Studio Masters

Sviatoslav Richter Live at Carnegie Hall, October 19, 1960 – All Beethoven Program (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:48:31 minutes | 0,98 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: Q0buz | Front Cover | ©  Columbia Records
Recorded: Carnegie Hall, October 19, 1960

Sony Classcial celebrates the art of Sviatoslav Richter (1995-1997) – one of the 20th century’s greatest pianists – with the first-ever release of his complete Columbia Masterworks and RCA Victor live and studio recordings in an 18 CD original jacket edition, underneath Richter’s legendary five October 1960 Carnegie Hall recitals.
Richter was already a legend in his native Soviet Union when he concertized in the West for the first time in 1960. Richter’s American tour that year not only consolidated the pianist’s international reputation, but also resulted the memorable recordings gathered together in this collection.

Richter’s five October 1960 Carnegie Hall recitals showcased the breadth of his repertoire from Haydn and Beethoven to Debussy and Rachmaninoff, with one program completely devoted to Prokofiev, a composer with whom Richter worked closely. Indeed, Richter’s success inspired Arthur Rubinstein’s ten-concert Carnegie Hall marathon the following season. The series yielded nine LPs, including two that only were released in Japan. Long treasured as rare collectors’ items, they appear here for the first time on CD mastered from the original analogue tapes.

Along with the December 26th Carnegie Hall recital brought out by RCA in 2001 as Richter reDiscovered, Richter’s December 28th Newark Mosque Theater recital receives its first integral release. The pianist’s 1960 RCA studio solo and concerto sessions, too, are justly acclaimed, and feature highly distinctive accounts of Brahms’s Second Concerto, Beethoven’s First Concerto, and three Beethoven sonatas.
Two RCA discs from 1988 concerts return to the catalog, revealing the veteran pianist’s undiminished power and concentration in Brahms’ early C major Piano Sonata, selections by Liszt, Etudes from Chopin’s Op. 10, plus a new recording of the Beethoven First Concerto. As a bonus, three Schubert works released in a 1977 Aldeburgh Festival anthology make their CD debut.

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Igor Stravinsky – Pulcinella Suite; Apollon musagete; Concerto in D for strings – Tapiola Sinfonietta, Masaaki Suzuki (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96kHz | Time – 01:04:55 minutes | 1,08 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: eClassical | Digital Booklet | ©  BIS Records
Recorded: April 2015 at the Tapiola Concert Hall, Finland

Masaaki Suzuki is firmly established as a leading authority on the works of Bach, both in his capacity as director of the Bach Collegium Japan and as an organist and harpsichordist. In recent years he has also been appearing in front of eminent orchestras worldwide, however, conducting repertoire as diverse as Britten, Fauré or Mahler. For his first recording of 20th century repertoire, Suzuki has chosen to collaborate with the acclaimed Tapiola Sinfonietta in an all-Stravinsky programme. The disc begins with the music for Pulcinella – here in the concert suite devised by the composer – which Stravinsky later described as ‘the epiphany through which the whole of my later work became possible’. Pulcinella was commissioned in 1919 by the Ballets Russes, for which Stravinsky had already written The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. For this adaptation of an early eighteenth-century commedia dell’arte libretto, he based his score on existing music, initially ascribed to Pergolesi although material by other baroque composers is also included. Stravinsky’s approach is never that of a faithful transcriber, however: in Pulcinella the material is slanted harmonically, rhythmically and texturally in a manner reminiscent of cubism – and it was indeed Picasso who provided the decor and costumes for the ballet’s first performance. The neoclassical (or neobaroque) spirit remained a vital part of Stravinsky’s compositional armoury for a long time, and also informs the other two works presented here. The formal design of Concerto in D, composed some 25 years after Pulcinella, pays homage to the baroque concerti grossi of Vivaldi and Bach, while the score for the ballet Apollon musagète (also known as Apollo) contains references to French music from the 17th- and 18th-century – but there are also echoes of Tchaikovskian lushness in the work which is richly scored for a string orchestra which is often subdivided, and with many distinctions between solo and tutti lines.

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Alexander Scriabin – Symphony 1 & 4 – Russian National Orchestra, Mikhail Pletnev (2015)
DSD64 (.dsf) 1 bit/2,8 MHz MHz | Time – 01:16:40 minutes | 3,03 GB
or FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 00:39:42 minutes | 2,38 GB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Digital Booklet | © Pentatone Music B.V.
Genre: Classical | Recorded: DZZ Studio 5 in Moscow, Russia in March 2014. Organ has been recorded at the St. Ludwig-Kirche in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, Germany

The Russian National Orchestra wishes to thank Ann and Gordon Getty and the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation for their support of this recording.

In 1899, Scriabin began writing his most ambitious composition to date: the First Symphony. The work still reflects the influence of the traditional four-movement formal scheme. The first movement, in sonata form (Allegro dramatico), is followed by a slow movement (Lento), a scherzo (Vivace) and an Allegro, again in sonata form. But Scriabin also framed the symphony with an introductory movement in a slow tempo and a monumental choral finale with a text of his own composition, and it is this movement that can be said to occupy the work’s interpretational centre of gravity. The First Symphony documents a search for salvation and unification, both of which can only be found in art: “May your mighty and free spirit reign all-powerfully on earth; and humanity, lifted up by you, perform a noble deed. Come all nations of the world and let us sing praises to art!”

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Robert Schumann – Das Paradies und die Peri – London Symphony Chorus & Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle (2015)
DSD64 (.dsf) 1 bit/2,82 MHz | Time – 01:27:50 minutes | 3,48 GB | Genre: Classical
Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Digital Booklet | © LSO Live
Recorded live in DSD 128fs, 11 January 2015 at the Barbican, London

In his debut recording on LSO Live, Sir Simon Rattle conducts a stunning performance of Schumann’s rarely recorded Das Paradies und die Peri featuring a superb line-up of soloists. Rattle is well-known for being a champion of this rarely-heard work, and yet this is the first audio recording he has made of it. Here it is brought to life by the LSO under his baton, and the starry line-up makes the best possible case for Schumann’s great oratorio. Sir Simon says of the piece, ‘It’s the great masterpiece you’ve never heard, and there aren’t many of those now…. This is just something else, a complete anomaly if you think about it. In Schumann’s life it was the most popular piece he ever wrote, it was performed endlessly. Every composer loved it. Wagner wrote how jealous he was that Schumann had done it and he’d stolen this subject that he wanted to do and how extraordinary it was… It was a playground for composers and the piece was extraordinary.’
Based on an episode from Thomas Moore’s epic poem Lalla Rookh, itself inspired by exotic, colourful tales taken from Persian mythology, Das Paradies und die Peri reflects the 19th-century craze for all thing Oriental. Completed in 1843, Schumann’s ‘secular oratorio’ tells how the Peri, a legendary creature, was expelled from paradise and follows her quest to redeem herself by giving the gift that is most dear to heaven. Writing about the work in a letter to a friend, Schumann said, ‘at the moment I’m involved in a large project, the largest I’ve yet undertaken – it’s not an opera – I believe it’s well-nigh a new genre for the concert hall.’ Conceived in three beautifully sequenced parts, it is unlike any oratorio of Schumann’s day. Sustained melodic invention is clear throughout, with Peri’s high C in the final forming a deftly timed climax. Soprano Sally Matthews gives a soaring performance as the Peri, showcasing Schumann’s imaginative and emotive vocal writing, while there are also superb supporting performances from Mark Padmore, Kate Royal, Andrew Staples and Florian Boesch.

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Robert Schumann – Cello Concerto, Piano Trio No.1 – Jean-Guihen Queyras, Isabelle Faust, Alexander Melnikov, Pablo Heras Casado, Freiburger Barockorchester (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96kHz  | Time – 54:50 minutes | 974 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: highresaudio.com | Digital Booklet | © Harmonia Mundi
Recorded: mai, août, septembre 2014, Teldex Studio, Berlin

This final instalment in our trilogy devoted to the complete concertos and trios of Schumann spotlights the cello of Jean-Guihen Queyras. The Cello Concerto, though energetically championed by Clara Schumann, suffered from delays in publication and was not premiered until after the composer’s death. Interpreted in the same poetic spirit as its two predecessors, this third volume concludes an adventure that has changed for ever the way we listen to Schumann.

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Itzhak Perlman plays Saint-Saens, Chausson & Ravel – Orchestre de Paris, Jean Martinon (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96kHz | Time – 00:46:08 minutes | 836 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: Q0buz | Digital Booklet | ©  Warner Classics
Recorded: Salle Wagram, Paris, 4 & 5 July 1974

Over the years, Itzhak Perlman has regularly enriched his recorded catalogue with works by French composers. As early as 1968, he set down his first versions of Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole and Ravel’s Tzigane (for RCA), as well as of Franck’s Sonata (for Decca). He later revisited the Symphonie espagnole, this time coupling it with Berlioz’s Rêverie et Caprice (DG, 1980). Next came Chausson’s Concert (1982, CBS), Saint-Saëns’s Third Concerto (DG, 1983) and, a few years later, Debussy’s Sonata and Ravel’s Trio (1994, Decca). In 1974, under the baton of Jean Martinon, he recorded four concertante works inspired by “exotic” music, but reclothed in westernised garb. Combining the concertante genre with the theme of foreign travel became very fashionable in France back in 1834, the year in which Berlioz’s Harold en Italie received its premiere. It appeared to be a recipe for success and other composers, such as Lalo, D’Indy, Chabrier, Saint-Saëns, Debussy and Ravel were to try their hand at it. Certain (non-French) musicologists have noted, slightly tongue-incheek, that French composers showed a particular talent for conjuring the musical atmosphere of places they had never actually visited… The works on this album would appear to back up that claim.

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Maurice Ravel – Complete Orchestral Works – Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich, Lionel Bringuier (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 04:02:27 minutes | 3.96 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: highresaudio.com | © Deutsche Grammophon
Recorded: Tonhalle, Zurich, 11/2014, 1, 4 & 9–11/2015, except for Piano Concertos (recorded at Tonhalle, Zurich, 4/2015), Tzigane & Fanfare (recorded at Tonhalle, Zurich, 11/2015)

On 8 April, Deutsche Grammophon is releasing a 4-album set of Ravel’s complete orchestral works and solo concertos, performed by the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich under the baton of Lionel Bringuier. The new set represents something of a rarity in its completeness and in having largely been recorded live. The soloists are pianist Yuja Wang and violinist Ray Chen, while this expansion of its CD repertoire with Ravel’s music marks the orchestra’s first recording project under Lionel Bringuier. The choice of composer was a carefully-considered artistic decision, according to the conductor: “For my first recordings with the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich I’ve opted for Ravel. We all know his Daphnis et Chloé, Boléro and La Valse. A complete cycle allows us to get to know some lesser-known works as well.” This is Deutsche Grammophon’s first collaboration with the renowned Zurich ensemble.

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