WDR Sinfonieorchester
16 products
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Silenced
$20.99CDLinn Records
Nov 28, 2025CKD772 -
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Andre: … hij … 1 & 2
Eotvos: Halleluja & Alle vittime senza nome / Various
Christopher Fox: Topophony
Orchestral Works
Brahms: Violin Concerto & Songs / Tjeknavorian, Haefliger, WDR Sinfonieorchester
Brahms: Piano Concertos / Măcelaru, Trpceski, WDR Sinfonieorchester
This eagerly-awaited new release sees Simon Trpceski reunite with conductor Cristian Măcelaru to record Brahms Piano Concertos. Their unrivalled chemistry, paramount in Brahms’s chamber-like concertos, is on full display in these new performances which puts the two artists’ musical affinity in the spotlight. These two contrasting concertos, one beginning in darkness, the other in light, mark Brahms’s major contribution to the genre. With Trpceski’s flawless technique and sensitive playing, pianophiles are in for a treat. Macelaru’s orchestra, WDR Sinfonieorchester, joins the pair to complete the line-up; a perfect companion to their previous album, Shostakovich Piano Concertos, which garnered numerous accolades (BBC Music Magazine Concerto Choice, Le Choix de France Musique, among others).
Bartók: The Wooden Prince; Dance Suite / Măcelaru, WDR Symphony Orchestra
Following their first album for Linn (Dvorák: Legends Op. 59, Czech Suite Op. 39), the WDR Sinfonieorchester and Cristian Măcelaru pursue the same folk vein with two orchestral works by Béla Bartók. Based on a rather childish tale (prince, princess, fairies, and of course a happy ending!), the music of the ballet The Wooden Prince – recorded in full here – has all the ingredients of a masterpiece: masterful scoring for large forces, use of musical themes, an effortless amalgam of folk and late-Romantic elements.
Composed in 1923 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the merging of the towns of Buda and Pest – alongside commissions by Ernö Dohnányi and Zoltán Kodály – the century-old Dance Suite is a six-movement work that has become one of Bartók’s best known compositions. Born in Timișoara, a short distance from Hungary, Măcelaru can boast an unparalleled understanding of Bartók, as evident here.
REVIEW:
For overall quality Măcelaru rivals Mälkki, and comparing the two readings episode by episode, one is as likely as the other to convey a little more mood and color. But neither really has the freshness of discovery and excitement heard in Boulez’s first account on Sony, and neither of the two orchestras, the WDR Symphony and Helsinki Philharmonic, approaches Boulez’s spectacular results with the New York Philharmonic.
Măcelaru is up against it again in the Dance Suite, which has had outstanding recordings from Fricsay, Boulez, Solti, and Iván Fischer, among others. Less raw than Solti, Măcelaru shows himself a master of the score in a reading that crackles with aliveness and presence. He gets animated playing from the Cologne musicians, and you quickly forget that they are not on a par with eminent ensembles in this music.
I was captivated from start to finish, and more importantly, I got a bead on Măcelaru beyond my only other exposure to him, in the Shostakovich piano concertos. There’s no reason not to give this release the same enthusiastic praise that has become the norm for Măcelaru. The recorded sound is full, vivid, and lifelike.
-- Fanfare
Baltakas, Eötvös, Haas & Staud: Sax – Concertos for Saxophone / Weiss, WDR Cologne SO
After the invention of the saxophone about 180 years ago, it has been hugely successful in certain musical styles, but never really established itself in the symphony orchestra. It’s still seen as a newcomer, and relatively few solo works have been written for it – at least until recently. Marcus Weiss, one of the most successful classical saxophonists, chose four very characteristic concertante pieces from recent decades that demonstrate a wide range of possibilities for the instrument. All four pieces were premiered by him and three of them are dedicated to him. The compositions represent various directions within New Music with very distinct individual characters each.
“The pieces also show that we saxophone soloists always play the full range of instruments, from the lowest to the highest, from baritone to soprano. Every instrument is able to show its particular qualities in these works.” (Marcus Weiss) When Adolphe Sax applied for patents for his new instrument in Paris in 1846, he submitted drawings of the baritone saxophone. Georg Friedrich Haas’s work is therefore the centerpiece of this recording – the baritone with its physical power, with multiphonics that are juxtaposed with the orchestra, but also with a singing parlando. The youngest piece of this album, Peter Eötvös’s very virtuosic “Focus”, and the work by Johannes Maria Staud use both tenor and alto sax, while the soprano is exactly the right choice for Vykintas Baltakas’ crystalline music.
Zimmermann: Recomposed / Holliger, WDR Sinfonieorchester
[The] new three-CD set titled “Zimmermann: Recomposed,” on the German Wergo label, is among the standout releases of 2022. -- The New York Times
Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918–1970) was one of the most distinctive composers in the musical avant-garde after the Second World War. While Karlheinz Stockhausen served as a kind of ‘generator’ in Cologne during the 1950s and 60s, inventing completely new sounds and techniques, Zimmermann was in many ways his opposite, a ‘transformer’ who redefined previously existing material by placing it in new contexts and collage-like structures, anticipating the ideas of the Postmodernists. Zimmermann created these new contexts on many levels.
Especially in his younger years, he arranged and orchestrated songs and piano pieces using brash and daring instrumental colors. These arrangements then found their way into his works that are now recognized as modern masterpieces: “Alagoana”, “Konzert”, “Sinfonie in einem Satz”, “Stille und Umkehr”, etc. His self-composed works employing numerous quotations as well as his arrangements ‘recomposing’ previously existing music are juxtaposed in the excellent recordings presented by WERGO in this collection. It contains more than three hours of music as well as an extensive booklet with a wealth of information and an interview with Heinz Holliger, the guiding spirit behind this production.
Holliger conducted all of the recordings and has worked for years to ensure that Zimmermann’s long-forgotten arrangements were rescued, published, performed, and recorded. The performances and recordings took place as part of the celebrations organized by the WDR in Cologne in honor of Zimmermann’s 100th birthday. This new release from WERGO presents a fresh perspective on the composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann, whose tragic suicide shortly after the completion of “Stille und Umkehr” shocked the musical world. His fascinating instrumental effects and his embrace of popular and traditional music make his works feel much more at home in our contemporary world than they did in the cultural atmosphere of his time, with its faith with technology and progress.
J.S. Bach: Complete Orchestral Works, Vol. 3
Beethoven & Schulhoff: Berlin 1923 / Schuch, Chuang, WDR Symphony Orchestra
Beethoven und Schulhoff in Dialogue
Schuch:"Indeed, it’s quite exciting to look at what was going on exactly 100 years ago – perhaps because 1923 doesn’t seem all that distant to us.
Certain events and circumstances seem to mirror one another a century apart. From a musical point of view, Erwin Schulhoff’s piano concerto is a truly interesting work that has not attained the recognition it deserves…
In terms of style, the piano concerto, composed between 11 June and 10 July 1923, is one of those works where Schulhoff radically deals with the dance types of jazz, which had crossed the Atlantic at the end of the First World War and spread out from Paris until taking all of Europe by storm…
No other pair of composers could be more different – on paper – than these two.
Schulhoff always took a decisive stance against traditionalism. Indeed, he may have been something of an iconoclast, but he was also a talented and well-trained pianist – a pianist who wanted to earn success in that very role. Of course, Schulhoff studied the Beethoven concertos, performed them, and ultimately also took the opportunity (like many other composers before him) to put his stamp on these works by writing his own cadenzas…
…It was also in Berlin – in February 1923, to be exact – that Schulhoff conceived and worked out the cadenzas for the first four Beethoven piano concertos…" (Excerpts from the booklets notes)
Mozart's Journey to Paris
Bacewicz: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4 / Borowicz, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln
The symphonic oeuvre of the Polish composer Grazyna Bacewicz has never before been recorded in its entirety "from one source", so that the series beginning here represents a pioneering act. The Third Symphony for large symphony orchestra was written in early 1952 and the monumental and pathetic music shows a hitherto unknown face of the composer. One of its characteristics is the use of large instrumental blocks, although fragments also appear that hint at the lighter expressivity of the neoclassical tradition. It is a masterfully constructed work and the overt formal schemes of the Classical period are complemented by the subtle use of elements that were characteristic of music between the wars - in particular the timbres of the French tradition. Nevertheless, this work is not about setting new accents. The same applies to the Fourth Symphony. The orchestra of this work from 1953 is larger than in the previous symphony - among other things, English horn, E-flat and bass clarinet, contrabassoon and harp are now also called for. In both works, the composer achieved an excellent balance between the music of the past (form referring to tradition) and new sources of inspiration (folklore) as well as a new approach to traditional elements (rhythm). As a result, she managed to reconcile the autonomous, artistic qualities of her music with the expectations of the cultural policy of the time. We are very happy to have found congenial interpreters for this project, which sets new standards in the WDR Symphony Orchestra and the Polish conductor Lukasz Borowicz.
Abrahamsen: Left, alone / Stefanovich, Chiacchiarini, Rundel, WDR Symphony
Hans Abrahamsen is one of the most important contemporary composers. Numerous productions have already been published by Winter & Winter and have attracted great attention from the public and the press. "Let me tell you" is one of the greatest worldwide successes in contemporary music. With the WDR production "Left, alone" Winter & Winter continues its canon with Hans Abrahamsen. Ten Sinfonias, Left, alone and Two Pieces in Slow Time can be heard on this album. Ten Sinfonias, recorded under the direction of Peter Rundel, Left, alone under Mariano Chiacchiarini with Tamara Stefanovich on piano and Two Pieces in Slow Time with soloists from the WDR Symphony Orchestra, form an exciting and multi-layered album with important key works by Hans Abrahamsen. A production with the WDR Symphony Orchestra.
