Berliner Philharmoniker, Sir Simon Rattle The Sound of Simon Rattle

Sergei Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26 & Béla Bartók: Piano Concerto No. 2, Sz. 95, BB 101 -
Lang Lang (piano); Berliner Philharmoniker; Sir Simon Rattle, conductor
Classical | 1 CD | EAC Rip | 343 MB, 3% recovery | FLAC+LOG+Cue | Complete scans
Publisher: Sony Classical | Recorded: 2013| Published: 2013

It is extremely hard for any new recording to compete with the stunning 1967 Berlin account that Argerich made with the Berliner Philharmoniker under Abbado… Lang Lang certainly equals the boldness, power and communicative quality of Argerich’s account. Under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle the Berliner Philharmoniker is highly persuasive and sympathetic. Not for the first time the woodwind excel - marvellous. - Michael Cookson; www.musicweb-international.com

Sir Simon Rattle conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker in Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 including the world premiere of the latest scholarly revision of the fourth movement that the composer left unfinished at his death.

LSO, Sir Simon Rattle - Turnage Remembering - In Memoriam Evan Scofield (2017) {B&W Society of Sound no. 81 Digital Download 16-44.1}
FLAC (tracks) - 16bit/44kHz - Official Digital Download (bowers-wilkins.com) -> 114 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 70 Mb | Cover | 5% repair rar
© 2017 LSO / B&W Society of Sound | LSO86 / SoS no. 81
Classical / Modern Classical

Remembering, written in memory of Evan Scofield, is Mark-Anthony Turnage’s response to the young man’s premature death from cancer in 2013, at the age of 26. Turnage knew Evan as the son of family friends, the jazz guitarist John Scofield and his wife Susan, and the sister of Jeannie, the partner of Ursula. A boy whose quirky but deep rooted enthusiasms – for cinema, axes, hyacinths, friends – reflected a readiness to take on life in all its fullness, a young man whose ways of seeing seemed so good, so full of promise and possibility. Such early deaths strike us less like personal tragedies and more like cosmic catastrophes. What kind of a world is it that allows such things to happen?

Sol Gabetta’s first recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto, with the Danish National Symphony, was much admired when it appeared six years ago. This one, taken from a concert in the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus in 2014, is a far glossier affair orchestrally. Simon Rattle’s tendency to overmould the phrasing is sometimes too obvious, but Gabetta’s playing is intense and searching, less introspective than some performances in the Adagio, perhaps, but epic in scale in the outer movements, and always keenly responsive. Those who possess her earlier disc might not think they need to invest in this one, but would then miss Gabetta’s vivid, pulsating account of the Martinů concerto, which went through a quarter of a century of revisions before the definitive 1955 version she plays here, with Krysztof Urbański conducting. She finds real depth and intensity in it, both in the slow movement and in the introspective episode that interrupts the finale’s headlong rush.