Thomas Dausgaard

On Synergy, flautist Sharon Bezaly and her musician friends demonstrate that one plus one can be much greater than two. Featuring works that celebrate the coming together of like-minded musicians, this project is a reminder, after more than two years of a pandemic that has affected all of us, that true musical synergy can only be achieved 'face-to-face’, rather than ‘remotely’.

Commencing a series on Onyx dedicated to the orchestral music of Béla Bartók, Thomas Dausgaard and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra deliver dynamic performances of one of the composer's greatest works, the Concerto for Orchestra, SZ 116, accompanied by the less famous but deserving Suite No. 1, SZ 31, presented here without cuts. Because the Concerto for Orchestra is widely performed and recorded, listeners are likely to know it well, so Dausgaard's decision to open with the Suite No. 1 gives it a prominence that it rarely receives. Both works have parallels that are important to note, primarily the five-movement form and the quasi-symphonic internal structures that Bartók might have employed had he written an official symphony.

With his symphonies the Danish composer Rued Langgaard offered 16 vastly different versions of what a symphony can be. His captivating, complex genius made room for all conceivable idioms and a wealth of styles ranging from the grandiosely Late Romantic to the purest Absurdism. This box is the first collected recording of Langgaard's 16 symphonies based on the critical edition of the scores; recordings which demonstrate, with spectacular sound quality, Langgaards masterly grasp of the orchestra and his ecstatic view of art.

Bartók composed The Miraculous Mandarin (published as ‘A Pantomime in One Act’) at a time of violent unrest in Hungary. The unpleasant Soviet Hungarian Republic had collapsed in 1919 and was replaced by an ultra nationalist regime which persecuted communists, Jews and leftists, and left over 1,500 dead and thousands imprisoned without trial. It is against this bloody political and social backdrop that the composer, recovering from Spanish Flu, set about a musical depiction of Lengyel’s ‘pantomime grotesque’.

Kullervo represents not only the confident first step in Sibelius's symphonic odyssey, it is also a viscerally exciting experience on its own terms. It is little wonder that the first performance in 1892 was such a triumph for the young composer. This recording from Thomas Dausgaard and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in an unmissable acquisition for anyone who knows only the numbered symphonies.