Hobby Hifi №4. 2007

Hailed by the press as “the definitive video production” of Tchaikovsky’s music, this exceptional concert series, recorded live from the Alte Oper Frankfurt, features the leading Russian conductor Vladimir Fedoseyev and the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra. Fedoseyev’s perceptive reading of the works of his fellow countryman, the masterly playing of the orchestra and guest soloists combine to produce performances which are revelatory in their execution and understanding of Tchaikovsky’s music and the Russian heritage.

Schubert's 'Tragic' Symphony and Mozart's 'Paris' Symphony are performed by the Vienna Philharmonic under the baton of Nikolaus Harnoncourt at the Wiener Musikvereinsaal in 1984. Harnoncourt goes back to Schubert's original manuscripts to perform the music in its purest form. Harnoncourt joined forces with The Chamber Orchestra of Europe for Mozart's last symphonies (Nos. 39-41), performed at the Wiener Musikvereinssaal in 1991. Known throughout the world for his highly original approach to classical music, conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt reveres Mozart as 'the most romantic composer of all'.

For a work composed originally as independent items, Roussel's impressionist First Symphony (1904-06) works surprisingly well. True, its structure is unorthodox, each of the four movements – which form a seasonal cycle from winter to autumn – larger than its predecessor, but it all flows together remarkably well, adding up to rather more than a picturesque set of tonepoems or suite. Small wonder it so impressed early audiences.

If you’re only interested in a single disc of Joonas Kokkonen’s music, then let this be the one. It contains three out-and-out masterpieces, stunningly played and recorded with even more vividness and immediacy than on the already superb BIS complete orchestral music edition. Kokkonen’s austere but deeply felt idiom, with its atmospheric tone colors and fleeting lyricism, follows logically on the Sibelius of the Fourth Symphony. This is particularly true of Kokkonen’s Third and Fourth Symphonies, which have much the same feeling of organic growth from just a few simple motives that so often characterizes Sibelius’ work.

Ernst Eichner was a composer of the so-called Mannheim School who fell into obscurity as the Romantics discarded the light music of the Classical era, and whose music has until now been overlooked in the general late eighteenth century revival – probably because the focus on music of the period has shifted from Mannheim to Vienna. But of course the influence of the Mannheim composers was continent-wide; Mozart's symphonies and keyboard sonatas from the late 1770s, for example, can't be understood without it. The chief musical attraction in Mannheim was the court orchestra maintained by the Elector of the Palatinate, outsized to match the Elector's mega-palace (at the end of World War II it was about the only thing standing).

Sammartini had a long and active musical career, working as maestro di cappella or organist in as many as ten different churches, yet surprisingly few of his sacred compositions survive. In the sacred cantata Gerusalemme sconoscente ingrata, set to a text from another of his cantatas, La perfidia giudaica nella SS. Passione di Gesù Cristo, vocal texture is dominated by a typically Italianate melodiousness and virtuosity, while the orchestral writing is full of daring harmonies, sparkling themes, and an inexhaustible wealth of ideas.

The popularity of the film Tous les matins du monde (All the Mornings of the World) has revived the fortunes of a shadowy composer named Sainte-Colombe, who was active in the late seventeenth century. The film was largely fictitious, but subsequent research, much of it nicely summarized in the notes to this disc, has shed light on who Sainte-Colombe might have been and has actually backed up some of the guesses made by filmmakers and by novelist Pascal Quignard, on whose book Tous les matins du monde was based.

Lang Lang delivers his first-ever Beethoven recording, a stunning reading of the extensive Concerto no. 4 and the jubilant Concerto no. 1. Even though he has performed this repertoire extensively in concert, Lang Lang waited for the perfect moment and the perfect team to record his first pair of concertos from these milestones of piano repertoire When Lang Lang embarked on his international career, Christoph Eschenbach became one of his first and most enthusiastic proponents - and a mentor and close friend ever since, Eschenbach was the ideal collaborator for Lang Lang's first Beethoven recording.