Noseda

The National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) will release an album of George Walker’s five sinfonias, conducted by Music Director Gianandrea Noseda, on September 8, 2023. The recording project celebrates NSO’s connection to Walker—the first African American composer to receive a Pulitzer Prize and a D.C. native—and honors his centennial, which was in 2022.

Prokofiev sends an urgent musical bulletin from Stalin’s Russia with his Symphony No. 5—music of iron and steel, forged in a time of war and tyranny.

"Certain moments in history gave composers the possibility of saying something deeply personal", says LSO Principal Guest Conductor Gianandrea Noseda. "And Shostakovich speaks equally to us today." As Noseda and the LSO continue their journey through Shostakovich's symphonies, which span the composer's lifetime, they take on one of his biggest creations, the Seventh. Written during the siege of Leningrad in World War II, it is shattering in scale and impact.

Gianandrea Noseda continues his survey of Italian orchestral music with a disc of works by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, which is the Chandos March Featured Release. Wolf-Ferrari was the son of a German painter and his Italian wife and although acknowledged as an Italian composer, he was perhaps better known in Germany. Wolf-Ferrari achieved his greatest success with a string of operatic works, especially Il segreto di Susanna. The recording includes orchestral excerpts from five operas, together with the Suite-Concertino for bassoon and orchestra.

Gianandrea Noseda and the London Symphony Orchestra launch a cycle of the complete Shostakovich symphonies with one of the 20th Century's most iconic artistic statements.

Composed against a cataclysmic backdrop of Stalinist oppression and the Second World War, Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony is a deeply affecting poem of suffering. The composer described it as “an attempt to reflect the terrible tragedy of war” and it contains some of the most terrifying music he ever wrote.

Widely recognized as one of the leading conductors of his generation, LSO Principal Guest Conductor Gianandrea Noseda presents the first release in a new series exploring Tchaikovsky's final three symphonies. Urgent, supercharged and violent in places, Tchaikovsky's Symphony No.4 is said to reflect the turmoil he found himself in while composing: a disastrous marriage, struggles with his sexuality and severe depression. Yet, despite the gloomy outlook, the symphony proves undoubtedly that Tchaikovsky knew how to fill his works with memorable melodies. Known for his mastery of Russian repertoire, for this album Noseda pairs Tchaikovsky with a masterpiece by his fellow countryman, Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, performed here in Ravel's iconic orchestration.

Our Principal Guest Conductor first recorded for LSO Live in 2011, stepping in at the last minute for Sir Colin Davis to conduct an award-winning account of the Britten War Requiem. Since then he has produced acclaimed recordings of works by Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky and Shostakovich.

When Gianandrea Noseda was appointed Chief Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic, great things were expected – the reputation of this young conductor preceded him. What was less expected was the diversity of repertoire that he would conduct, with equal success. His releases for Chandos, from Prokofiev to Dallapiccola, routinely pick up accolades from the critics. This disc features two of Dvorak’s neglected concertos, performed with great élan by soloists James Ehnes and Rustem Hayroudinoff. Both works have been overshadowed by Dvorak’s more popular Cello Concerto in B minor, but, as is apparent from this recording, both are delightful pieces, full of Slavic colour and folk rhythms, and characteristic of Dvorak at his best.

For his first LSO Live recording, Gianandrea Noseda is joined by three of today s most widely acclaimed singers for a magnificent performance of Benjamin Britten s choral masterpiece. Premiered 50 years ago on 30 May 1962, the 'War Requiem' was commissioned for the re-dedication of Coventry Cathedral, which was destroyed by bombing raids during the Second World War. Using the Latin mass of the dead, interspersed with texts by war poet Wilfred Owen, Britten, a pacifist and conscientious objector, created a work that both mourned the dead and pleaded the futility of war.