Andris Nelsons

Britten‘s War Requiem: 50th anniversary in Coventry. 2012 brings the 50th anniversary of the premiere of Britten‘s War Requiem, one of the most powerful pacifist statements in music. The first performance took place in 1962 in the newly consecrated Coventry Cathedral, built alongside the ruins of the old cathedral, left as a sombre reminder of the wartime bombings. On 30 May 2012, 50 years to the day, Britten‘s masterpiece returns to the cathedral, performed as at the premiere by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and vocal soloists from three once warring nations. The anniversary performance is conducted by the CBSO‘s Music Director, Andris Nelsons, featuring the Canadian soprano Erin Wall, English tenor Mark Padmore singing the role written for Peter Pears, and German baritone Hanno Müller-Brachmann.

Over the last few years, Andris Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester have recorded a Bruckner symphony cycle, pairing each work with orchestral music by Wagner. DG now presents their complete Bruckner/Wagner recordings in a 10-CD box and digitally, including Dolby Atmos versions. The set also features the artists’ previously unreleased recordings of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 0 (the so-called “Nullte”) and the overtures to Wagner’s Rienzi and Der fliegende Holländer.

In this latest installment of their acclaimed Shostakovich cycle, Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra explore the composer’s shifting identity and political convictions under the Soviet regime, tracing with the four symphonies on this album a 35-year span in Shostakovich’s creative and personal evolution: from youthful idealism to mature disillusionment and resignation. The orchestra and its Musical Director are joined by bass-baritone Matthias Goerne who gives an impressive performance of the “Babi Yar” solos in Symphony No. 13. The Tanglewood Festival Chorus (chorus master: James Burton) gives a strong support in the choral parts of Symphonies Nos. 2, 3 and 13, and are joining powers in the mighty Symphony No. 13 with the New England Conservatory Symphonic Choir (chorus master: Erica J. Washburn).

The Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra join forces with pianist Yuja Wang and announce their upcoming album which features a stunning rendition of Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalila-Symphonie. The recording celebrates the 75th anniversary of the work’s premiere in 1949. Most notably, it was originally commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra itself via their pioneering music director, Serge Koussevitsky.

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.