2 Cellos

Two decades ago, APOCALYPTICA's first and most important album, "Plays Metallica By Four Cellos", was released, selling over 1.5 million copies to date and leading to a carefully remastered, critically acclaimed new album version with three bonus tracks in 2016.

The DVD delivers the band's full two-hour concert at the renowned Finnish Savonlinna Opera Festival in the breathtaking scenery of Olavinlinna Castle, featuring previously unreleased METALLICA covers.

“Archangels” for eight cellos. It begins with several of the cellos playing a scratchy, jumpy rhythmic riff; their lines hovering above, other instruments slide around, making spectral sounds. The music evolves into thick, shifting clouds, like celestial wailing. A second movement seems like a cosmic dance in which a four-squared pulse is constantly broken up by syncopations.

Anton Wranitzky (1761-1820), a near-contemporary of Beethoven, was a leading figure in Vienna’s highest musical circles. He was under the patronage of Prince Lobkowitz and in that capacity he led the world premieres of Beethoven’s 3rd and 6th symphonies. Beethoven held him in high esteem as a composer.

This box of Schumann's chamber works makes a superb package, and is often available at bargain price. It is a bit like one of Martha Argerich's box sets from Lugano, except that here she is present in a large number of the formations. All of the works where she features, including the Piano Quintet, the 2nd Violin Sonata and the Marchenbilder, are unmissable and full of passion and excitement, conveying a continuous sense of transport. Where she is not the pianist Alexandre Rabinovitch takes over at the keyboard and also gives us some superlative versions.

In the lush mosaic of Russian 19th-century music life, Franz Xaver Gebel (1787-1843) was a fascinating, if marginal tile. Born in Germany, Gebel emigrated to Moscow in the 1820s and there taught a generation of students, including Nicolai Rubinstein, while composing on the side. His chief role in Moscow was organizing chamber music concerts with the intention of elevating music taste in Russia. He impressed some pretty big names in the process, such as Borodin and Glinka. Gebel wrote eight quintets and the two selected for this recording are the best examples of his art currently on disc; if you're curious about him, this is the quintessential gateway.