Harncourt Dvorak Stabat

We first heard Sawallisch in Prague conducting the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra during the Prague Spring festival of 1958 and since then he has been a guest at this festival seven times more. In between, however, he has also been a guest conductor of the Czech Philharmonic and we even heard himas a pianist with Josef Suk as his sonata partner. Sawallisch, as one of the leading opera conductors today and a great admirer of Czech music, literally fell in love with the Czech Philharmonic Chorus which he conducted in big oratorios and cantatas (he even invited it in 1964 to the Milan La Scala for several performances of Wagner's Lohengrin). He very gladly visits us tocollaborate both with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and its chorus.

Dvorak: Stabat Mater - Sinopoli
Classical | 2 CDs | WMA 615 kbps| BOOKS COVERs | 408 MB
Deutche Gramphon 471033-2 | Release Date: 2003

Like Mozart writing his Requiem, this live recording of Dvorak's Stabat Mater has taken on great significance being released in the weeks following the death at 55 of the conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli in May 2001.

No one knew when Robert Shaw made this recording in November, 1999, that it would not only be a crowning personal achievement for the conductor and his Atlanta musicians, but also would stand as a final and fitting memorial to the work of one of this century's finest and most influential conductors. Shaw's death from a stroke three months after the sessions assured that this last recording would get extra attention, primarily viewed through a lens of reverence, respect, and retrospection.

Unrivalled in the catalogue, this box brings together all the works in a genre for which Dvořák has been undervalued. The composer was himself a lifelong Catholic, a man of uncomplicated faith and not prey to spiritual torments in the manner of his contemporary Bruckner.

Dvořák, a most personal symphonist: David Patrick Stearns assesses how Dvořák’s greatness was bound up with the way he saw the world.

This 2004 survey of modern settings of the medieval sequence Stabat Mater Dolorosa is part of conductor Marcello Viotti's project to record the little-known but worthy sacred works of the twentieth century, in conjunction with the Munich Radio Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Chorus for their concert series Paradisi gloria. The four works by Francis Poulenc, Karol Szymanowski, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Wolfgang Rihm are dramatically different in conception and musical content, and may be regarded more as reflections of personal faith than as practical works for ecclesiastical purposes.