The Mussorgsky Pictures is the most unusual and most interesting reading of the set. Starting with a carefully molded legato opening trumpet tune, Celibidache puts forth an amply lyrical interpretation, one awash in warm, glowing orchestral colors that, unlike in his Scheherazade, do not get lost in the wash. Every number receives special attention to its particular nuance, Bydlo being just one example, while the finale’s grand solemnity (and massive slowness) makes for a truly moving conclusion.
This album features performances of less frequently recorded orchestral works by Igor Stravinsky. They showcase the versatility of the Russian composer, who was never a supporter of any particular genre of aesthetic expression. On the contrary, he saw composing as an intellectual game, an attempt to solve self-imposed musical problems that could be kindled equally by Italian Baroque music, by the polyphonic structures of the Renaissance, by jazz, or by Anton Webern’s serial tone complexes. As both an opera conductor, orchestra director, festival director and author, Ingo Metzmacher is noted for his consistent and especial commitment to 20th- and 21st-century music.
This album features performances of less frequently recorded orchestral works by Igor Stravinsky. They showcase the versatility of the Russian composer, who was never a supporter of any particular genre of aesthetic expression. On the contrary, he saw composing as an intellectual game, an attempt to solve self-imposed musical problems that could be kindled equally by Italian Baroque music, by the polyphonic structures of the Renaissance, by jazz, or by Anton Webern’s serial tone complexes. As both an opera conductor, orchestra director, festival director and author, Ingo Metzmacher is noted for his consistent and especial commitment to 20th- and 21st-century music.
The Donaueschinger Musiktage is an annual music festival, providing a platform for contemporary composers in the eponymous south German town. In 1996 col legno published a 12-CD set with highlights of the (then) 75 years history of the event, complete with an illustrated 125-page booklet. 15 hours of exciting modernist compositions from Stravinsky to Lachenmann. The first of these festivals was held in 1921 but there were interruptions in the Nazi years.
It starts, appropriately enough, with Charles Ives's The Unanswered Question, which seems to hold its breath, and occasionally exhale in brief bursts of panic, as the new century unfolds. It ends with Dmitri Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony Op. 110a (based on his String Quartet No. 8), whose alternating sequences of anguish, alarm, and derision come as close as possible for absolute music to indicting its bloody history - eight CDs and over 30 works later.
Deutsche Grammophon presents a complete survey of Sir John Eliot Gardiner's recordings for Achiv Produktion and DG. Orchestras & Choirs: Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists, the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantic, the Wiener Philharmoniker, NDR-Chor, NDR Sinfonieorchester, and the London Symphony Orchestra. Soloists include: Anne Sofie von Otter, Ian Bostridge, Barbara Bonney, Emma Kirkby, Mark Padmore, Bernarda Fink, Magdalena Kozena, Bryn Terfel, and many more.