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SHOSTAKOVICH SYMPHONY NO.8

WARNER CLASSICS

$17.28 Jul 31, 2020

The first album of our new collaboration with ONTC, Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse, and their Ossetian musical director, Tugan Sokhiev, features Shostakovich's 8th symphony: an "opera for the Orchestra" composed with an unheard dramatic power. ONTC world famous for their work on French repertoire, is opening up to new horizons under the influence of their Ossetian chief conductor, Tugan Sokhiev. The 15 symphonies of the soviet composer are a major common theme throughout the seasons for the ONTC & Tugan Sokhiev. Tugan Sokhiev was one of the lasts students of the conductor and excellent pedagogue, Ilya Musin, who was one of the first conductors to conduct Symphony n° 7 « Leningrad » (Ilya Musin also trained a generation of Russian chefs like Valery Gergiev, Teodor Currentzis, Yuri Terminakov).

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SHOSTAKOVICH SYMPHONY NO.8
WARNER CLASSICS Jul 2020
CD
$17.28

BEETHOVEN: Octet / Piano Quintet / Symphony No. 7 (arr. for
Chandos Jun 1996
CD
$21.99

Scriabin: Symphony No. 2 / Ono, Brussels Philharmonic

Evil Penguin

$18.99 May 17, 2024

Can a composer like Alexander Scriabin be associated with any tradition at all, given the uniqueness of his musical language? Initially focusing on piano compositions, Scriabin later expanded to larger orchestral works, crafting five symphonies between 1899 and 1910. A noticeable evolution in composition unfolds, transitioning from a late Romantic style to a more modernistic approach. Evolving from late Romanticism to modernism, Scriabin drew inspiration from symbolist poetry and philosophical figures. Envisioning himself as a musical messiah to change the world, his Second Symphony provides a glimpse of this eccentric vision.

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Scriabin: Symphony No. 2 / Ono, Brussels Philharmonic
Evil Penguin May 2024
CD
$18.99

Mahler: Symphony No. 2 / Vänskä, Minnesota Orchestra

BIS

SACD

$21.99 Feb 01, 2019

Gustav Mahler's Second Symphony started life as a single-movement tone poem called Todtenfeier (‘Funeral Rites’). Completed in 1888 – one year before Richard Strauss's Death and Transfiguration – it echoed the composer's vision of seeing himself lying dead in a funeral bier surrounded by flowers. Deciding to use it as his opening movement, Mahler didn't finish the complete five-movement symphony until more than six years later, the longest time he spent on any work. The huge scale of the work apart, its weighty subject matter may well have contributed to the slow progress: Mahler himself outlined a scenario making references to the ultimate meaning of life and death (first movement), recollections of lost innocence and the desperation of unbelief (second and third movements), the return to naïve faith (fourth movement) and final redemption from the last judgement (finale). To convey this he took recourse to the human voice: incorporating a solo alto in the 4th movement Urlicht, he went on in the finale to risk comparison with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony by introducing a choir, as well as a soprano and alto soloist.

Minnesota Orchestra and Osmo Vänskä have received praise for their previous Mahler recordings (‘Vänskä and the orchestra are among the finest exponents of Mahler’s music...’, allmusic.com). The team is here joined by soloists Ruby Hughes and Sasha Cooke and the Minnesota Chorale in the deeply moving close to the vast and tumultuous panorama that is his Second Symphony.

REVIEW:

[Vänskä] adopts a nicely relaxed approach – and pace – for the second movement. The strings play very stylishly and the recording differentiates very well indeed between the various string parts. The third movement is also largely a success; the sardonic humour comes across quite well – as is in keeping with the original Knaben Wunderhorn song on which the movement is based. The orchestra points the music very effectively with special praise for the woodwind in this regard. The wild premonition of the finale (8:03) is projected with dramatic force and urgency. Sasha Cooke sings "Urlicht" very well indeed.

The huge finale is unleashed in dramatic fashion and the vivid impact of the bass drum stroke is typical of the quality of the BIS recording. Vänskä handles this vast musical fresco pretty well. The drama is projected strongly, not least in the huge march episode that follows those two apocalyptic percussion crescendi (9:21). The grosse Appell is impressive (17:16): the distant brass is very well handled in the recording and the solo piccolo and flute distinguish themselves. When the choir begins to sing (20:01) their sound is hushed but distinct, which is as it should be. Ruby Hughes’ silvery voice rises gently and sweetly from the midst of the singers at the end of the first long phrase. Miss Hughes does very well, too, in the ‘O Glaube’ duet with Sasha Cooke.

The performance is highly accomplished. Vänskä has a good choir at his disposal and two excellent soloists. As for his orchestra, they play the music marvellously. There are many idiomatic touches such as string portamenti while accents – so crucial in Mahler – and dynamics are scrupulously observed.

– MusicWeb International

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Mahler: Symphony No. 2 / Vänskä, Minnesota Orchestra
BIS Feb 2019
SACD
$21.99

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 8 (Complete Symphonies, Vol. 2)

Alpha

$20.99 Oct 23, 2026

Basically, I only have two symphonies: the Fourth and the Eighth.' Shostakovich is said to have remarked. Yevgeny Mravinsky, to whom Symphony No. 8 is dedicated, wrote in his diary: 'I spent the whole evening reflecting on and sketching out the form and dramatic arc of Shostakovich's Eighth. It moves me ever more deeply each time. Especially the "Great Terror" section of the first movement!!'. The themes of martyrdom and the transformation of the human being into a manipulable puppet run through this unsettling and monumental work. This recording constitutes the second volume of the complete Shostakovich symphonies by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by it's music director, Alain Altinoglu.

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Shostakovich: Symphony No. 8 (Complete Symphonies, Vol. 2)
Alpha Oct 2026
CD
$20.99

Schacht: Symphonies, Vol. 2 / Schmalfuss, Evergreen Symphony

CPO

$18.99 Nov 19, 2021

Andreas Blau and his orchestral colleagues of the Berliner Philharmoniker are to be admired for discovering the treasure that is Anton Hoffmeister’s Flute Quartets, and they play them superbly well, while placing Hoffmeister’s output in close proximity to Mozart and Haydn, and in the vicinity of early Beethoven. The solo parts are evidently tailormade for the flute, and their virtuoso passages seem modeled on cadenzas from Mozart piano concertos. Their musical sensitivity, evident enjoyment and great orchestral experience ensure the recordings do not just document the artistry of socalled minor masters, but are a valuable addition to our view of the brilliant epoch of Viennese classicism.

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Schacht: Symphonies, Vol. 2 / Schmalfuss, Evergreen Symphony
CPO Nov 2021
CD
$18.99

Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 / Haitink, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic

Challenge Classics

$10.49 ~~$20.99~~ Save 50% Oct 15, 2021

Bernard Haitink was born and educated in Amsterdam. His conducting career began at the Netherlands Radio where in 1957 he became the Chief Conductor of the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. The links between Bernard Haitink and the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra have withstood the test of time, even when his career was taking him all over the world. One fine example of this was Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust in 1998, later issued on CD(CC 72517). He returned on 15 June 2019, when he gave his very last concert in Amsterdam, with Bruckner Symphony no. 7, a work that has always been especially dear to him.

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Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 / Haitink, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic
Challenge Classics Oct 2021
CD
~~$20.99~~ $10.49

Alfvén: Symphonic Works, Vol. 3 / Borowicz, German Symphony Orchestra Berlin

CPO

$18.99 Aug 26, 2022

“Here loving service is done to a composer who is perhaps Sweden’s most important symphonist and certainly its most popular one.” This is what FonoForum wrote of Vol. 2 of our edition of symphonic works by Hugo Alfvén, who numbers among the most productive and most versatile Swedish cultural personalities. Alfvén’s Symphony No. 2 brought him a success that he termed his definitive artistic breakthrough. A second performance was held during the same year, and it was not long before it was also being presented in foreign countries. This work became his most popular symphony and the first of his compositions to appear in print (1900). At the time national Romantic tones had long dominated music by Swedish composers, while Alfvén adopted a taste that was more Continental – a fact that reviewers registered with astonishment. His Swedish Rhapsody No. 3, a composition featuring impressive work with motifs from Swedish folk music, rounds off this album.

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Alfvén: Symphonic Works, Vol. 3 / Borowicz, German Symphony Orchestra Berlin
CPO Aug 2022
CD
$18.99

Franz Ignaz Beck: Symphonies Op. 4, Nos. 4-6 & Op. 3, No. 5

Naxos

$9.99 ~~$19.99~~ Save 50% Dec 09, 2014

The court at Manneheim, one of Europe’s great 18th-century musical centers, provided myriad opportunities for creative development. Having absorbed the ideas of his teacher, Johann Stamitz and other luminaries, Beck wrote a series of symphonies notable for their dramatic contrasts, breadth and sweep, the progressive inclusion of the woodwinds and a willingness to explore expressive intensity. His progressive use of woodwind instruments in the Symphony in G major, Op. 4 No. 5 is among the notable developments to be heard in this second recording of Beck symphonies by Marek Štilec and the Czech Chamber Philharmonic.

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Franz Ignaz Beck: Symphonies Op. 4, Nos. 4-6 & Op. 3, No. 5
Naxos Dec 2014
CD
~~$19.99~~ $9.99

Kalinnikov: Symphony No. 1 - Glazunov: The Sea, Op. 28 - Spr
Chandos Feb 2008
CD
$21.99

Santoro: Symphonies Nos. 5 & 7 "Brasilia" / Thomson, Goiás Philharmonic Orchestra

Naxos

$13.99 ~~$19.99~~ Save 30% Mar 11, 2022

Claudio Santoro was one of Brazil’s most eminent and influential composers. Over a 50-year period, he wrote a cycle of 14 symphonies that is widely acclaimed as the most significant cycle of its kind ever written in Brazil. The two selected works in this inaugural volume of the first complete recording of his symphonies focus on the 1950s, a period when Santoro sought a more direct and communicative idiom using Brazilian elements. His use of folk-based material is nonetheless highly creative, sometimes indeed abstract, as in key moments of Symphony No. 5. The Symphony No. 7 is one of his most complex and intense works, a celebration of his country’s new capital Brasília in music of striking modernity.

REVIEWS:

Claudio Santoro (1919-89) composed fourteen symphonies over the course of about fifty years, making him one of the most noteworthy twentieth-century Brazilian composers in large forms. On evidence here, they are uneven in quality, with the problems occurring when you might expect – in the larger, more complex outer movements. I’m thinking especially of the Fifth Symphony, whose opening Andante mosso–Allegro moderato consists of a series of crescendos leading, essentially, nowhere. The thematic material isn’t too memorable either. The situation improves in the central scherzo and slow movement (a set of variations), but the same “sound and fury signifying nothing” returns in the finale. Santoro’s style incorporates obvious Brazilian elements without ever turning blatantly “folksy.” Clearly the idiom is his own.

This is even more evident in the Seventh Symphony, subtitled “Brasilia,” and designed for the dedication of the country’s new capital city. A more ambitious and successful work than the Fifth, this time with the scherzo played third rather than second, the music evolves from the relative harmonic simplicity of its opening to a more challenging language in the finale–from rural to urban, you might say. Whether this was Santoro’s intention I have no idea, but I like the result. There’s a good bit of stomping and pounding in this symphony–indeed in both works–with some enthusiastic use of the bass drum, but it all seems to be part and parcel of the music’s boldness and energy, and its confrontational gestural language never sounds merely gratuitous.

Certainly the Goiás Philharmonic under Neil Thomson has every reason to be proud of its achievement here. This is not easy music to play. Santoro’s writing for the violins, in particular, sounds positively wicked, with lots of passage-work at high speed, often reaching upwards into the nether regions of the instrument. The scherzos too offer plenty of rhythmic kinks to keep everyone alert, and the crispness of the orchestra’s response can only provoke admiration.

-- ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

Neil Thomson conducts strongly committed readings of these fine works, and Goiás Philharmonic Orchestra play with confidence. The recording is very fine and the notes are exemplary. This first instalment of the Naxos cycle of Santoro’s symphonies augurs well indeed.

-- MusicWeb International

The journey is navigated with aplomb by Neil Thomson and the Goias Philarmonic Orchestra. Deftly woven counterpoint is contrasted with off-beat rhythms and expansive melodies that showcase each section of the orchestra to effect.

-- BBC Music Magazine

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Santoro: Symphonies Nos. 5 & 7 "Brasilia" / Thomson, Goiás Philharmonic Orchestra
Naxos Mar 2022
CD
~~$19.99~~ $13.99

Mahler, G.: Symphony No. 2, "Resurrection"
Antes Edition Apr 1998
CD
$37.99

Tchaikovsky: Symphonies Nos. 1-6; Manfred Symphony; Orchestral Works

Relief

$42.99 Sep 30, 2014

This six-disc set of Tchaikovsky concert performances, recorded 1984-2009, features more than a dozen orchestral works, including the composer’s last three symphonies, the Manfred, The Tempest and other symphonic poems. Three of the recordings are first-time releases. The Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, founded 1930, is internationally recognized as one of Russia's most prestigious and versatile orchestras. Vladimir Fedoseyev has, since 1974, held the position of Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the orchestra, now known as the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra.

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Tchaikovsky: Symphonies Nos. 1-6; Manfred Symphony; Orchestral Works
Relief Sep 2014
CD
$42.99

Jan Van Gilse: Symphony No. 4 / Porcelijn, Netherlands Symphony Orchestra

CPO

$18.99 Oct 30, 2012

GILSE Symphony No. 4 in A. Funeral Music on the Death of Uilenspiegel. Concert Overture in c • David Porcelijn, cond; Netherlands SO • CPO 777689 (62:33)

CPO here continues apace with its survey of Jan van Gilse’s symphonies. Details of the composer’s life and descriptions of his music can be found in reviews of his first three symphonies in 32:2 and 36:2. The Fourth Symphony in A Major occupied Gilse from 1910 to 1915, and appears to be his last fully completed symphony; only a fragment of a Fifth exists, dating from 1922, and since the composer lived for another 22 years after that, it has to be assumed that it wasn’t death that prevented him from completing it. The Concert Overture in C Minor has received a previous recording by Jac van Steen conducting the Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra on an NM CD. It was reviewed in 31:5.

If you acquired one or both of David Porcelijn’s CPO recordings of Gilse’s first three symphonies, you’ll know what to expect of the Fourth, and there’s really not a lot to add. This is well-made music in high romantic style. Commenting on the First Symphony in 32:2, David H. North pegged it as Dvo?ák’s No. 4-1/3. Gilse has advanced considerably beyond Dvo?ák in his Fourth Symphony, but considering its date of composition, it’s still a decade or so behind its time. The most pervasive influence on the score, even more so than on Gilse’s Third Symphony, is Richard Strauss. The music is shot through with much of the same orchestral busyness—the flashes, splashes, and dashes of luminous colors—and the long-arching passages of melodic and harmonic nostalgia familiar from Strauss’s tone poems. If Gilse’s First Symphony was Dvo?ák’s No. 4-1/3, his Fourth Symphony is Strauss’s Don Juanenspiegel.

The Strauss connection is literary as well as musical. In 1941, during the German occupation of Holland, Gilse composed his Funeral Music on the Death of Uilenspiegel , the flip side, if you will, of Strauss’s Till . This, for Gilse, was how things ended for the legendary merry prankster. The music now anticipates the Strauss of Metamorphosen of four years later. If this and previous reviews have not taken Gilse very seriously, his Funeral Music is a score that commands serious attention and perhaps a re-evaluation of his work as a whole. The piece actually was extracted from a section of Gilse’s opera Thijl and then expanded to stand as an independent orchestral work. The Concert Overture of 1900 is Gilse’s first attempt at a piece for orchestra and it, like the First Symphony, contains echoes of Dvo?ák.

Of the three CPO discs released so far in this series, I find myself most impressed by this one. Performance and recording standards remain very high, and this is music anyone who enjoys beautifully crafted and magnificently scored orchestral music of the type and style described will derive much pleasure from. Strongly recommended.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

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Jan Van Gilse: Symphony No. 4 / Porcelijn, Netherlands Symphony Orchestra
CPO Oct 2012
CD
$18.99

SYMPHONY 4
RCO LIVE HOLLAND Oct 2007
SACD
$21.99

Symphonies, Op. 4 Nos- 4-6 & Pandore (Excerpts)

CPO

$18.99 Jul 17, 2026

Franz Ignaz Beck was a "Mannheim pupil" from the very beginning. The son of the court oboist Franz Aloys Beck, he was taught by other court musicians after his father's early death before studying in Venice with Baldassare Galuppi and ultimately making his way via Naples to France. He was twenty-three when three of his symphonies won acclaim in Paris; yet he was soon drawn onward-to Marseille and then to Bordeaux, where, until 1798 (for more than thirty-five years), he served as Maître de Musique, overseeing operas and concerts as well as the performance of both his own works and those of others. The six symphonies Op. 4 date from his early years on the Garonne and are now presented complete. They represent Beck's final contributions to the genre in which he undertook bold yet successful experiments-stormy and urgent, filled with striking turns that electrified audiences and explain why he was sometimes hailed as the "Berlioz of the eighteenth century." The music from the melodrama Pandora, composed some twenty years later, forms an illuminating counterpoint.

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Symphonies, Op. 4 Nos- 4-6 & Pandore (Excerpts)
CPO Jul 2026
CD
$18.99

Mix & Match

Mendelssohn: Symphonies 3 & 5; Ruy Blas Overture / Bernstein, New York Philharmonic
Sony Masterworks Jun 2012
CD
$17.99

Raff: Symphony No 7, Jubel Ouvertüre / Albert, Philharmonia Hungarica
CPO Jul 2004
CD
$18.99

Badings: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5 / Bochumer Symphoniker, Porcelijn

CPO

$18.99 Jan 08, 2016

This new Henk Badings recording further confirms his rank as a great twentieth-century Dutch composer with an important and independent individual voice in European music. Although he composed his fourth symphony during the war years, absolutely nothing related to World War II or its atmosphere is to be found in it. It is instead a work adhering to the classical structure and displaying unaffected naturalness and quick musical wit, especially in its fast movements. In 1949 Badings composed his fifth symphony as a commissioned work for the sixtieth anniversary of the Concertgebouw Orchestra. In 1955 a reviewer for the daily De Tijd wrote that this symphony resembled film music inasmuch as it clearly dealt with illustrative elements. This was not intended as a negative judgment but instead was born of admiration for the composer’s suggestive style. In any case, today this music impresses the listener with its surprising freshness and vitality.

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Badings: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5 / Bochumer Symphoniker, Porcelijn
CPO Jan 2016
CD
$18.99

Symphonies Nos. 6 & 9

Challenge Classics

$16.99 May 15, 2026

Shostakovich's Sixth and Ninth Symphonies stand as sharply contrasting yet deeply connected reflections of a century scarred by violence, fear, and forced optimism. The Sixth Symphony, composed in 1939 at the height of Stalin's Great Terror, opens with a vast, searing Largo that unfolds like a requiem for a silenced society-mourning lost friends, broken lives, and collective suffering. It's bleak introspection is followed by movements of icy detachment and grotesque parody, where frantic energy and empty cheer mask a profound spiritual void. Through this unsettling trajectory, Shostakovich speaks with "secret freedom," revealing a truth that words could not safely express: a tragic meditation on human dignity under oppression. Written in 1945, the Ninth Symphony defies expectations of monumental victory music. Instead of triumphal bombast, Shostakovich offers a compact, ironic, and life-affirming work, brimming with wit, clarity, and subtle defiance. Beneath it's Haydnesque lightness and carnival spirit linger shadows of war, grief, and memory-solemn brass rituals, elegiac melodies, and moments of fragile reflection. In this recording, the Janácek Philharmonic Orchestra and Daniel Raiskin illuminate the symphonies' dual nature: tragedy entwined with irony, joy haunted by loss. Together, these works form a powerful portrait of resilience, humanity, and artistic truth in the face of history's darkest pressures.

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Symphonies Nos. 6 & 9
Challenge Classics May 2026
CD
$16.99

Mix & Match

Beethoven: Triple Concerto & Symphony No. 5 / Blomstedt, Gewandhausorchester [Blu-ray]

Accentus Music

Blu-Ray

$53.99 Jun 16, 2017

More than 200 years after its premiere at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras and Martin Helmchen have congenially mastered the artistic challenge of Beethoven’s gemstone. Under Herbert Blomstedt's sensitive direction, the soloists unite chamber musical intimacy together with virtuoso sophistication – and prove once again that the Triple Concerto is an unduly underestimated, much too rarely programmed masterpiece. With the composer's 5th Symphony, Blomstedt succeeds in achieving an entirely new perspective of this work. In the culmination of his three-year, intensive reenactment of Beethoven’s cosmos, the impressive sound that characterizes the Swedish grand seigneur's conducting is heralded by transparency rather than showmanship, relevance instead of pathos, and tenderness in place of sentimentality.

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Beethoven: Triple Concerto & Symphony No. 5 / Blomstedt, Gewandhausorchester [Blu-ray]
Accentus Music Jun 2017
Blu-Ray
$53.99

Offenbach: Le Royaume de Neptune & Other Works / Griffiths, Deutsches Symphony Orchestra Berlin

CPO

$18.99 Nov 01, 2019

On his recently released Offenbach album featuring some of this composer’s unknown overtures, “Howard Griffiths is able to generate sparkling moments, dramatic buildups of suspense, highly expressive lyrical designs, and frequently suddenly occurring shifts of mood with absolutely outstanding success” (klassik-heute. com). And the latest Offenbach interpretation by Griffiths also does perfect justice to this composer’s highly effectively instrumented and melodically very appealing music while transmitting infectious zest for life. Orphee aux Enfers was Offenbach’s first international success and perhaps his most performed opera throughout the world – a landmark establishing a new genre known as the “Offenbachiade” and standing for societal satire in the form of music theater. The present album offers the essence of the orchestral numbers and ballet inserts composed for the version of Orpheus in the Underworld from 1874. The rediscovery of the magnificent ballet L’Atlantide or Le Royaume de Neptune (The Realm of Neptune) and its recording premiere on this album qualify as nothing short of sensational. Found under incredible circumstances by Jean-Christophe Keck in an old storage box, this music from the recently published volume of Keck’s Offenbach edition for Boosey & Hawkes / Bote & Bock accomplishes a very important task ranking first on the list of every composer’s desiderata by making available score material in its uncorrupted form. These gems are finely orchestrated and filled with magical melodies!

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Offenbach: Le Royaume de Neptune & Other Works / Griffiths, Deutsches Symphony Orchestra Berlin
CPO Nov 2019
CD
$18.99

BRUCKNER: SYMPHONY NO.7

LSO LIVE

$15.99 Sep 22, 2023

Conducting Bruckner, says Rattle, is a lifelong quest for some "extraordinary vista, some wonderful moment which leads you out of this world". This certainly rings true for Bruckner's Seventh Symphony, the opening theme for which is said to have come to him in a dream, played by an angel. This huge, glowing mountain-range of sound is all at once majestic, reverent and terrifying. This edition of the symphony by Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs was first performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle in September 2022, and the recording completes a set of three albums which also features Cohrs' editions of Bruckner's Fourth and Sixth symphonies. Making use of Bruckner's discarded fragments and lesser-known material through his many revisions, this set of albums is a must-listen for lovers of Bruckner's music, and gives us a glimpse into the composer's untold musical thoughts.

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BRUCKNER: SYMPHONY NO.7
LSO LIVE Sep 2023
CD
$15.99

Bruckner: Symphonies Nos. 0 & 1 / Venzago, Tapiola Sinfonietta

CPO

$36.99 Jan 31, 2012

“Venzago amazes us with his idiosyncratic and wholly novel performances of Bruckner. The sound of his Bruckner is thrillingly lean...His intelligent conducting focuses our attention on the chamber-music aspect of Bruckner's music.” –Pizzicato. In this Vol.2, Venzago devotes himself to the beginnings of Bruckner's symphonic output, the so-called “No. 0” and the 1st.

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Bruckner: Symphonies Nos. 0 & 1 / Venzago, Tapiola Sinfonietta
CPO Jan 2012
CD
$36.99

Scriabin: Poem of Ecstasy; Symphony No. 2 / Falletta, Buffalo Philharmonic

Naxos

$19.99 Feb 10, 2023

Scriabin composed most of his single-movement fourth symphony The Poem of Ecstasy between 1905 and 1908 in Italy and France. He originally intended it to be called Poème orgiaque (‘Orgiastic Poem’) with its unprecedented raw sensuality and overpowering aesthetic, taking chromaticism beyond even Wagnerian voluptuousness. His earlier Symphony No. 2 in C minor adopts César Franck’s cyclical ideas to which Scriabin layered sweeping climaxes, majestic intensity and rich orchestral colour that enliven its five movements with ceaseless invention.

REVIEW:

The Poem of Ecstasy is an extremely effective piece. JoAnn Falletta’s sleek, graceful performance, at 19 minutes, is on the swift side of things, and well balanced for transparency and texture. The Buffalo Philharmonic paints in lovely light colors, and nothing drips. The electronic organ used by the orchestra supplies a fine weight for the conclusion of the piece. Falletta delivers the last apocalyptic chord after a slight pause, all the more effective given the fact that this has been a swift performance unencumbered by needless rubato. The Poem of Ecstasy emerges gleaming and appealing.

Falletta’s traversal of the Second Symphony is, if anything, even better, and almost relentless. This reading is ablaze with forward motion, bringing the piece home in 40 minutes. Scriabin has not provided many moments for the music to catch its breath, so it turns out that an effective counter to this is to speed one’s way through the score and gradually ratchet up the tension.

Falletta does not linger excessively over the slow movement. This is where conductors can get into trouble dwelling on atmosphere. In the propulsive last third of the symphony, Scriabin seems to tighten his compositional approach, as if aware of this pitfall, and the Buffalo Philharmonic is with him all the way, brass and percussion snarling through the whiplash winds of the Tempestuoso and ultimately hitting paydirt with the memorable march that brings the symphony to its powerful and optimistic conclusion.

The Naxos engineers are to be congratulated throughout. The recorded sound is utterly natural and true to the hall. Falletta deserves kudos for daring to be brisk and for knowing how to build satisfying climaxes. This is the best version of the Second Symphony I have heard.

-- Fanfare (Steven Kruger)

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Scriabin: Poem of Ecstasy; Symphony No. 2 / Falletta, Buffalo Philharmonic
Naxos Feb 2023
CD
$19.99