Symphony x

The Epiphany, the debut CD from the symphonic metal band is a celestial blend of enigmatic lyrical threads and layered neoclassical metal. While traces of Hendrix, Symphony X and J.S. Bach can be detected throughout the 10-track CD, X Opus has shaped a dense musical landscape pockmarked by major plateaus and minor gullies. The combination of doomy chord changes, bombastic compositional grandness, the flavor of Middle Eastern scales, and lyrical themes, based on the redemptive nature of faith, is enough to send chills up and down your spine.

Nobody is better suited to undertake such a challenge than Valery Gergiev and his Mariinsky Orchestra. Over a period of a year all 15 Symphonies and 6 Concertos have been recorded at Salle Pleyel in Paris. What an adventure for the artists and the big production team! Never before in the history of television has something like this been undertaken including the very first “Ring” for television at Bayreuth…

The programme Stravinsky selected for his Royal Festival Hall concert with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in December 1958 was unusually challenging both for the players and the audience. It offered in essence a retrospective of his life’s work, opening with his most recent score Agon, which must have surprised many people with its idiosyncratic use of serial techniques, and then worked backwards in time to conclude with the much safer Firebird Suite.

Günter Wand at the BBC Proms: Anton Bruckner - Symphony No. 5
BBC Symphony Orchestra - Günter Wand
NTSC, MPEG-2 720 x 480, 4:3 | PCM Stereo, 48.0 KHz | 4.43 Gb (DVD5)
Label/Cat#: ica CLASSICS # ICAD 5049 | Country/Year: Germany 2011 | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic, Concert Video

Günter Wand's Indian summer is surprisingly well documented on DVD. This Bruckner 5 from the Proms follows similar video releases of the 6 th, 8 th and 9 th Symphonies from the same period with the NDR Sinfonieorchester. Wand's conducting technique, and the aura that he projects from the podium, make each of these well worth watching. Even from audio-only recordings, it is clear that Wand was a living embodiment of Bruckner's art. That impression is all the stronger for actually seeing him at work…

In this installment in 'an ongoing Shostakovich survey that has rightly won him three Grammy Awards' (New York Times), Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra bookend the composer's brilliant, often turbulent symphonic career. Nearly half a century lies between Shostakovich's triumphant debut with the 'First', premiered before his 20th birthday, and the 'Fifteenth', an inventory of influences written under the shadow of his own mortality. Penned just two years earlier, the 'Fourteenth' is a symphonic song cycle, and the Chamber Symphony is a skillful adaptation of that tragic masterpiece, the Eighth String Quartet.