Gamelan Br. Teges Kanginan

For the first time, the successful series of BR-KLASSIK audio biographies is devoting itself to a 20th-century composer: Dmitri Shostakovich. His symphonies are still highlights in the concert hall, and his fate has inspired great novels. But what do we really know about his life? He liked to play his cards close to his chest – and had good reason to do so…

The Symphony No. 5, which came about over a very short time period some twelve years after beginning his career, today one of Tchaikovskys most popular works. As early as the world première in St. Petersburg it was already a great public success. More feeling, more emotion and more drama could hardly be converted into symphonic music; however a superior compositional technique and a ongoingly consummate command of structure keeps the work from ever slipping into superficial mawkishness.

Weightless, floating sounds, far removed from any earthbound striving for a home key and eluding any measurable emphases; a dazzlingly bright play of colors in instrumentation and impressionist tones, combined with that affectionate, softly melodic character of the French language – that is what constitutes the special charm of the French art-song. Audibly very different from the German Lied of the Romantic and Late Romantic periods, its extremes are filled with tensions and delightful contrasts. In the concert repertoire on the German side of the Rhine, however, French solo and choral songs have remained something exotic.

Mozart: Requiem in D Minor, K. 626 "Missa pro defunctis" (Completed by F. X. SüßMayr) [Live] Genia Kühmeier

For the Munich TATORT episode 'Dreams, the 87th criminal case for police commissioners Ivo Batic (Miroslav Nemec) and Franz Leitmayr (Udo Wachtveitl), directed by Boris Kunz ('Hindafing'), the orchestral film music was commissioned from the Munich composer David Reichelt (*1986), who has already won the German Film Music Award twice. The music was recorded by the Münchner Rundfunkorchester conducted by Andreas Kowalewitz (in the TV film itself, of course, we see principal conductor Ivan Repušić at the helm of the orchestra). BR-KLASSIK is now releasing the soundtrack fans!

Mariss Jansons dirigiert zwei revolutionäre Meisterwerke französischer Komponisten: Hector Berlioz' leidenschaftliche und exzessive "Symphonie fantastique" und Edgard Varèses "Ionisation" - die erste selbstständige Komposition für Schlagzeugensemble. Nach der Beethoven-Box mit ihrer Gegenüberstellung von Klassik und zeitgenössischen Werken bringt das aktuelle Album mit Mariss Jansons und dem Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks erneut eine Begegnung von Musik unterschiedlicher Epochen.

Mariss Jansons Jansons’s earliest memories were of his father, the conductor Arvid Jansons, conducting opera and ballet: ‘As a very small boy, three years old, I was always observing… I went to my father’s rehearsals. When I came home, I put my book on the table and started to conduct. I changed my trousers because they were for rehearsal, not for concert. I played at being artistic director, drawing up programmes for subscription seasons.’ He learned to play the violin in Riga, and in 1957 entered the Leningrad Conservatory, where he studied conducting with Rabinovich, as well as the piano and violin.

Mariss Jansons rehearses Ludwig van Beethoven´s Symphony No. 5 with the BRSO.