Canary Wharf ¨C February 2014

Cellist Gary Hoffman joins the Cypress String Quartet in this 2013 rendition of Franz Schubert's String Quintet in C major, D. 956, one of the supreme masterpieces in chamber music. The performance on this release from Avie is energetic and passionate, and the listener becomes deeply engrossed from the outset because the highly expressive playing is immediately compelling.

For his project of recording the complete symphonies of Anton Bruckner on CPO, Mario Venzago has chosen to record each symphony with a different orchestra to re-create the sounds that Bruckner would have heard. Considering that Bruckner's experiences with orchestras spanned three decades, he would have witnessed growth of the orchestra's size and the introduction of new instruments, which clearly influenced his decisions when he composed and revised each work. Venzago performs the Symphony No. 8 in C minor with the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, following the 1890 version and employing the same instrumentation and ensemble scale, as well as traditional practices that are documented in performances from that period. The result is an Eighth that sounds strikingly different from the other symphonies, quite far removed from the early Romantic orchestra he used in the First, and considerably expanded from the ensembles he would have expected for the Fourth or even the Seventh symphonies.