Schoenberg Michael Gielen Bwv 552

In October 2014, Michael Gielen issued a press release announcing that he had been forced to end his conducting activities for health reasons. On this occasion, and also with his 90th birthday in July 2017 in mind, it is time to listen to the different phases of a long conducting career. The Michael Gielen Edition offers this opportunity. It comprises several volumes of varying size, dedicated to individual composers or major historical periods. The recordings in this sixth volume have all been taken from the SWR’s Baden-Baden archive. Hence they are all performed by “his” orchestra, recently named the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg. Presumably the earliest recording of a Mahler symphony conducted by Gielen was at a concert of the Hessischer Rundfunk (public broadcaster for the German state of Hessen), where the Fifth Symphony was played in December 1963, and his last recording of a Mahler symphony was the Sixth Symphony performed in a guest concert of the SWR Symphony Orchestra at the Salzburg Festival on August 21, 2013.

Shostakovich - Symphony Nº12 - SWR Symphony Orchestra - Michael Gielen (Arte Nova)
EAC 099pb4 Rip | APE+CUE, LOGs | 62:17 min | 251 MB 300 dpi PDF Complete Scans
Genre: Classical - 20th Century| Label: Arte Nova

A distinguished Mahlerian of the cerebral kind, Michael Gielen has not previously tackled Shostakovich symphonies on disc, so his choice of the agitprop Twelfth is something of a puzzle. This is, as you might expect, a sober, straightforward account that makes no attempt to disguise the music’s obvious shortcomings by ‘imposing’ fervour in the Mravinsky manner. The result is chilly, formal and blank, despite some eloquent woodwind playing. Reviewed on Gramophone 11/99

This extensive release is the second installment of a ten-volume tribute to conductor Michael Gielen. Some of Michael Gielen's very first broadcast recordings made in the 1960s were of Bruckner's symphonies. The development of the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg is visible in these recordings, from the very earliest recording all the way to the incredible 2013 performance of Bruckner's Symphony No. 9. All of Bruckner's symphonies are included on this release. Four of these performances have never been previously released.

These are important first recordings of orchestral works, commissioned by South-West German Radio, that have turned out to be milestones in Wolfgang Rihm’s development. He was just 22 when Morphonie was heard at Donaueschingen in 1974, a premiere that must have seemed like a slap in the face to those hardline serialists who gathered there every year, for it showed Rihm using a complex musical language to convey an unmistakably powerful emotional message.