Blomstedt

For today’s musicologists, performers and concert-going audiences, Mozart’s final symphonies are still a veritable miracle. Why they were written remains a mystery, and no-one knows whether Mozart ever heard them performed during his lifetime. One thing is certain: Mozart created three individual, distinctive and unique works here, which complement each other despite their extreme diversity.

Maestro Herbert Blomstedt and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig close their acclaimed PENTATONE Brahms cycle with the composer’s Third and Fourth Symphonies. Compared to the epic First and gloomily pastoral Second, Brahms’s Third Symphony is a glorious exploration of the chamber-musical possibilities of the symphony orchestra. While musical variation of elementary motifs already plays an important role in this work, Brahms shows his absolute mastery of that technique even more impressively in The Fourth.

With these concerts, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig embarks on a musical journey to the Czech Republic in memory of its former conductor Vclav Neumann.It was there that Jan Vclav Vorek was born in 1791, the year of Mozart's death, and was taken away from it by pulmonary tuberculosis at the same age as Mozart, only 34 years old.

Maestro Herbert Blomstedt and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig continue their integral Brahms symphonies project with a recording of the composer’s Second Symphony in D Major, alongside his Academic Festival Overture.

The symphonies in G minor, K. 550 (no. 40), and C Major, K. 551 (no. 41, also known as 'The Jupiter') are the ones that most represent Mozart's symphonic legacy to later generations of musicians. As early as 1800, the popular 'Great' G minor Symphony was praised as the 'painting of a passion-stricken soul'. Like its big sister, the 'Jupiter' Symphony in C Major, it numbers among the most-played works in classical music and has been immortalized in countless recordings. Nevertheless, these symphonies - probably the most profound ones before Beethoven - reveal themselves as something quite new in every interpretation.

It was in 1953, 65 years ago, that Herbert Blomstedt conducted the Gothenburg Symphony for the first time. Since then he has been back on numerous occasions, performing a wide range of works – only not those by Wilhelm Stenhammar. Blomstedt has told of how an international career gave him little opportunity to study and conduct Stenhammar’s music. At the age of 85, however, when he no longer had any obligations as a chief conductor, he thought ‘now or never’ and began to study the composer’s major scores in earnest.

Admittedly, Franz Schubert's biography offers little in the way of great adventures, love affairs, glamour and long journeys. Jörg Handstein - in what is now his tenth audio biography in the successful BR-KLASSIK series - devotes himself here to a composer with an altogether quieter life.

Herbert Blomstedt chose the repertoire for his keenly awaited Deutsche Grammophon debut recording without hesitation. Joining forces with the majestic Gewandhausorchester, the Swedish conductor decided on a programme comprising two symphonic masterworks: Schubert’s Symphonies Nos. 8 “Unfinished” and 9 “Great”. Schubert · Symphonies is set for release on 8 July 2022, in time for Maestro Blomstedt’s 95th birthday three days later.

Anton Bruckner is a composer with an unmistakable musical language: darkly glowing, overwhelmingly beautiful, but also energetic and innovative.