Haydn Op 1

Like buds about to bloom, like the changing of the seasons from spring to summer, the Symphony No. 2 by Johannes Brahms is full of energy and vitality in quiet yet powerful transformation. As I started my sixth season with the Tonkunstler Orchestra, the recording we created together seems to symbolise our footsteps and friendship over the years. This recording was made during the extremely difficult period when Vienna was under lockdown because of Covid-19, but I‘m confident we managed to express in our sound our determination not to forget the joy of playing music, as well as the pain and prayer portrayed in the second movement. It is noble yet full of feelings, which is exactly the sound of my favourite orchestra.

Dimitri Mitropoulos (1896-1960) was a Greek conductor who came to America in the 1930s and made many recordings with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Like Wilhelm Furtwangler of Arturo Toscanini, Mitropoulos' height of popularity came just before the advent of modern sound technology, so that many of Mitropoulos' finest recordings are marred by distortion and background noises that may make those recordings practically un-listenable to some classical music enthusiasts (although the new Sony Mitropoulos set has advertised that most of those very rough recordings have been "remastered").