Harding Daniel Die Planeten

Thanks to the combined talents of Matthias Goerne and Daniel Harding at the head of the excellent Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the music of Richard Wagner glows here with a special radiance. In the finest scenes for baritone or bass from Tristan und Isolde, Der fliegende Holländer, Parsifal and other operas, the themes dear to the composer (gods, men and redemption) inspire him to deploy supreme expressive resources and show the incontestable genius of this born orchestrator in a new light.

Ein deutsches Requiem, Brahms's longest choral work, was composed during three different periods of his life but completed between 1865 and 1868, perhaps as a result of the death of the composer's mother. It is a sacred work, but non-liturgical. It features text chosen by Brahms from the German Lutheran Bible, with passages from both the Old and New Testament. However, it does not include material about the Last Judgment, and was written primarily (according to Brahms), to comfort the living. On this recording, soloists Christiane Karg and Matthias Goerne are joined by the Swedish Radio Choir and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, all under the direction of maestro Daniel Harding.

Vienna has a habit of throwing up beautiful settings for unique events. The Summer Night Concert (“Sommernachtskonzert” in German) is a prime example.

This sonically spectacular recording of Richard Strauss’ Alpine Symphony was made with the internationally hand-picked players of the Saito Kinen Orchestra and recorded at the Saito Kinen Festival, Matsumoto, at the heart of the Japan Alps. Daniel Harding was specially invited to conduct the orchestra in the absence of Seiji Ozawa who, at that time, was still recuperating from treatment for cancer.

Isabelle Faust's first recording for harmonia mundi, Bartok Sonatas, won her a Gramophone Young Artist of the Year. Here she returns to Bartok, perfoming the two concertos, accompanied by Daniel Harding and the Swedish Radio SO.

As the last completed symphony that Mahler wrote, the Ninth has often been heard by audiences as the composer’s swan song: a nostalgic, moving farewell from a composer conscious of his own mortality. This interpretation is of course easily justifiable, as etched into the musical fabric of the symphony are references to the tragedies that befell the composer in the years before his death. Furthermore, it is wholly plausible that for a man as melodramatic as Mahler, the idea of a symphony that centres around themes of loss and finality would surely have been an appealing prospect.

A world might seem to divide the unbridled Romanticism of Berlioz from the highly controlled art of Rameau, standard-bearer of the French Late Baroque. And yet, at a distance of less than a century ('Hippolyte' was premiered in 1733, the 'Fantastique' in 1830), the same passion links two works more similar than their stylistic divergence might suggest. There is the same audacity in the orchestration, combined with an innate sense of drama that springs repeated rhythmic and harmonic surprises.

Leading Swedish composer Jesper Nordin’s soundscape lies at the crossroads of Swedish traditional music, rock and improvised music. On this recording, Daniel Harding and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra perform Röster (‘voices’), a trilogy whose works are each based on different kinds of Swedish music which the composer sees as being part of his background. In Åkallan (‘Invocation’), Nordin has used the traditional vocal technique called kulning as his starting point.

Seven musical character images – each one immensely sensual and expressive, and standing on its own like a monument. The British composer Gustav Holst, fascinated by (esoteric) astrology, chose the planets of our solar system and the characteristics attributed to them as the basis for what he referred to as musical ""mood pictures"" or ""embodiments"". Ultimately, the seven movements of his orchestral suite “The Planets”, op. 32, composed between 1914 and 1916, can also be understood as general explorations of human traits.

Mahler famously stated, that “a symphony must be like a world; it must contain everything”. Guided by this saying the British conductor Daniel Harding and the Verbier Festival Orchestra, capture the colossal spectrum of emotions in Mahler’s last completed symphony (1908–1909). Their performance of the 9th Symphony has been recorded live at the 2017 Verbier Festival and will be released on February 2. The symphony’s rustic second movement is now available to listen to.