ナンプレファン – 10月 2019

Left unfinished at the death of the composer, Gustav Mahler's Tenth Symphony has exerted an enormous fascination on musicologists as well as musicians. Whether fully orchestrated in specific passages, or a sole melody in others, there is one continuous line throughout the surviving manuscript pages and over the years a number of different completions or performing versions have seen the light of day. One of the latest is this 'recreation' of the work for chamber orchestra by composer and conductor Michelle Castelletti.

Mariss Jansons considers Dmitri Shostakovich to be one of the most serious and sincere composers ever, and finds the fifteen symphonies in particular to be deeply moving and captivating. He sees their music as bearing shattering testimony to a traumatic era of political darkness, while remaining a timeless expression of existential human feeling and experience. Over a period of seventeen years, Mariss Jansons has recorded all the Shostakovich symphonies, on each occasion together with the orchestra he was artistically associated with at the time. Six of the performances were with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks.

Alexander Moyzes is considered one of the leading composers of his generation, his style skilfully fusing inspiration from both his Slovakian heritage and contemporary European trends. The premiere of his Ninth Symphony took place in 1971, only three years after the Soviet-led invasion of his homeland, and the work’s dark and dramatic atmosphere depicts the tragedy and hopelessness of this period. By contrast, the serene colours of the Tenth Symphony avoid political connotations, and the piece is stylistically typical of the composer’s last decade in its technical virtuosity, formal elegance and brilliant artistic design.