In 1999, Sir Simon Rattle was appointed as successor to Claudio Abbado as the orchestra's principal conductor. He gave his first concert as principal conductor on 7 September 2002, leading performances of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 5 and Asyla by Thomas Ades, a "spicy mix of traditional and modern" (The Guardian). These performances received incredible reviews from the press worldwide and the Mahler 5 recording released at that time won many awards, being one of his most successful albums so far. This recording is released on vinyl for the very first time. 'Rattle brings a real sense of structural cohesion and an apposite lightness of touch to passages routinely overweighted in the great performances of the past. The finale, deft, vigorous and full of joy, is sure to impress.' GRAMOPHONE
Bruckner’s Fifth is eminently suited to an arrangement for performance on the organ above all because of its musical texture. In no other Bruckner symphony, for example, does counterpoint play such an important part. I am thinking in particular of the great fugue in the final movement. It really does seem as if many passages of this magnificent work were composed as if with the organ in mind, even though the Fifth is not a piece for organ at all, being in the first place a symphonic work. And yet it lends itself admirably to the extraction of a compositional substrate with no loss of essential content. That cannot be said of all Bruckner’s symphonies. Of all his symphonies, in my opinion, the Fifth, Eighth and Ninth are most amenable to an arrangement for organ. Building on the compositional core, it is the orchestral treatment above all that plays a key role. If this is lacking, an arrangement of the work can deprive the work of its grandeur. That is again at risk if one attempts to copy the orchestra or to transpose certain orchestral effects one-to-one onto the organ. Such an approach is generally unsatisfactory, because organ writing is governed by different rules than those applying to orchestral scoring. It would be fatal to make the organ rival the orchestra. My aim from the start was to avoid imitating the orchestra and to create a work specifically for organ in the manner of an organ symphony.
Tchaikovsky: The Voyevoda & Symphonies Nos. 5 and 6
Nimbus
CD
$16.99Mar 02, 2018
The London Symphony Orchestra, led by formidable conductor Yondani Butt, presents this outstanding recording of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, Symphony No. 6 ‘Pathetique,’ and The Voyevoda- Symphonic Ballad. The programme was recorded in 2012 at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in London. Yondani Butt was born in Macau. He studied conducting with Wolfgang Vacano (1906-1985) at Indiana University, majoring in chemistry. He continued to study conducting with Josef Blatt (1906-1999) at the University of Michigan while pursuing his chemistry degree. Hailed by Robert Marsh of the Chicago Sun Times as “an outstanding talent,” Yondani Butt has received acclamation from critics and audiences for his many album recordings and concert performances. He died on August 28th, 2014.
Combining the vigorous forces of the Insula Orchestra and Insula camerata, Laurence Equilbey revives a historic tradition: that of the double orchestra. Beethoven, who was familiar with this principle, composed with the great festivals in mind at which orchestras could muster large numbers, often exceeding a hundred players. A unique musical experience.
Haydn composed the three symphonies in this volume during the mid-1780s in a spirit of triumph. Though still employed by the Esterhazy family, he had recently been allowed to publish his music himself and to accept outside commissions. A number of symphonies were duly commissioned by a new, large ensemble recently established in Paris. Superficially similar, they reveal Haydn's inexhaustible creativity whether in the astonishingly colourful introduction to No. 84, the rustic interludes in the trio section of No. 85 - a favourite of Marie Antoinette, or in the greatest of the Paris symphonies, No. 86, where the transition from the slow introduction to the main section is unequalled in his music.
In response to the vinyl craze and to extend very nice successes of vinyls composers best of on Warner Classics (Beethoven, Part, Debussy, Piazzolla and more recently Chopin, Mozart and Bach) the new one focuses on the emblematic composer of German Romantic music: Franz Schubert. A LP using the same refreshed style artwork as the previous Mozart & Bach and which includes highlights from greatest masterpieces performed by first-class musicians: Elisabeth Leonskaja, Barbara Bonney, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Alexandre Tharaud, Alban Berg Quartett, Gautier Capucon, Renaud Capucon, Ian Bostridge, Antonio Pappano
Boris Lyatoshynsky was the foremost Ukrainian composer of the twentieth century and his five symphonies are the cornerstone of the symphonic music of his country. The Fourth Symphony of 1963 met with immediate acclaim for its imaginative orchestration, while the Fifth Symphony is memorable for its use of Ukrainian folkloric material. This is the third of three discs comprising the complete Lyatoshynsky symphonies.
Weinberg: Symphony No. 19, Banners Of Peace / Lande, St. Petersburg Symphony
Naxos
CD
$19.99Nov 13, 2012
The subtitle of this symphony Bright May would normally lead one to think that, being written by a Soviet composer, it alluded to 1 May and the workers’ holiday. In this case you would be wrong since it refers to the month the ‘Great Patriotic War’, (the Second World War to most of us) ended. In the first of three linked movements Weinberg describes the devastation left by the war with an overwhelmingly sad introduction. This finally gives way to a calm pastoral episode that continues until disturbed by an insistent and ominous theme heavy with foreboding. This mood finally returns to the pastoral calm. Merging almost seamlessly the second movement opens with a gentle theme that once again is disturbed by a threatening passage leading to a central climax during which percussion and brass dominate before peace returns once more. This leads us into the symphony’s final movement that, like the other two, is a sequence of calm interludes interrupted by ominous passages. The symphony finally ends on a positive note.
It has often been the case that composers horrified either by the looming threat of war or its unleashing, felt compelled to express this horror in music. However, it is unusual for a composer to take a war as a theme for, in Weinberg’s case, a set of three symphonies, so many years after its end. I wondered if the passage of time leads to a better historical view of it musically or whether memory is dulled over the decades. I can’t answer that as I’m not yet acquainted with symphonies 17 and 18 but I can say that this one certainly does express the joy that must have been felt when that terrible war, whose cost was so appalling, was finally over. The continuing disturbance of that joy expressed by the gentle pastoral sections, by the dark clouds of martial sounding passages and thunderous brass and percussion can surely mean only one thing; to emphasise that winning the peace would be as challenging as winning the war. After all, Stalin was still ruling Russia with all that implied.
Weinberg could never have been described as a ‘Party’ hack, though like many other Soviet composers, including Shostakovich, he did write some works that could be described as “socialist realist”. These were linked to aspects of Soviet policy. An example is Weinberg’s 1985 Symphonic Poem The Banners of Peace. This followed shortly after the 19 th Symphony and was dedicated to the 27 th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party. Apart from some references to revolutionary songs such as the Varshavianka the music is not overtly propagandist nor is it bombastic in any way; rather it could be construed as a critique. After all, the words of the Varshavianka, which is quoted throughout, include “We will drown our enemies in their own blood, Death to the ruthless, To all pests of the workers, Death to tsars and plutocrats!”. In 1985, over 80 years after the song’s first appearance, these words seem at odds with the concept of peace. I regard this work more as another example of Weinberg’s ability to make powerful statements and this in music that is expressive and exciting. Viewed as such this work forms another worthy addition to the increasing amount of his music available in recorded form. We should be grateful.
Both works are given committed performances full of colour from an orchestra that will surely have this music in their blood. It is conducted with verve and enthusiasm by Vladimir Lande.
Following a highly successful series 'Mendelssohn in Birmingham', the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra with their former Chief Conductor Edward Gardner here presents the first volume in a new surround-sound series: Schubert Symphonies. This first volume comprises of three symphonies spanning across Schubert's short productive composing life. His Symphony No. 3 (1815), with it's extensive and evolving slow introduction modelled on late Haydn is followed by the culminating distillation of Schubertian classicism that is his 'little' Symphony No. 5 (1816). Scored for chamber orchestra, it tells of much more of an influence of Mozart, for whom Schubert seemed to have felt a special affinity with around this time. Completing the album is Schubert's much more intense (with a turbulent first movement and serene second) Symphony No. 8 "unfinished" (1822), of which only the first two movements and a skeleton sketch of a third Scherzo movement were completed.
Enescu, Gliere, Tchaikovsky & Arnold: Orchestral Works / Stokowski, BBC Symphony, International Festival Youth Orchestra
Cameo Classics
CD
$16.99Sep 07, 2018
Leopold Stokowski was born in London of Polish/Irish ancestry in 1882 and showed such an early aptitude for music that he was able to enter the Royal College of Music at the tender age of 13, the youngest student at that time to do so. His first foreign tour took place in the spring of 1951 when, at the invitation of Sir Thomas Beecham, he took the Royal Philharmonic on a tour of England to coincide with the 'Festival of Britain' that year. It was during this tour that he also made his first appearance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a Royal Festival Hall concert that included Beethoven's 7th Symphony and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. During the next couple of years Stokowski performed many works with the BBC Symphony in a Maida Vale studio programme which included two full-length radio broadcasts. One such broadcast was on May 5, 1954, consisting of Malcolm Arnold's Beckus the Dandipratt, Glière's Concerto for Coloratura Soprano and Orchestra, and the Enescu Romanian Rhapsody No. 1. We must be grateful that Richard Itter recorded the three short works from the first concert, in particular in the case of the Arnold and Glière works, Stokowski was performing both of them for the only time in his life. It was Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony that he played the most, having conducted it for the first time in Cincinnati in 1910. The performance heard here has a certain historical interest as it was the very last time he conducted the work. A packed Royal Albert Hall responded with great enthusiasm to the nonagenarian maestro and indeed to the youthful band of players on the platform.
Roger Norrington and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra SWR continue their survey of the major works of the 19th Century symphonic repertoire with two symphonies by Schubert. Throughout his decade of working with the RSO, Norrington has transformed the sound of a modern symphony orchestra into an ensemble capable of delivering authentic historically informed music making. By employing both the benefits of authentic performance practice and technically superior modern instruments, Norrington has left a legacy that has opened the ears of romantic "purists" as well as delighting devotees of authentic performance practice.
Symphony 5 In C Minor 67 / Die Fledermaus Overture
NKB Record
CD
$18.99May 03, 2019
This recording, unlike the previous two albums, was made in the newly renovated Slovak Philharmonic Hall. Reflecting the bright and festive atmosphere of this hall, this performance changes the heavy impression of anguished "Destiny" which has prevailed until now. The progression of this symphony, starting with the first movement which inspires violent anxiety, to a reversal in the warm and friendly second movement, to the wrenching third movement, and finishing with the strong resoluteness of the fourth movement, is testimony to the lifetime of Beethoven. The two works of Johann Strauss let you enjoy the good old Vienna atmosphere, appropriate to the home of this orchestra. Without aggressive pressure, with a characteristic generous and spacious tempo, this performance dispels the stern image which tends to follow this work around.
Hans Eklund numbers among the Swedish composers who gained public notice in the 1950s following his studies at the Royal Music Academy from 1947 to 1952 with Lars-Erik Larsson, one of his country’s most popular composers. Although Eklund was one of the very first Swedish composers whose music was performed at the Darmstadt Summer Courses, his music never abandoned tonality. Eklund wrote a total of thirteen symphonies. With the exception of the fourth, all of these works have richly associative Italian titles. His third symphony was inspired by the landscape and folk music of the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea, while in his fifth symphony he deals with the subversive powers of war. The music sounds grey, sharper, not so smooth rhythmically, and hotter. Although Eklund termed his eleventh symphony of 1995 the “Sinfonia piccola,” it is ironically one of his longest such works as well as a memorial tribute to his honored teacher Lars-Erik Larsson. The time to rediscover this important symphonist is now!
Krouse: Symphony No. 5 - Fanfare for the Heroes of the Korean War - Symphonies of Strings Nos. 1 & 2
Naxos
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%Nov 12, 2021
Underscoring the very special relationship between the United States and the Republic of Korea, the 2017 version of Ian Krouse'sSymphonyNo.5performed on this recording with a South Korean orchestra commemorates the 70thanniversary of the Korean War. At the heart of the second movement of this expressively powerful and wide-ranging work Krouse mingles three famous American melodies with the popular Korean tune Arirang. The two Symphonies of Strings show why he is so distinctive a composer: one is scored for strings but without violins and the other is a brilliantly inventive 'geometrical' exploration of La Follia.
The Sinfonie milanesi, unique among Zingarelli’s symphonies as they are in three movements, took their name by the American musicologist Rey Longyear, due to the place in which they are conserved (Conservatory of Milan). Composed around 1780 in a Mitteleuropean style, they reflect the stylistic changes of the epoch through the dramatic use of the minor mode, reaching new and powerful expressive meanings, after decades in which the use of the major mode was predominant. Atalanta Fugiens Orchestra is a group made up of people who share a passion for Music as a means of knowledge, in the awareness that the knowledge that Music offers us is absolutely not reducible to language (on pain of its disintegration). The knowledge that the study of treatises, of counterpoint, of the musical text offers us are certainly precious gifts, but which must be "dropped" (like the fruits that Aphrodite gave to Hippomenes) to enjoy the true and ineffable Knowledge of Music.
