUS: Symphonies, Vol. 2

Having begun their collaboration in 1997, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and its conductor laureate Thomas Dausgaard have developed an unusually tight partnership. Nowhere is this demonstrated more clearly than in their cycles of the symphonies of Schumann, Schubert and, most recently, Brahms – performances which have been characterized by reviewers as variously ‘fresh’, ‘vivid’, ‘transparent’ and ‘invigorating’. Of Mendelssohn the team has previously recorded the incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a release described as ‘capturing Mendelssohn’s inimitable spirit’ on the website Crescendo. The same disc included The Hebrides, and now the SCO and Dausgaard return to Scotland, with Mendelssohn’s ‘Scottish’ Symphony. This was begun in 1829, after a stay in London during which the composer conducted his Symphony No. 1, also included on this disc. Mendelssohn’s imagination was often fired by impressions from nature, and Scotland was the Romantic landscape par excellence, celebrated for its rugged Highland scenery and melancholy tunes. ‘I think that today I found the beginning of my ‘Scottish’ Symphony’, he wrote to his parents after a visit to the ruined chapel at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh. It took more than a decade for him to complete the symphony – but ever since its first performance, in 1842, it has been a staple of the symphonic repertoire.

REVIEW:

With the 38-member Swedish Chamber Orchestra, conductor Thomas Dausgaard here offers an ensemble probably quite similar in size to that which played Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56. The size fits Dausgaard well, for his readings are crisp and restrained, without a lot of vibrato (as is his trademark with this group) or big emotional climaxes. Dausgaard's quick, high-tension approach works well here. BIS contributes fine engineering from the Örebro Concert House in this fresh Mendelssohn release.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

KRAUS: Symphonies, Vol. 4

Classical Music

Classical Music

Born in Prague in 1737, Josef Myslivecek spent most of his short life in Italy, where for a while he enjoyed success with his many operas, and became known as ‘Il Boemo’ (‘The Bohemian’). It was also in Italy – in Bologna – that he first met Mozart, in 1770. Their paths would cross again and in letters Mozart wrote about him with affection, describing him as full of ‘fire, spirit and life’. Myslivecek’s influence is apparent in Mozart’s early operas, violin concertos, symphonies and keyboard music. His music soon fell out of fashion, however, and it is only recent decades that have seen more interest in works such as the wind octets, violin concertos and symphonies. In comparison, Myslivecek’s output for keyboard has been somewhat neglected, something which the English pianist Clare Hammond seeks to rectify with her latest disc. The keyboard concertos in particular have barely seen the light of day since Myslivecek’s death and the second concerto is recorded for the first time on this album which gathers all of the extant keyboard works. Clare Hammond, whose imaginative recording projects on BIS have received international acclaim, is here supported in the concertos by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by no one less than Nicholas McGegan, whose expertise in 18th-century style is undisputed.

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REVIEWS:

The two compact concertos have a sparky grace that comes across buoyantly in these performances. Schnabel’s old adage about Mozart’s piano sonatas – “too easy for children, and too difficult for artists” – would come to mind for Myslive?ek’s Divertimenti, were it not for the perfectly judged tone that Hammond strikes with them, preserving their seemingly artless charm while finding a striking profundity in their simplicity.

– Guardian

Sprightliness abounds in the concertos and short pieces gathered here, delivered with deliciously unfussy poise and elegance on a modern Steinway, crisply supported by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and the conductor Nicholas McGegan.

– Sunday Times (UK)

Chamber orchestra Schubert, but with plenty of bite.

Having greatly enjoyed Thomas Dausgaard’s Schumann symphonic recordings, I was more than delighted to find this Schubert disc amongst my allocation. This is still part of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra’s ‘Opening Doors’ collection, though the logo isn’t being paraded with quite as high a profile as previously and my copy had no extra cardboard slip for the standard jewel case. Schubert’s 8th and 9th Symphonies are already available in this series on BIS-1656. BIS already released some Schubert Symphonies with Neeme Järvi in the 1980s with nice performances from the Stockholm Sinfonietta, but Dausgaard’s recordings, while drier in acoustic, are more distinctive in terms of style.

My last encounter with Schubert’s symphonies via these pages was with Herbert Blomstedt’s fine Berlin Classics set with the Staatskapelle Dresden. The orchestral sound is inevitably grander than with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, but timings with each movement are not so very different, and I still like Blomstedt’s lightness of touch with these works, even if the wobbly vibrato to the flute sound is bothersome. There are no such quibbles with the orchestral sections with this BIS recording. The music is played expressively but without any kind of over-emphasis, the actual recording not terribly spectacular but nicely detailed and realistic.

Performing Schubert symphonies with a chamber orchestra should hold few if any real surprises, unless you are only used to the likes of Herbert von Karajan, whose Berlin Philharmonic recordings on EMI Gemini are a rich and refined sonic feast but of a distinctively mid to late Beethovenian flavour. Schubert’s symphonies were never performed publicly in his lifetime, and the Symphony No. 6 was the only one he heard played in rehearsal with an amateur orchestra. This is a youthful work which makes tribute to the likes of Rossini, and the orchestra of the time would have been more comparable with those used by Mozart and Haydn than anything particularly Romantic. Chamber orchestra forces do not however result in Schubert-lite, and you only have to listen to the tremendous accents of the Scherzo to be made aware of the hard-hitting possibilities of such an ensemble. Fewer strings make for a more equal partnership between these and the wind sections, and the sense of inner dialogue is a strong aspect in this recording. As far as I am concerned there is nothing anaemic about this performance, and it ticks all the boxes for radiant joy and underlying drama.

Six years on from the Symphony No. 6 saw Schubert involved in Rosamunde, a play which promised much but ended in humiliating public failure, Schubert’s excellent incidental music unable to lift the audience’s indifference to the theatre experience, but strong enough to become popular in its own right. The sections presented here are Entr’actes 1, 3, and 2, and the Ballet Music No. 2 and No. 1 in that order. This is a more complete set than most ‘filler’ movements added to orchestral recordings, and with the famous tune of Entr’acte No. 3 played with warmth and affection, the two ballets given perfect energy and tempi and plenty of atmospheric dramas elsewhere I can find nothing to complain about. You won’t find the orchestral opulence of recordings such as the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Claudio Abbado on Deutsche Grammophon, and this is still one of your best bets if looking for the complete Rosamunde, choir and all. Listening to this BIS recording does however make one realise how idealised such performances can become, and it is Thomas Dausgaard who brings us closer to the earthy reality of an orchestra in something approaching a theatre setting.

-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International

FRANZ SCHUBERT Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Orebro/Thomas Dausgaard FRANZ SCHUBERT: Symphonny No. 8 in B minor, 'Unfinished', D759; symphony No. 9 in C major, 'Great', D944.

Mozart’s horn concertos are so well-known that for many listeners the sound of the horn and Mozart are virtually synonymous. Mozart was not the first composer to write solo concertos for the horn, however, and works from earlier on in the eighteenth century give a quite different perspective on the instrument. With this release soloist Alec Frank-Gemmill provides insights into some of these early horn concertos, by composers ranging from Telemann to Haydn, by way of Mozart’s own father, Leopold.

Around 1750, both Christoph Förster and Johann Baptist Georg Neruda wrote extremely demanding and virtuosic concertos – Neruda’s Concerto in E flat major is in such a high register that it has sometimes been assumed to be composed for the trumpet. Through modern innovations in horn design it is once more possible to perform all of these early horn concertos, including parts previously considered ‘impossibly high’. Alec Frank-Gemmill is recognised internationally for the exceptional breadth and depth of his music-making. His interest in historical performance informed his previous, highly acclaimed release for BIS – a traversal of the horn repertoire throughout some 140 years, performed on four different 19th-century instruments. On the present album he plays on modern horns, but draws heavily on his familiarity with 18th-century horn technique and style, with the support of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra under period performance expert Nicholas McGegan.

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REVIEW:

Nicholas McGegan is equally at home in this repertory, meanwhile. The Swedish Chamber Orchestra play with wonderful freshness and finesse, and there’s a flawless sense of ensemble between Frank-Gemmill and the solo strings in the Sinfonia da camera. An exceptional disc that confirms and consolidates his reputation as one of today’s finest horn players, it makes for compelling and essential listening.

– Gramophone

Following a series of acclaimed recordings of 19th-century music including complete cycles of the symphonies by Schubert and Schumann, Thomas Dausgaard and his Swedish Chamber Orchestra turn to Felix Mendelssohn. The team’s latest offering unites three of the composer's four celebrated concert overtures, written between 1826 and 1835 and setting new standards for this emerging genre: Mendelssohn’s overtures are also tone poems, combining a Classical conception with Romantic expressivity. The earliest of the three – A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Mendelssohn composed at the age of seventeen, and his sister Fanny later remarked how Shakespeare's play had been a constant presence at their home, and ‘how at various ages we had read all the different roles, from Peaseblossom to Hermia and Helena…’ The overture immediately became one of Mendelssohn’s signature pieces, and seventeen years later he returned to it, composing additional incidental music for a stage production of the play. Written for soloists, women's choir and orchestra, the complete Midsummer Night score is included here. The disc opens with the last of the four overtures to be composed, however: The Fair Melusine, which Mendelssohn wrote after having heard an opera based on the old French tale of the water spirit Mélusine and her sad fate. Actively disliking the opera, Mendelssohn was provoked into his own musical setting of the subject matter in the form of a concert overture. Water – and its depiction in music – also plays an important role in The Hebrides, the closing work on the present recording. Inspired by the poems by Ossian – which captured the imagination of an entire generation at the beginning of the Romantic era – Mendelssohn visited Scotland and the Hebrides in 1829, and already during this trip he sent a postcard to his family, with the overture's famous opening written down in a four-part setting.

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Poised on the northern margin of Europe, Swedish composers struggled to have their voices heard but built a strong national musical culture during the course of the 19th century. The works for violin and orchestra collected on this disc have little obviously Swedish content, such as folk tunes. Rather, the composers can be heard drawing on the models of the musical giants of their day, asserting that Swedish music was ready for comparison on equal terms with that of central Europe.
Written early in the century, Franz Berwald's youthful concerto is an eccentric work that stretches the classical tradition. Fragmented melodies and military figures in the outer movements frame a very brief Adagio. Jumping to the end of the century, Wilhelm Stenhammar and Tor Aulin composed under the influence of Bruch, Brahms and Schumann. Stenhammar's Romances are predominantly lyrical, allowing young soloist Tobias Ringborg's attractive singing tone to shine. Aulin's Concerto no 3 is dramatic and impassioned; with many striking unaccompanied passages and austere dialogues between violin and orchestra. Despite the obvious influences, this work has an originality of rhetoric and style that make it the real discovery here.

The Haydn and Hummel Concertos were composed for a brand new instrument invented by Anton Weidinger - who was a member of the court orchestra in Vienna - a trumpet with keys which increased both the range and flexibility of the instrument.

"[A] lovely recording of four flute concertos by François Devienne. Playing on modern instruments..., [Patrick] Gallois and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra do a marvelous job of conveying the lightness and the joyful elegance of Devienne’s very French style. The album is a sheer delight from beginning to end." – Rick Anderson, CD HotList

I have to confess, I seldom listen to these pieces. Not because everyone agrees that they aren't "great" Mozart, but because most performances usually fall into one of two equally loathsome categories, which for convenience we may call Flutezilla vs. The Antiques Road Show. First, there is Flutezilla--the ego-boosting display of some star soloist who simply must record these concertos because Mozart wrote them and, let's face it, no other great composer between the Baroque period and the 20th century cared enough about the flute to even attempt to compose anything similarly worth playing. These productions usually feature the soloist blasting away on an instrument over-miked to the point where, regarding balance with the orchestra, it offers the aural equivalent of Godzilla stomping on teeny tiny Tokyo--"Tokyo" in this case being represented by a bargain-basement ensemble (I Solisti di Fresno, perhaps?) usually bored out of its mind, led by a no-talent, no-name conductor for whom excitement means having everyone start and end more or less at the same time (never mind what happens along the way). More than a few great flutists have thus been defeated by these lovely, unassuming works when played and recorded in such a fashion.


Then there's The Antiques Road Show. This more recent, second batch of vile recordings comes from those terribly earnest period-instrument folks. Here it's the flutist who's usually the one with no name and no talent, as well as no timbre and no intonation, playing some "authentically replicated copy" of an 18th-century wooden atrocity impressively designated as a "flauto traverso" or some such--as if it makes one iota of difference if the player blows the ghastly thing sideways, front-ways, backwards, upside down, or under water. Any way you slice it, the instrument sounds like a whistling tea-kettle in distress, with far more hiss of escaping air than musical tone. But in this case, the soloist has the backing of some "très à la mode" period-instrument pick-up band attacking the music with a sadistically ferocious ideological fervor more appropriate to the Manson family or the Symbionese Liberation Army than to a proper chamber orchestra. Naturally the soloist doesn't stand a chance, and given the appalling quality of the instrument in question, this probably is a good thing when all is said and done.


All of which is a long way of saying that I have no hesitation in declaring this to be the finest recording of Mozart's flute concertos currently available, and believe me, I've suffered through most of them. It has everything: a first rate soloist, a marvelous orchestra obviously mindful of period practice but playing modern instruments, an intelligently added harpsichord continuo (especially wonderful as a foil to the timbre of the harp), and boundless enthusiasm from all concerned. It's captured by Naxos in excellently balanced, warm, pellucidly clear sound. All it takes is about 10 seconds' listening to any single movement in any of these three works to make the outstanding quality of the musicianship self evident. The Swedish Chamber Orchestra launches the opening Allegro aperto of the Second Concerto (wisely placed first on the disc) with infectious rhythmic drive, and from the moment of Patrick Gallois' joyous, chirping entrance the performance flies by like a force of nature.


Listen to how characterfully the horn and oboe parts contribute to the opening tutti of the Concerto for Flute and Harp, and to the lively and luscious interplay between harpist Fabrice Pierre and Gallois throughout their many exchanges over the course of the movement. Taut rhythms and vivid accents keep the ear consistently engaged from first note to last. The long central Adagio of the First concerto is so beautiful that you easily could enjoy it for another nine minutes, and Gallois' cadenzas in all three works never outstay their welcome, being as fresh and pithy as Mozart's own music. No praise could be higher than to note how, in the same concerto's concluding Tempo di Menuetto, so often a dreary chore in other performances, Gallois & Cie manage to find a tempo both stately, as befits a minuet, but also energetically forward-moving, as befits a concerto finale. Really there's no reason to own any other version of this music, particularly given Naxos' budget price. As for the recording(s) already in your collection, they'll make a classy set of coasters. [11/15/2003]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

In their exploration of the symphonic repertoire of the Romantic era, Thomas Dausgaard and his Swedish Chamber Orchestra have previously recorded Bruckner, Tchaikovsky and most recently Brahms, in performances described as ‘exhilarating’ (The Observer) and ‘stirring’ (ClassicsToday.com). As they take on the music by another archetypal nineteenth-century composer, Richard Wagner, they are joined by one of today’s foremost Wagner singers. Named ‘Singer of the Year’ by the magazine Opernwelt in 2012, Nina Stemme has been the Isolde of choice at Glyndebourne, Bayreuth and Covent Garden. She here performs the five Wesendonck Songs – of which two in particular, Im Treibhaus and Träume, were referred to by their composer as ‘studies’ for Tristan and Isolde. Wagner himself prepared a version for violin and orchestra of Träume, which the conductor Felix Mottl incorporated when, supervised by the composer, he made an orchestration of the set. These songs to texts by Mathilde Wesendonck, Wagner’s muse during the 1850s, are framed by two versions of the overture to The Flying Dutchman, the rarely heard 1841 original version and the composer’s final creation from 1860, with its new ending inspired by Tristan, composed three years earlier. Concerning his revisions, Wagner wrote to Mathilde: ‘Now that I have composed Isolde’s last transfiguration, I could at last find the right close for this Fliegender-Holländer overture’. Included is also the Siegfried Idyll, composed in 1870 as one of Wagner’s few purely orchestral works. It is known by this title because it was presented as a gift to Cosima Wagner, who had recently given birth to the couple’s son Siegfried, but also because it uses themes from the opera Siegfried, which was then nearing completion. Closing the disc is the stately prelude to another opera, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, in which Wagner with a spectacular use of counterpoint – ‘applied Bach’ was his own description – aspires to express the idea of a reconciliation between artistic freedom and respect for tradition.

Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Bruch Maxim Rysanov Maxim Rysanov Plays Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Bruch

Classical Music

HAYDN: Symphonies, Vol. 27 (Nos. 50, 51, 52)

This disc received the 1999 Cannes Classical Award for "Best Orchestral Recording - 18th Century."

A weighty symphony, swaying Viennese waltzes and fiery Hungarian dances make up the colourful programme when Thomas Dausgaard and his Swedish Chamber Orchestra engage with Johannes Brahms in Opening Doors, the team's acclaimed series of Romantic orchestral composers. Johannes Brahms was only twenty years old when Robert Schumann hailed him as one whose genius gave rise to the greatest symphonic hopes. It is therefore striking that he didn't complete his First Symphony until more than twenty years later, in 1876 - even though the earliest sketches for it date back to 1855. Brahms - who once said that he constantly heard the 'giant' Beethoven 'marching behind him' - had such a deep respect for what his great predecessor had achieved with the genre that he for a long time doubted that he would ever be able to write a symphony of his own - by the time he did, it must have been gratifying to him that it was hailed as 'Beethoven's Tenth'. While working on the symphony, Brahms composed his Op.52, the cycle Liebeslieder-Walzer 'for piano four-hands (and song ad libitum)'. He kept the forces as flexible as possible: the waltzes were performable with or without voices; if used, the vocal parts could be sung either by soloists or by a choir. Even so, he was soon asked for another version, for choir and orchestra. Brahms initially rejected this idea, but finally agreed to make a partial orchestration: selecting eight of the Op.52 waltzes, he supplemented them with an early version of one of the not yet published Neue Liebeslieder-Walzer, Op.65. Around the same time, he was asked to orchestrate another collection of dances composed for piano four-hands: his first set of Hungarian Dances, which had quickly become a great hit. It took him four years to comply with this wish, and even then he only accepted to orchestrate three of the dances, leaving the field open for various other arrangers (including Dvorák) to satisfy the demand for more.

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

Classical Music

During their long collaboration (1997 - 2019) Thomas Dausgaard and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra developed a project they named ‘Opening Doors’, performing orchestral works from the Romantic era with the smaller-than-usual forces of a chamber orchestra. Due to the often revelatory results of this approach, the team went on to present at concerts around the world and on several recordings. This box set brings together an important chapter of the project: Robert Schumann’s orchestral music, symphonies as well as overtures. In addition to his four symphonies - including both versions of No. 4 - this collection presents the Zwickau Symphony, an early, unfinished work from 1832-33, as well as a divertimento-like sequence of movements, Overture, Scherzo and Finale.

Of the six overtures included in the set some are well-known, like the overture to Genoveva, Schumann’s only opera, and the Manfred Overture which Clara Schumann regarded as ‘one of the most poetic and most gripping of Robert’s pieces’. Other, less often heard works will constitute pleasant discoveries. The three albums included in the set were greeted with critical acclaim on their individual releases, earning distinctions in magazines such as Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine and Fono Forum. Summing up the cycle, the reviewer in Fanfare described it as ‘close to being the most thrilling Schumann symphony series on the market, with sawing violins smoking down to the bridge and timpani-like rifle shots.’

Past praise for the albums included in this edition:

Symphony No. 1 & Overtures

Right from the opening fanfares, there's a sense of joy and exhilaration, and the openness of the orchestral textures brings freshness and clarity. The ensemble’s lithe flexibility is used to the full by Dausgaard, whose instincts on tempo are persuasive, and the dramatic tension underpinning the work isn't allowed to evaporate.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Symphonies Nos. 2 & 4

The Second Symphony is revealing with keen accents and prominent inner voices, the latter half of the slow introduction biting and muscular, the main Allegro superbly built. In the Scherzo Dausgaard slows and softens the bridge passage appealingly, accentuating the dizzy flight back to the main subject. In the achingly beautiful Adagio, top line and accompaniment seem to lean on each other to ease the pain, and in speeding for the finale's second set Dausgaard intensifies the argument, making fresh sense of it.

-- Gramophone

Dausgaard is not the first conductor to use the 1841 version of the D minor Symphony… but… this performance, given by an orchestra of the size of Schumann himself would have known brings it vividly to life.

-- BBC Music Magazine

This disc offers the world première recording of Viatore ('The Wanderer', 2001), which may be described as a representation in sound of 'becoming' or 'passing' - a spiritual journey in familiar Vasks territory. All the works were recorded in the presence of the composer by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra - an ensemble whose previous BIS recordings have all been highly acclaimed. The orchestra's performances on one of their latest offerings - H.K. Gruber's Manhattan Broadcasts BIS-CD-1341) - were termed "masterful" (Gramophone), "a triumph" (BBC Music Magazine), and "superb" (The Times). Under the direction of the orchestra's leader Katarina Andreasson, who also performs the solo part of the violin concerto, the playing on the present disc is no less committed.

Classical Music

Although Kurt Weill’s principal legacy lies in music theatre works of both popular appeal and intellectual weight, he was equally at home in purely orchestral works as evidenced by his two symphonies. Written just over a decade apart, they reveal his chameleon-like ability to work with any range of style and form. The Symphonie in einem Satz (Symphony in one movement), completed when he was barely 21, adopts an expressionist idiom that shows intricate writing, dense counterpoint and quick shifts reminiscent of Schoenberg's First Chamber Symphony. Completed in France in 1934 after Weill had to flee Nazi Germany, the Fantaisie symphonique is filled with allusions to the 'sung ballet' The Seven Deadly Sins, composed at the same time. Opening the programme is a selection from the ‘play with music’ Der Silbersee (The Silver Lake), a commentary on commercial greed. As in The Threepenny Opera, the vocal parts were composed for singing actors rather than opera singers. Steeped in the world of Weill, conductor, composer and chansonnier HK Gruber performs the songs himself in his own inimitable way, giving an unusual authenticity to the interpretations.

REVIEWS:

The collection is conducted by HK Gruber, a standard-setting interpreter of Weill’s music, who has been inspired by the composer in his own works. His account of the first symphony (1921) tightly controls what could easily seem scattered; and he sings in the “Silbersee” excerpts, with the gravely, unrefined affect of Lotte Lenya that will be instantly familiar to those who know his 1977 song cycle “Frankenstein!!” The second symphony unfurls with an ease that becomes more disturbing as, from behind the wit and tunefulness, emerge flashes of heartbroken nostalgia and martial terror. The scores comes out sounding more personal, if documentary, for it — a postcard from a precarious Europe on the brink.

-- New York Times (Joshua Barone)

Der Silbersee was Kurt Weill’s European swan-song; premiered in Berlin in February 1933, it was banned by the Nazis in March, and Weill was forced to flee Germany.

There’s a jarring contrast between the pungent text (beautifully projected here by HK Gruber) and the lovely orchestral accompaniment that perfectly sums up Weill’s best music. There are only a few excerpts from the score, but they’re choice.

The marvelous Symphony No. 2 is close to the top of my list of obscure orchestral works that deserve to be programmed and recorded much more frequently. He’s taken the accessible theatre music which had become his hallmark, and neatly slotted it within the classical symphony form of Haydn and Mozart.

Back in 1921, Kurt Weill had written his Symphony in One Movement (his First). His characterization of it: “By Mahler, out of Strauss, trained by Schoenberg.” Weill cleverly melds the neo-romantic tradition with leading edge serialism. This is more than juvenilia; it’s an accomplished work in its own right. Weill has the compositional skill this early in his composing career to produce music that has value a century later.

This project is a perfect example of honest performance of great music; with stellar support from the musicians of the Swedish Chamber Choir, we have here an outstanding contribution to the Weill discography.

-- Music for Several Instruments