Yannick Nézet Séguin The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra Collection 6cds

Recorded live in 2016—almost exactly 100 years to the day since Leopold Stokowski conducted The Philadelphia Orchestra in the US premiere of the work—Mahler’s Eighth once again awes and overwhelms. Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s superb musicianship and skill in choral repertoire make this very special indeed. The orchestra plays magnificently, the choirs sing as if their lives depended on it, and the numerous soloists are well chosen, with Erin Wall and Angela Meade the standouts. The recording captures the symphony’s scale as well as its complex spatial demands. A terrific account of a work whose performance still ranks as a major musical event.

Premiered at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2022 – with Joyce DiDonato, Renée Fleming and Kelli O’Hara as its stars – Kevin Puts’s The Hours was praised by The New York Times as “sincere and persuasive … fervent … and soaringly lyrical”. The opera returns to the Met’s schedule in May 2024. Based on both the award-winning 2002 film directed by Stephen Daldry and the original novel by Michael Cunningham, The Hours interweaves characters and events from three different periods of the 20th century. Joyce DiDonato, who takes the pivotal role of writer Virginia Woolf, says that: “Even though it deals with death head-on, the piece is life-affirming and tells a timeless story. The characters’ struggles are shared universally, and by highlighting them through the different personalities and periods, hopefully everybody can find a part of themselves in the story.”

Lahav Shani, Chief Conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra for the past five years, conducts the Dutch ensemble in Bruckner’s epic Symphony No 7. He admires the Austrian composer for his proverbially grand musical architecture, but also for his vision and the atmosphere he creates as he builds to mighty climaxes over extended periods “ … from a hint of light to the whole world”. Shani’s sense for symphonic structure and drama, and the Rotterdam Philharmonic’s response to it, was evident in their Warner Classics recording of Shostakovich’s Symphony No 5 (released in 2022). Gramophone magazine’s reviewer praised “… an account where the feeling is refreshingly one of rediscovery …. Shani has a wonderful nose for atmosphere … [He] reminds me just how achingly beautiful the slow movement of this piece is … and I don’t think I have ever heard the transition into the hushed final pages sound quite as breathtaking … A terrific disc.”