Detail 2017

On two previous discs, Yevgeny Sudbin and Osmo Vänskä have released Beethoven’s three last piano concertos to critical acclaim. Distinctions include Editor’s Choice in Gramophone and the performances have been described as ‘electrifying’ (classicfm.com), ‘absolutely stunning’ (Fanfare) and ‘a Beethoven experience you will not want to miss’ (ClassicsToday.com). For the final disc in their cycle, Sudbin and Vänskä have travelled to Helsinki to team up with Tapiola Sinfonietta, one of the top Nordic ensembles, and well suited for these earlier and more classical of Beethoven’s concertos. Of the two, the one we now know as the Second was actually begun several years before Concerto No. 1, and indeed even before Beethoven left Bonn for Vienna. During the following decade, Beethoven returned to the score repeatedly and made substantial revisions – including composing a new final movement – and ultimately the C major concerto reached publication first.

Inside Tirumala Tirupati, a documentary about Tirumala Tirupati, brings the story behind the temple to the small screen. The National Geographic documentary premiered on March 27, giving a 360-degree view of one of the world's most iconic temples. Inside Tirumala Tirupati unraveled the stories of devotion, belief and love of the people who come to the temple. The documentary incorporated elaborate graphics that explain the temple layout in detail re-creating the sacred inner parts of the temple. The temple that receives 60,000-80,000 people every day is managed by hundreds of officials and priests.

Firma Melodiya presents a rarity of Russian chamber music, string quartets by Sergei Taneyev performed by Lubotsky Trio. In the early 20th century, they called Taneyev “musical conscience of Moscow.” Tchaikovsky’s best student and friend, the first recipient of the Big Gold Medal of the Moscow Conservatory, and a teacher of Rachmaninoff, Scriabin and other famous composers, Taneyev proved to be an outstanding pianist, composer, educator and music theorist. A true master of polyphonic composition and a fine ensemble performer, Taneyev devoted special attention to thematic development, vibrant voiceleading, subtle palette of strokes, and sought to find an ideal balance between emotional and rational in music. The chamber and instrumental genres were perhaps the ones that answered his artistic demands to the greatest extent. Two string trios – E flat major, Op. 31, and B minor (no opus) – on this album belong to the 1910’s, the last period of Taneyev’s life. The latter one remained unfinished and was published many years after the composer’s death. The recording was made in Germany in 2015, the year of the 100th anniversary of the prominent Russian composer’s death.

St. Thomas, dating back to the twelfth century, is a musical landmark for the city of Leipzig, in which renowned composers like Gustav Mahler, Richard Wagner and Felix Mendelsson Bartholdy worked. Johann Sebastian Bach was the Thomaskantor here from 1723 to 1750, the world-famous Thomanerchor sings motets here every Saturday, and here resounds the wonderful music played on the instrument Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart once declared the "Queen of Instruments" and about which the poet Honore de Balzac said, "The organ is without a doubt the greatest, boldest and most magnificent of all instruments. It is an entire orchestra form which a skilled hand can demand everything." St. Thomas houses not one but two organs wtihin its walls. In 1889 Wilhelm Sauer built the organ, named after him, in the west choir loft. On the north gallery, the Bach Organ has stoody since 2000. The Sauer Organ has over 88 stops, and the Bach Organ, whose facade is adorned with the seal of the famous Thomakantor, has 61 stops. "Soli Deo Gloria" - Glory to God alone - is the motto by which Bach wrote his music.

For thousands of years, the Great Plains were home to countless numbers of American bison, but in the late 1800s, the number of bison dropped from nearly 30 million to just a few hundred in less than 100 years. What happened to place this national icon on the brink of extinction? Join us as we detail the events that led to this mass extermination. Then follow the story of William Temple Hornaday, a chief taxidermist at the Smithsonian Institution who headed west to hunt bison for the museum, but ended up saving the species instead.

GRAMOPHONE Magazine Editor's Choice. Stefan Temmingh is a member of the new young generation of world-class recorder players. Born in Cape Town, he comes from a Dutch-South-African family of musicians and now lives in Munich. Being an early music specialist, he plays internationally with his baroque ensemble at renowned festivals and concert series, and can also be heard as a member of ensembles of all sizes in Europe, Asia and Africa. His fine playing is regularly compared to the style of the legendary Frans Brüggen. On this collaboration with the Capricornus Consort Basel, he makes use of his wide array of technical and musical resources to render a reference version of Vivaldi’s Recorder Concertos.

Barack Obama et ses conseillers relatent au jour le jour les péripéties d'une présidence qui voulait changer l'Amérique. Une immersion documentaire dans la réalité de la Maison-Blanche, contée avec le souffle de la fiction. Acte I : comment, deux mois avant son investiture, Barack Obama doit mettre de côté ses ambitieuses promesses de réformes pour gérer la crise économique.

Sebastian Sternal - Home It was a distinct artistic idea that prompted Sebastian Sternal to lure the internationally celebrated Larry Grenadier from New York to Cologne. After Sternal’s two ECHO-Award-winning, large-scale productions under the name Sternal Symphonic Society, the virtuoso pianist, composer and arranger wanted to play in ”classical” trio instrumentation again. “After the orchestral, late Romantically inspired timbre of the Society, I had an album in mind, that exhibits a more rhythmic and physical attitude,” Sternal summarizes the idea in a sentence and adds: “It is about melodies, the energy in music and about swing; of course in a modern aesthetic, not necessarily in the traditional sense.” Sternal’s artistic reflections quickly led him to Larry Grenadier. The 51-year-old American from San Francisco initially studied English literature at Stanford, then settled in New York via Boston as a jazz musician in the mid 1990s and is a renowned specialist for trio formations.