Anton Dolgov

One of the most celebrated conductors of the 20th century, Eugen Jochum was a leading interpreter of the works of Anton Bruckner. Famous for his fleet and impassioned Bruckner style, Jochum also perfectly captures the spirituality of each of the symphonies, from the first Schubertian strides of No. 1 to the bleak expanses of the unfinished Ninth.

Anton Webern - Chamber Music for Strings
Schoenberg Quartet / Sepp Grotenhuis
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 227 MB | Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Chandos # CHAN 10083 | Country/Year: UK 2003
Genre: Classical | Style: Early 20th Century

"…The whole disc is a great success. Recording quality is first rate, with the necessary clarity tempered by warmth and just the right amount of resonance. Excellent notes are by Dr. Christopher Hailey. Recommended, even if you still find Webern hard work." ~musicweb-international

Anton Webern - Chamber Music for Strings
Schoenberg Quartet / Sepp Grotenhuis
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 227 MB | Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Chandos # CHAN 10083 | Country/Year: UK 2003
Genre: Classical | Style: Early 20th Century

"…The whole disc is a great success. Recording quality is first rate, with the necessary clarity tempered by warmth and just the right amount of resonance. Excellent notes are by Dr. Christopher Hailey. Recommended, even if you still find Webern hard work." ~musicweb-international

For a long time, Anton Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony (together with his Second) was regarded as something of a “poor relation” in his immense symphonic oeuvre, even though the composer himself had moodily referred to it as his “boldest”. Over the decades, in view of its performance figures and recordings, this has changed significantly: The work has now secured itself a permanent place in the repertoire. The Sixth Symphony belongs to the creative process of the two preceding symphonies, the “Romantic” Fourth (1874/1880) and the Fifth (1875), and is now seen as an important preliminary stage in Bruckner’s last great upsurge that followed the composition of the “Te Deum” (the initial sketches of which date from 1881), and culminated in the sublime grandeur of his final symphonies, the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth.

The soundtrack for the film The Hours (2002), with its all-star cast including Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman, has been one of Philip Glass' most popular works, with a BAFTA award in Britain having been a key step in spreading Glass' reputation beyond the U.S. Perhaps the task of writing specifically representational music helps him hone his style (see also his big operas of the 1970s and '80s). The music has also had a second life in Michael Riesman and Nico Muhly's piano version; in Muhly's case, you might argue for a degree of influence.

Richard Strauss and the Viennese Trumpet is the latest in Jonathan Freeman-Attwood’s imaginative series of musical reinventions for trumpet and piano. Works by Fux, Beethoven, Schubert, Mahler, Bruckner, Webern and Zemlinsky complement the core work: a newly imagined Strauss trumpet sonata. Building on his highly successful transcriptions of sonatas by Fauré, Grieg, Mendelssohn and Schumann, Freeman-Attwood pushes the boundaries further delivering a fully realised trumpet sonata which Strauss did not write. This innovative approach embraces various levels of transcription, transformation, realignment and composition to create a significant new contribution to the trumpet repertoire, full of the gloriously idiomatic writing for which Strauss is renowned.

This disc brings together four sacred cantatas by composers who only infrequently feature in these pages. Best known of them is Georg Anton Benda, brother of the celebrated violinist Franz, who served Frederick the Great for over half-a-century. Georg Benda made a name for himself with his Singspiels and innovative melodramas, which made a deep impression on Mozart. There is nothing innovative about either of the two cantatas with instruments performed here, though from an expressive standpoint they are far from being run-of-the-mill. Both belong to a cycle prepared in 1761 while Benda was Music Director at the Court of Gotha.

The sincerity and at the same time emotionality of Anton Bruckner's musical thoughts create an inimitable magnetism that makes one "forget" time in the very best sense of the word. Anyone who wants to approach Bruckner only analytically will find their mind boggled, especially at the first encounter. His great power is a certain "transcendental charm" that is common to all his symphonies.