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The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge, Andrew Nethsingha – Locus Iste (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:49 minutes | 1,23 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Signum Records
The composers whose music is featured on the present album lived and worked in Czechoslovakia between the two world wars, and their fates were afflicted by the monstrous Nazi regime. Viktor Ullmann, who before WWII held the post of Kapellmeister at the New German Theatre, wrote Quartet no.3 while he was detained at the Theresienstadt ghetto-camp. Hans Krása completed the Theme and Variations in 1936, yet he only saw it performed in Theresienstadt, along with his children’s opera Brundibár. Erwin Schulhoff’s Five Pieces reveal his zest for rhythm and dance, as well as his evidently having been inspired by the music of the Viennese salons, Italy and Spain. Pavel Haas’s Quartet no.2, dating from 1925, serves as vivid proof of the claim that the composer was the most gifted pupil of Leoš Janáček.
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Simone Lamsma, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, James Gaffigan, Reinbert de Leeuw – Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 77; Gubaidulina: In tempus praesens (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/352,8 kHz | Time – 01:13:19 minutes | 2,99 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Challenge Records / Northstar Recordings
The structure of Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto is particularly original, with a sequence of four movements – slow, fast, slow, fast – entitled Nocturne, Scherzo, Passacaglia and Burlesque. The opening movement (Nocturne) is a beautiful song, blossoming from a single melodic fragment. The Scherzo is biting and dazzlingly virtuosic, like a carousel gone wild. The ensuing Passacaglia is, quite simply, the pinnacle of this concerto; a masterpiece – mature, elegiac and highly lyrical. The passacaglia theme is repeated nine times with contrapuntal elaborations. This is followed by a large-scale cadenza that forms a bridge to the finale. The concerto closes with a Burlesque, in which the theme from the Passacaglia has one final, piercing reappearance.
Shortly after the premiere of Gubaidulina’s Offertorium (1981), the Swiss patron of the arts Paul Sacher asked her to compose a further violin concerto for the German soloist Anne-Sophie Mutter, but nothing came of this due to lack of time. It was only in 2007, eight years after Sacher’s death, that Gubaidulina completed In tempus praesens, which was given its première by Mutter at the Lucerne Festival. It is a work of extreme contrasts in which very deep, infernal passages are juxtaposed with extremely high, celestial episodes. Much more so than Offertorium, In tempus praesens is a spectacular work for the violinist, who plays virtually from start to finish and barely has a chance to pause for breath. The virtuosity demanded by the work is never an end in itself.
Pizzicato on Lamsa’s first release on Challenge Classics (CC 72677): “The surround recording from Challenge Classics stands out due to especially brilliant and powerful interpretations and a finely coordinated dialogue between the instruments. This is perfect harmony.”
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Sinfonia Grange au Lac, Esa-Pekka Salonen – Beethoven: Symphony No.3 ‘Eroica” & Strauss: Metamorphosen (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:15:18 minutes | 782 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
This live recording of Strauss’s Metamorphosen and Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony marks the birth on record of the ‘Sinfonia Grange au Lac’, an orchestra created in July 2018 on the occasion of the Rencontres Musicales d’Évian, the prestigious festival created by Mstislav Rostropovich in 1985 and revived since 2014. A musical ambassador intended to promote the excellence of its parent festival worldwide, the Sinfonia Grange au Lac consists of musicians from leading European orchestras (in Amsterdam, Berlin, Frankfurt, Leipzig, London, Lucerne, Munich, Paris, Salzburg, Valencia and Vienna) as well as existing groups such as the Trio Karénine and the Quatuor Ébène. And it was a stroke of genius to manage to secure the services of Esa-Pekka Salonen. The brilliant Finn became a passionate supporter of the project, checking the list of members one by one. He told Diapason magazine: ‘Our work together made me understand what guided Claudio Abbado when he created the Lucerne Festival Orchestra: the pleasure of working with handpicked musicians and making music with great freshness.’
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Saleem Ashkar – Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Nos. 3, 5, 14 “Moonlight” & 30 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:22:48 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Decca
Saleem Ashkar made his New York Carnegie Hall debut at the age of 22 and has since worked with many of the World’s leading orchestras including the Vienna Philharmonic, La Scala Philharmonic, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, London Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus, NDR Hamburg, DSO RSB and Konzerthaus orchestras in Berlin, Maggio Musicale Firenze, Santa Cecilia Rome, Mariinsky Orchestra St. Petersburg, and Danish Radio Orchestra among others.
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Isabel Bayrakdarian, Orchestre symphonique de Laval, Alain Trudel – Respighi: Il tramonto (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:26 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ATMA Classique
Canadian star soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian is the featured soloist in this recording by the Orchestre symphonique de Laval—its first with current artistic director and principal conductor Alain Trudel. The album is devoted to orchestral works by Ottorino Respighi. Known for her sparkling stage presence and astonishing musicality, Bayrakdarian joins the orchestra for Respighi’s setting of the lyric poem Il tramonto (The Sunset).
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Nils Monkemeyer – Anájikon (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 50:44 minutes | 465 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series
“Anajikon”, the second ECM album after “Music for piano and string quartet”, by Athens-born and Munich-based Konstantia Gourzi, incorporates her chamber and orchestral music of the past decade. The composer also conducts the Lucerne Academy Orchestra here: “I see composing and conducting as a whole, as an inseparable relationship”, she says.
Gourzi is particularly concerned with making connections between the arts, which also relates to the question of her own artistic identity and the influence of her origins. In Gourzi’s sound language, elements of different musical traditions repeatedly merge, and East and West enter into a dialogue.
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Midori – Beethoven: Violin Concerto & Romances Nos 1 & 2 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:08 minutes | 1006 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
The violinist Midori has been a celebrated performer for more than 35 years, this recording of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, complemented by his two Romances for violin and orchestra, marks the composer’s 250th birthday in December 2020. Midori plays with the Lucerne Festival Strings in a recording made in Switzerland shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic had caused the cancellation of a planned concert performance and international tour. “Beethoven guided my colleagues and me,” says Midori, “his work focusing and inspiring us, our concentrations heightened, enveloped together in our musical efforts … I am reminded that he was a man of strong beliefs … who took firm stands on many major issues of his day … Beethoven’s determination still provides a model for humankind.”
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Bennewitz Quartet – Haydn: String Quartets Op. 17/5, 33/2, 54/2 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:42:24 minutes | 822 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Supraphon a.s.
During the 18th century, the string quartet gained the position of the most valued and most challenging chamber music genre, and gradually became a vehicle for conveying the composer’s personal feelings. Joseph Haydn played a key role in forging the quartet’s classical form. He created almost 70 string quartets, which, along with the symphonies, constitute the largest, as well as the most significant, part of his oeuvre. Haydn accorded them the form that would serve as the model for Mozart, Beethoven and later composers. Just as fascinating as the quantity is his quartets’ sheer diversity, with each of them being singular, featuring novel (often humorous) ideas, experiments, as well as constant seeking of new possibilities of expression. The three quartets included on the present album chart the development of Haydn’s musical idiom, from Op. 17 (1771), which he wrote at the age of 40, through Op. 33, dubbed “Gli Scherzi” (1781, dedicated to the Grand Duke of Russia Pavel Petrovich, the future Tsar Paul I), to the formally experimental pieces making up Op. 54 (1788). The Bennewitz Quartet have given numerous concerts worldwide, including at the most prestigious venues (Wigmore Hall in London, Musikverein in Vienna, Konzerthaus in Berlin, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, concert halls in New York, Seoul, etc.) and such renowned festivals as the Salzburger Festspiele, Lucerne Festival and Rheingau Musik Festival. At many of them, they have performed quartets by Haydn, one of their favourite composers, whose music they endow with a transparent sound, revealing their levity and sense for detail.
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Maxim Vengerov – Gateways. Chen – Kreisler – Rachmaninov (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:18 minutes | 1,30 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
The Shanghai Symphony Orchestra (SSO), Asia’s oldest symphony orchestra, celebrates its 140th anniversary with a new album, Gateways, to be released June 28 via Deutsche Grammophon/Universal Music Canada, the country’s leading music company. Joined the SSO on the album and on tour is Music Director and conductor Long Yu, who celebrates his 10th season with the Orchestra.
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Gottlieb Wallisch and Piatti Quartet – Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 12, 13 & 14, The Chamber Version (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:09:11 minutes | 2,43 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Linn Records
The Quartet’s debut recording features master Mozartian Gottlieb Wallisch in a stunning performance of his fellow Austrian’s own rarely-heard chamber orchestrations in ‘Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 12, 13 & 14’. In contrast to the orchestral version the ensemble strikingly enhances the intricacies of the string writing and encourages immediate interaction among the five musicians.
Wallisch and the Piatti Quartet performed this repertoire to packed audiences at various venues and festivals across the UK in the summer and autumn of 2011.
In 2012 the Piatti Quartet (Charlotte Scott 1st violin, Michael Trainor 2nd violin, David Wigram viola, Jessie Ann Richardson cello) were chosen for the UK-wide ‘Future Classics Classical Tour’ designed to promote the ‘stars of tomorrow’.
The Quartet has performed at both the Newbury Spring Festival and the Bath International Festivals plus major UK venues UK including the Purcell room, Conway Hall, St Georges (Bristol), The Queens Hall (Edinburgh) and has made numerous appearances live on BBC Radio 3.
Named a Steinway Artist in 2012, Gottlieb Wallisch is a competition prize-winner and a respected artist in the Viennese piano tradition.
Wallisch has performed with many leading orchestras including the Vienna Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and BBC National Orchestra of Wales and has appeared at leading festivals and in major concert halls including the Salzburg Festival, Lucerne Festival, Klavierfestival Ruhr, Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Tonhalle Zurich, Musikhalle Hamburg and Singapore Arts Festival amongst others.
Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Performer: Gottlieb Wallisch
Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, James Gaffigan – Rihm: Symphonie “Nähe fern” (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 47:33 minutes | 821 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
If every work of art can be understood as the docile or rebellious descendant of dozens, indeed hundreds of other works of art, the immense majority of Wolfgang Rihm’s compositions fully assume the heritage of the past. This is especially true of ‘Nähe fern’, whose title (‘Distant proximity’) refers to his experience of the four symphonies of Brahms. Each of these pieces for orchestra is a homage profoundly linked with its model, yet at the same time constantly moves away from it. Commissioned by the Lucerne Sinfonieorchester ‘Nähe fern’ was premiered at the Lucerne Festival on 20th August 2012.
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Francesco Piemontesi – Liszt: Années de pèlerinage I, S. 160 “Suisse” & Légende No. 2 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:18 minutes | 886 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Orfeo
Francesco Piemontesi i s a pianist of exceptional refinement of expression, which is allied to a consummate technical skill. Widely renowned for his interpretation of Mozart and the early Romantic repertoire, Piemontesi’s pianism and sensibility has a close affinity too with the later 19th century and 20th century repertoire of Brahms, Liszt, Dvořák, Ravel, Debussy, Bartok and beyond. Of one of his great teachers and mentors, Alfred Brendel, Piemontesi says that Brendel taught him “to love the detail of things”.
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Kian Soltani, Aaron Pilsan – Home (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:44 minutes | 1,33 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
No, no, we’re not going to pretend that the repertoire chosen by the Austrian-Persian (the nationality stated on his website… born in 1992) cellist Kian Soltani and the Austrian pianist Aaron Pilsan is completely original: Schubert’s “Arpeggione” Sonata, recorded a thousand and one times, and Schumann’s Fantasiestücke form the backbone of the record. But what’s really remarkable here is Soltani’s career: the soloist made his big international breakthrough in 2011 at the age of 19, with triumphant débuts at the Vienna Musikverein, and then First Prize at the International Paulo Cello Competition in Helsinki in 2013. Shortly thereafter he joined Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, firstly as the first solo cellist, and then as one of the soloists in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto and Strauss’s Don Quixote still with Barenboim. Concerts followed in Berlin, the Salzburg and Lucerne festivals, and the BBC Proms, as a soloist or in a chamber ensemble. A brilliant career, off to a flying start. The album listing finds a touch of originality at the end, with Persian Folklore by the Iranian composer Reza Vali (b. 1952), a piece of writing inspired by Kodály’s own translations of popular Hungarian music into classical language.
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Laterna Magica – Transcriptions of Bach works (Bonus Track Version) (Bonus Track Version) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:03 minutes | 1,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Paraty
Laterna Magica (The Magic Lantern) is an orchestral composition by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. The work was commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic and the Lucerne Festival. Its world premiere was given by the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Simon Rattle at the Berliner Philharmonie on August 28, 2009
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Wilhelm Furtwängler, Philharmonia Orchestra – Beethoven Symphony No. 9 “Choral” in D minor, Op.125 (1954/2010)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:16:11 minutes | 781 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Pristine Classical
XR Remastering from a radio broadcast by Sottens Beromünster and Monte Ceneri. Recorded live at Lucerne Festival in Switzerland on August 22, 1954.
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