Shostakovich 5 Symphony

Orchestral transcription can be a contentious enterprise, obscuring as it enhances. Yet in rare cases its contours manage to take a shape all their own, living a new life somehow beyond the shadow of the original. Of this transformation we get two fine examples in Dolorosa, a well-conceived program from three distinct compositional minds. The works are presented in chronological order, with a 1967 orchestration of Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8 as a “Chamber Symphony” coming first. The arrangement, by conductor and violist Rudolf Barshai (the only one ever approved by the composer), is brilliant in that it avoids masking itself and features a flowing chain of solos.

Fans of Leonard Bernstein will not want to miss the chance to snap up this limited edition 60-CD set, Bernstein Symphony Edition. With a list price of just over two dollars per disc, it's a bargain not to be missed. What's most impressive about these recordings of well over 100 symphonies made between 1953 and 1976, almost all of which feature the New York Philharmonic, is the scope and depth of Bernstein's repertoire. The complete symphonic works of many of the great symphonists are here, including Beethoven, Schumann …

Fans of Leonard Bernstein will not want to miss the chance to snap up this limited edition 60-CD set, Bernstein Symphony Edition. With a list price of just over two dollars per disc, it's a bargain not to be missed. What's most impressive about these recordings of well over 100 symphonies made between 1953 and 1976, almost all of which feature the New York Philharmonic, is the scope and depth of Bernstein's repertoire.

Recorded live at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, London on 24 November 2004 (Symphony No. 3) and 27 November 2004 (Symphony No. 5). This recording features former Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra Kurt Masur, who conducted more than 150 performances in London and internationally during his tenure.

Music Director Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, with Reference Recordings, are pleased to announce the release of a new recording in superb audiophile, pairing Tchaikovsky’s iconic Symphony No. 4 with the world premiere of leading American composer Jonathan Leshnoff’s Double Concerto for Clarinet and Bassoon, featuring the orchestra’s own Michael Rusinek, Principal Clarinet, and Nancy Goeres, Principal Bassoon. This HIGHRESAUDIO release was recorded in Heinz Hall for the Performing Arts, the acoustically outstanding and historic home of the orchestra.

REFERENCE RECORDINGS® proudly presents Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7, in a new interpretation from conductor Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. It is coupled with the first recording of Mason Bates’ Resurrexit, which was composed in 2018 on a commission from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra to celebrate the sixtieth birthday of Maestro Honeck. This album was recorded live in 2022 in beautiful and historic Heinz Hall, home of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, in superb audiophile sound.

Reference Recordings® proudly presents the beloved Requiem of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, in a very special interpretation. Academy Award and Golden-Globe-winning film and Broadway star F. Murray Abraham joins Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for Honeck’s dramatic conception of “Requiem: Mozart’s Death in Words and Music.” Over a decade ago, Honeck contemporized Mozart’s epic masterpiece by incorporating text into the score. F. Murray Abraham, Manfred Honeck, and the Orchestra previously performed “Requiem: Mozart’s Death in Words and Music” at Heinz Hall in 2012 and at Carnegie Hall in 2014.

Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) composed his Symphony No 6 in E flat minor, Opus 111 between 1945 and February 1947, though his sketches date from 1944 - before his completion of the Fifth Symphony. The scoring is for large orchestra includ­ing piccolo, cor anglais, E flat clarinet, contrabassoon, harp, piano, celesta and an array of percussion. Although the key of E flat minor is extremely rare in the symphonic literature, Myaskovsky also wrote a sixth symphony in that key.

Multiple Grammy Winner Andris Nelsons and his “superb” (The Guardian) Leipzig orchestra continue their acclaimed couplings of Bruckner and Wagner with Symphony No. 6, which Bruckner himself described as his “boldest” and “most brazen”, and Symphony No. 9, which Bruckner struggled with for a total of nine years until his death. The Symphonies are accompanied by the Wagner’s Prelude to his last complete opera, Parsifal, and the lovely Siegfried Idyll.