Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra Mariss Jansons Shostakovich Rehersal

In the series of live recordings with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, this outstanding recording took place both in Germany and abroad. Jansons’ previous Ravel/Bartók recording has received an ECHO Klassik in 2008. On this new album, the orchestra presents key symphonic works by Joseph Haydn: the Sinfonia Concertante No. 105 and symphonies No. 100 and No. 104. Once again Jansons and the Orchestra prove to have a superb flair for the musical content of those works.

From 2003 to 2019, Mariss Jansons was chief conductor of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and the Bavarian Radio Chorus. His death on December 1, 2019 marked the end of an era. As a conductor, Mariss Jansons was appreciated by the musicians of his orchestra and chorus like no other, he was loved by his Munich audience, and revered by his fans in international concert halls from Tokyo to New York. To create a place for everyone who wants to remember individual concerts or tours during his time as the principal conductor of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, there is now a timeline on the orchestra’s website. All the concerts since his inaugural one in Munich on October 23, 2003 can be found there. In addition to documentation of programmes and line-ups, selected concerts are accompanied by image galleries, concert videos, backstage material and excerpts from interviews or rehearsals from the archives of BR-KLASSIK and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. These archives are continually being extended, so the timeline is worth visiting again and again. We hope that this “virtual collection of memories” will give Jansons fans all over the world pleasure in browsing and remembering.

Hollow pathos is not his thing. From an artist like Mariss Jansons Friedrich Schiller’s Ode: “An die Freude” must receive a far deeper significance, which also fully encompasses the doubt and profound hope embodied in this text. And thus, in Jansons’s recording of the Ninth Symphony, the choral finale does not degenerate to mere superficial orgy of jubilation, but rather becomes a delicately balanced, wisely developed drama. On October 27, 2007, the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks played Beethoven’s Ninth in the presence of the Pope in the Vatican. The recording of this memorable concert is now being released in the highest audiophile recording quality as a multi-channel SACD.

The German-French composer Mark Andre (b.1964) is one of the most important representatives of New Music. His twelve "Miniatures" for string quartet were composed in 2014/17 as a commission from the Arditti Quartet, Bavarian Radio's "musica viva", the Festival d'Automne à Paris and the ProQuartet-CEMC, funded by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. Andre created his organ work "Himmelfahrt" (Ascension), funded by the Siemens Music Foundation, in 2018 on behalf of the Evangelical Church in Germany. The orchestral work woher…wohin was written between 2015 and 2017 as a composition commission by BR's "musica viva" in conjunction with the Happy New Ears prize for composition from the Hans and Gertrud Zender Foundation. The live recordings of all three works are now being released in the CD edition of Bavarian Radio's "musica viva" concert series on BR-KLASSIK.