In this installment in 'an ongoing Shostakovich survey that has rightly won him three Grammy Awards' (New York Times), Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra bookend the composer's brilliant, often turbulent symphonic career. Nearly half a century lies between Shostakovich's triumphant debut with the 'First', premiered before his 20th birthday, and the 'Fifteenth', an inventory of influences written under the shadow of his own mortality. Penned just two years earlier, the 'Fourteenth' is a symphonic song cycle, and the Chamber Symphony is a skillful adaptation of that tragic masterpiece, the Eighth String Quartet.
For the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frédéric Chopin, the renowned Ruhr Piano Festival in Essen invited the Staatskapelle Berlin to give a truly special program: the rare combination of Chopin‘s two piano concertos in one concert. For this purpose Daniel Barenboim, the orchestra‘s principal conductor, handed over the reins of „his“ ensemble to up-and-coming young conductor Andris Nelsons, assuming the role of piano soloist instead. The press raved: „Storms of applause for a dream couple: Daniel Barenboim and Andris Nelsons won over the audience […] with their rousing Chopin interpretations“.
Lang Lang presents a treasure trove of musical discoveries in this album: Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No. 2, recorded with the Gewandhausorchester and Andris Nelsons, is a true romantic masterpiece for Lang Lang that rivals the great concertos by Rachmaninoff or Tchaikovsky. Pairing it with Carnival of the Animals, a whimsical menagerie that has captivated young hearts for generations, Lang Lang continues his heartfelt wish to promote the love of classical music to young people and it also gives him a chance to collaborate with his wife, pianist Gina Alice. These two large scale orchestral works are complemented with solo compositions, including hidden gems by five female French composers as well as beloved French Classics.
The Wiener Philharmoniker, or Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, has attained a kind of exalted status among symphonic ensembles of the German-speaking world. In fact, it may be so exalted that it only occasionally, when properly motivated, bestirs itself to creativity. From this perspective, this cycle of Beethoven symphonies, with Andris Nelsons conducting the venerable Viennese, is a success worthy of the shelf and hard drive space among all the other hundreds of Beethoven symphony cycles. Nelsons generally makes his Beethoven brisk enough to put the players into a bit of a state of tension, and when they execute, the results are thrilling indeed, in a way that brings the entire weight of the Vienna tradition alive.
The "Under Stalin's Shadow" subtitle of this release may be confusing inasmuch as the opening Passacaglia from the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District dates from before the period when Stalin made Shostakovich's life a living hell, and the main attraction, the Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93, was finished ten months after Stalin's death. Actually the album is the first in a set of three; the others will cover the symphonies No. 5 through No. 9, all written during the period of Stalinist cultural control. But even here the theme is relevant: the pieces are linked by a dark mood that carries overtones (of a feminist sort in the case of the opera) of repression. And the Symphony No. 10 is decidedly some kind of turning point, with repeated (and finally triumphant) assertions of the D-S-C-H motif (D, E flat, C, B natural in the German system) that would appear frequently in the composer's later work.
After the "scandalously successful" (Sunday Times) Symphony No. 10 in 2015, "the sheer expressive beauty" (Gramophone Magazine) of Symphonies Nos. 5, 8, 9 from 2016, and the "overbearing vividness" (The Guardian) of the most recent Symphonies Nos. 4 & 11, Nelsons and the BSO continue the Grammy-winning cycle with Symphonies Nos. 6 & 7. The symphonies are complemented by two other works by Shostakovich, the Suite from the Incidental Music to King Lear, Op. 58a and the Festive Overture, Op. 96.
The newest addition to Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra's award-winning survey of Shostakovich's orchestral works takes on symphonies from the opposite ends of the composer's life. Shostakovich's first symphony, composed when he was only 19, announced his presence to the world, while his 15th seemingly grapples with his impending mortality. The Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Op. 10, was written as a graduation piece for his composition class at the Leningrad Conservatory. The composer's youth and the influences of Stravinsky and Prokofiev are evident in the work, but there are plenty of allusions to his later style. Slightly on the slower side overall, the emotion and forward motion of the music is not lost. The Symphony No. 15 in A major, Op. 141, written a few years before the composer's death, though not programmatic, seems to present a look at the cycle of life.
The Summer Night Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic is the world's biggest annual classical open-air concert that takes place in the magical setting of the Schönbrunn Palace Baroque park in Vienna (Concert date: June 16, 2022).