Haydn Dmitri Babanov

Dmitri Shostakovich was the most versatile of composers: popular and serious styles came to him with equal ease and are frequently found together in the same work. In his twenties, before the heavy hand of Soviet officialdom slapped him down in 1936, music of every kind poured out of him: symphonies, operas and full-length ballets but also a great amount of music for film and theatre. Here Andrew Litton leads the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in a programme which explores this lighter side of a composer who is otherwise often regarded as unrelentingly serious.

He is one of the "superstars" of the piano world. An exceptional teacher – his pupils include stars such as Arcadi Volodos or Claire-Marie Le Guay – Dmitri Bashkirov’s debut with Claves combines a most original programme with orchestra. Face to face; we have: Johann Sebastian Bach’s most famous son; Carl Philip Emanuel; forbearer of the great Romantic composers; and an unusual Ludwig van Beethoven. This particular Concerto op. 61a is indeed very rarely played; copying almost note for note the original score of the Violin Concerto op. 61.

Our first-ever full-length Italian opera recording, Delos’s star-studded current release of Giuseppi Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra promises to make quite a splash among today’s opera fans. As Verdi was entering his glorious “late period” (Otello and Falstaff) he wrote and re-worked much of Simon Boccanegra, a work that he had first tackled in 1857. The opera emerged in 1881 as a powerful masterpiece, although one that has been unfairly neglected, in comparison with Verdi’s other works on that level. So it’s high time for an authoritative new release of an opera that gives glamorous title star Dmitri Hvorostovsky – considered by many to be the world’s greatest Verdi baritone – the chance to record what he calls “…one of the most complex, deepest characters in the whole baritone repertoire.”

Haydn’s Missa in tempore belli (Mass in Time of War) ‒ a classical work for our times. Indeed, his faith was never of the bleak, incessantly penitential kind, but cheerful, reconciled and trusting, and it was in this spirit that he composed his sacred works, too. (Georg August Griesinger on Joseph Haydn, 1810).

Trio Stadtlmann is a Japanese trio formed and active in Switzerland, featuring the world's rarest stringed instrument, the baritone. Celebrating their 10th anniversary, the Trio Stadtlmann released their first recorded work with the cooperation of Tokyo Zoshigaya Haiobun-tei, which has been conducting a project to perform Haydn's complete baritone trio works. It also includes the only quintet in existence that includes two horns!

Recordings such as this superb one serve to remind us that though we may think we know the output of the major composers, there are still treasures to be discovered. Works for individual instruments find their way into recital programs but often lie in shadow of the 'big works' for the concert.

The city of Eisenstadt was the location of the Esterhazy Court where Joseph Haydn was music director for 25 years. Prince Nikolaus commissioned Haydn to write trios for the baryton, an instrument on which the Prince had become proficient. The baryton is a bowed, stringed instrument similar to the viol but with extra plucked strings that can enable the performer to accompany themselves. For Nikolaus, Haydn wrote string trios of elegance, refinement and poise that encapsulate a rich variety of moods. Seldom performed or recorded, the baryton trios attest to Haydn's limitless powers of invention in every medium.

Few new pieces of music in the 20th century have received the kind of celebrity accorded the Shostakovich Symphony No. 7 when it arrived in America. At a time when Russia was seen in a somewhat friendly light by the allied nations, this supposed depiction of the siege of Leningrad was seized upon by the press as a vital cog in the war effort. The composer, clad in military fireman's garb, graced the cover of Time magazine, and Toscanini and Stokowski fought tooth and nail to get the premiere American performance. (Toscanini got his hands on the manuscript first, and Stokowski gave the second performance a few days later.) Here is a Soviet studio recording from the 1950s by Evgeny Mravinsky, the conductor most closely associated with Shostakovich during his lifetime. It is a strong performance with plenty of impact and the Leningrad Philharmonic in good form, and while live Mravinsky versions of several of the symphonies exist in abundance, there are none of the Seventh, making this disc especially valuable.