Symphony 7

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.

In Bulgaria, both folk and art music evince an ancient tradition that strikes awe even in some of the great music nations today. The way Pancho Vladigerov incorporated these folk-music themes into his concert pieces shows not only his affinity for them but also suggests that he felt something of a calling to promulgate and champion the folk-traditions of his central European homeland. The most-performed work of Pancho Vladigerov’s is undoubtedly his Bulgarian Rhapsody op.16 “Vardar” from 1922. The most outstanding must be his Seven Symphonic Bulgarian Dances op.23 (1931), with which he might have wanted to create a counterpart to Brahms’ Hungarian Dances, Dvorák’s Slavonic Dances, or Grieg’s Norwegian Dances or similar such popular aural nationalistic postcards.

Dvořák, a most personal symphonist: David Patrick Stearns assesses how Dvořák’s greatness was bound up with the way he saw the world.

Second Symphony is also a youthful work – the composer was just 21 at the time – but it differs from the First in that it’s cast in a single movement. After the premiere in 1973 Aho decided to rework the middle section, a task he didn’t attempt until 1995. The result is a compact, tightly structured piece – it’s a triple fugue – which the composer candidly admits was intended as an antidote to some of the more ‘difficult’ music of the 1960s.

Conducting Bruckner, says Rattle, is a lifelong quest for some "extraordinary vista, some wonderful moment which leads you out of this world". This certainly rings true for Bruckner's Seventh Symphony, the opening theme for which is said to have come to him in a dream, played by an angel. This huge, glowing mountain-range of sound is all at once majestic, reverent and terrifying. This edition of the symphony by Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs was first performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle in September 2022, and the recording completes a set of three albums which also features Cohrs' editions of Bruckner's Fourth and Sixth symphonies. Making use of Bruckner's discarded fragments and lesser-known material through his many revisions, this set of albums is a must-listen for lovers of Bruckner's music, and gives us a glimpse into the composer's untold musical thoughts.

These London Symphony Orchestra recordings were made at the Barbican in London in 2003 and 2004. The set includes not only the four Brahms symphonies but also the Tragic Overture, Op. 81, the Double Concerto in A minor, Op. 102, and the Serenade No. 2 in A major, Op. 16. It adds up to more than four hours of music, but one can make a strong case for this as the Brahms set to own for those who want just one, especially for those who aren't concerned with audio quality. There is much to sink one's teeth into here – over a lifetime.

Belisario is, quite simply, one of Donizetti’s finest achievements. Dating from the high watermark of Donizetti’s maturity, with its premiere in 1836 (the year after the debut of Maria Stuarda in Milan and Lucia di Lammermoor in Naples), Belisario proved a triumph on stages throughout the 19th century. Yet, incredibly, it is little known today. The libretto, by Salvadore Cammarano (who collaborated with Donizetti on Lucia di Lammermoor), tells the moving and typically complicated story of the 6th century Byzantine general. Falsely accused by his wife, Antonina, of killing their son, he was blinded and exiled as his punishment. Only the recognition by his daughter, Irene, that her father’s former captive, Alamiro, was her long-lost brother restores Belisario’s reputation; tragically, too late to save his life.

Valentin Silvestrov’s elusive post-modern style is rich in nostalgia for the lost music of a barely remembered past filled with beauty and spiritual aspiration. "Ode to a Nightingale is a masterly response to Keats’ unsentimental reflection on human mortality, contrasting with the beauty and affecting intimacy of the Cantata No. 4 and the resonant emotional world of its companion piece, the Concertino. Starkness set against elegiac melancholy are the shared features of Moments of Poetry and Music and the Seventh Symphony—an embodiment of Silvestrov’s dual musical nature of anguish and tenderness.

György Solti has come in for his share of hard knocks as a Mahler interpreter, and no one will pretend that he has the same sort of intuitive empathy for this music that Leonard Bernstein has. But he does have the Chicago Symphony Orchestra–no mean advantage–and many of these performances have come up sounding rather well. London also has been smart to include his first (and better) performance of the Fifth, and he generally does quite well by Symphonies Nos. 2, 6, 7, 8, and 9 as well.