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Adam Walker, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra & Edward Gardner – Nielsen: Flute Concerto, Symphony No. 3, Pan and Syrinx (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:52 minutes | 756 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos Records
For this second instalment in their Nielsen cycle, Edward Gardner and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra are joined by the flautist Adam Walker for a programme that combines the Flute Concerto, the Third Symphony, and the tone poem Pan and Syrinx. Nielsen began work on the Third Symphony in 1910, some seven years after he had completed his second symphony ‘The Four Temperaments’, and the work was premièred in Copenhagen in 1912. In his album note, Paul Griffiths describes the work’s eventual title, ‘Sinfonia espansiva’ as a fifth temperament – Joviality. In the second movement, uniquely in his symphonic output, Nielsen calls for (wordless) voices – solo soprano and baritone. It was also the first of his symphonies to be commercially released on record – Erik Tuxen conducting the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Composed in 1926, the Flute Concerto is a late work, and demonstrates Nielsen’s stylistic evolution towards the new modernism. The soloist engages in repeated interactions with other instruments within the orchestra, most notably the clarinet and the bass trombone. Pan and Syrinx dates from 1918, and is based on the ancient legend which tells how the amorous god Pan invented the pan flute whilst pursuing the nymph Syrinx.
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Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrew Litton – Prokofiev: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 7 (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:21:01 minutes | 1,33 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS
There is nothing unusual about a composer returning to a major work in order to make revisions, but among such works Sergei Prokofiev’s Fourth Symphony is a unique case in that it exists in two such different versions that the composer considered them quite separate works and gave each its own opus number. Composed in 1929–30, the first version, Op. 47, met with lukewarm response at its Boston and European premières as well as at performances given before Soviet audiences following Prokofiev’s final return to Russia in 1936. In 1947 Prokofiev decided to return to the symphony, producing not so much a revision as a complete reworking of the original material. The differences between the versions are too many to detail, but the main point is that the 1947 version, given the opus number 112, is a much bigger and more ambitious score. Some four years later Prokofiev began work on what would become his last major work, Symphony No. 7 in C sharp minor. The composer announced that he aimed at simplicity and was writing ‘a symphony for children’, a statement that was possibly influenced by the fact that he in 1948 had been accused for ‘formalism’ by the Soviet authorities. In any case, there is nothing childish – or simple – about the work. After the first performance, Prokofiev was persuaded into change the ending, adding a more up-beat and optimistic twenty-bar alternative to the original coda. Both endings are included on the present recording, giving listeners the opportunity to judge the very different effect each makes. The disc is the third instalment in a Prokofiev cycle from Andrew Litton and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, with previous discs receiving warm acclaim from, for instance, Fanfare (‘One of the best performances of the Fifth that I have ever heard…’) and the German website Klassik-Heute, which selected the recording of Symphony No. 6 as one of its recommended releases.
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Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrew Litton – Prokofiev: The Symphonies (5xSACD Boxset) (2020/2021)
SACD Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 / 5.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 06:28:56 minutes | Full Scans included | 17,62 GB
Genre: Classical | Publisher (label): BIS Records
Celebrating the 130th anniversary of Sergei Prokofiev (1891 – 1953), the present box set brings together recordings of his seven symphonies made by Andrew Litton and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra between 2012 and 2017. The symphonies appear with their original couplings, including the popular suites from the film score to Lieutenant Kijé and the ballet The Love for Three Oranges. As an added bonus, the set includes the team’s very first recording for BIS: an innovative and highly praised version of Prokofiev’s three suites from Romeo and Juliet, with the 20 movements reordered to follow the ballet score.
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Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner – Grieg: Symphonic Dances (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:48 minutes | 1019 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
Grieg’s four Symphonic Dances are a late work, completed in 1898. Grieg takes his inspiration (as in so much of his output) from traditional Norwegian folk tunes, and the four movements together deliver a symphonic unity in their overall effect. Both Bergliot and Before a Southern Convent are written on texts by Grieg’s good friend the author Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, who was also a theatre manager in Oslo. Bjørnson is considered one of the four great Norwegian authors alongside Ibsen, Lie, and Kielland, received the 1903 Nobel Prize for literature, and wrote the words for the Norwegian national anthem. Bergliot – a declamation with orchestra – tells the story of a dramatic episode involving the chieftain Einar Tambarskjelve and his son Eindride, killed by King Harald Hårdråde. Before a Southern Convent is a more traditional setting – requiring two vocal soloists, female choir, and orchestra rather than the narrator of Bergliot – of the story of the folk-hero and barbarian Arnljot Gelline. In the course of his wild escapades, he killed a chieftain, but allowed the chieftain’s daughter, Ingigerd, to live. This daughter left the homestead and wandered southwards in poverty – through Europe. At long last she arrived at a convent which granted her admittance. The album is completed by the Funeral March for Rikard Nordraak – a friend of Grieg’s, who died of tuberculosis in 1866. Grieg conceived it first for solo piano, but whilst travelling by train to Bergen to attend Grieg’s funeral, Johan Halvorsen made the orchestral arrangement heard in this recording.
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Sir Mark Elder, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Roderick Williams – Delius: A Mass of Life (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:34:21 minutes | 2,96 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Lawo Classics
Roderick Williams heads up the cast for this new recording of Delius’ A Mass of Life with the Bergen Philharmonic, conducted by Sir Mark Elder. Accompanied by soloists Gemma Summerfield, Claudia Huckle and Bror Magnus Todenes, the Bergen Philharmonic Choir and Edvard Grieg Kor join Collegium Musicum Choir to complete the tour de force needed to perform and record this monumental work.
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Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Neeme Järvi – Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker, Op. 71 – Ballet féerique in Two Acts (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:24:32 minutes | 1,39 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
This is the concluding recording in Neeme Järvi’s series with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra devoted to Tchaikovsky’s three great ballets. This complete, uncut version of The Nutcracker follows The Sleeping Beauty (CHSA 5113(2)) and Swan Lake (CHSA 5124 (2)), both of which have been much awarded.
The Nutcracker draws its influences from both Hoffmann’s and Dumas’s tales of the same name, and makes delightful use of ‘le joli’, i.e. ‘the pretty’, in music – vivacious themes decked out in ingenious orchestration – already mastered by Léo Delibes in Coppélia.
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Tora Augestad, Diego Lucchesi, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra & Edward Gardner – Henrik Hellstenius: Past & Presence (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:11 minutes | 1,02 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Lawo Classics
Henrik Hellstenius’s intense yet unassuming exploration of the interacting worlds of sound and time has spanned more than three decades. That hunger for discovery is perhaps the single most unifying feature across his life and work. It was already forming rapidly in his youth, from his teenage years spent listening to Keith Jarrett and Jan Garbarek to his studies of spectral music with Gerard Grisey in Paris.
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Stuart Skelton, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra & Edward Gardner – Britten – Peter Grimes, Op. 33 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:18:17 minutes | 2,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
‘The burly Aussie tenor is now even more identified with this ill-fated protagonist than Peter Pears, the first Grimes. And everywhere Skelton has sung the part, whether at English National Opera, the Proms, the Edinburgh festival or now on this international tour of a concert staging mounted by the Bergen Philharmonic, the conductor has been Edward Gardner. Theirs is one of the great musical partnerships, and they continue to find compelling new depths in this tragic masterpiece.’ – Richard Morrison (The Times)
This studio recording was made following the acclaimed production at Grieghallen, in Bergen, in 2019 (repeated in Oslo and London and reviewed above). Luxuriant playing from the Bergen Philharmonic and a stellar cast under the assured direction of Edward Gardner make this a recording to treasure.
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Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Dejan Lazić & Jan Willem de Vriend – Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 23 & 14 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:06 minutes | 938 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Challenge Classics
Dejan Lazić: The concept behind our present undertaking, the Mozart Piano Concertos CD-trilogy, is to bring together concertos of Mozart’s miscellaneous composing and performing periods, styles, techniques, and instrumentations side by side, thus to deeply examine and throughout his travels more closely explore his many creative phases within this genre. That is linked further with an encore-like single work on each CD, yet the additional connecting link between these initially planned six piano concertos is the Cadenzas & Lead-ins which I have composed myself.
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Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra & John Storgårds – Per Nørgård: Orchestral Works (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 54:00 minutes | 939 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Celebrating his 90th birthday in 2022, Per Nørgård is undoubtedly one of the most important Danish composers since Nielsen. His important production that covers all genres is a highly personal travel document based on his endless incursions through the sonic labyrinths of this world.
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Truls Mørk, Louis Lortie, Hélène Mercier, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Neemi Järvi – Saint-Saëns: Cello Concertos Nos. 1 & 2; The Carnival of the Animals; Africa; Wedding-cake (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:15:26 minutes | 1,23 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos Records
The Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Neeme Jrvi present this unusual collection of popular works by Saint-Sans, for orchestra and piano or cello.
Truls Mrk, this season Artist in Residence with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, is the soloist in the two contrasted cello concertos. His ‘seemingly flawless technical command’ is tested in the suave, expressive, famous No. 1 as well as in the many taxing solo passages, huge leaps, and double-stopping flourishes of No. 2.
The indefatigable duo Louis Lortie and Hlne Mercier join in the posthumously published Carnival of the Animals, after a highly successful recording of Concertos by Poulenc with Edward Gardner, Disc of the Week in The Sunday Times. They offer the original version, which features a glass harmonica (normally substituted by a glockenspiel). Louis Lortie is also the soloist in the entertaining fantasia Africa, which incorporates folk tunes of the different countries in which it was composed and which is brought off with consummate zest, as well as in the most characteristic and probably challenging of the composer’s keyboard pieces, the Caprice-Valse Wedding-cake, written for the second wedding of the composer’s virtuosic pianist friend Caroline Montigny-Rmaury.
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James Ehnes, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner – Nielsen Violin: Concerto, Symphony No. 4 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:51 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
Nielsen’s epic Violin Concerto was premiered in Copenhagen in February 1912, by violinist Peder Moller. Nominally the work is set in two movements; both open with a slow section and move to a faster one. Whilst unusual, this could be seen as a more usual fast – slow – fast three movement form, but with an extensive slow introduction to the first movement. The music moves quickly from one idea to the next, and overall has a bold, playful and optimistic feel. In stark contrast, although written only a few years later, the fourth symphony is more cohesive and unified as a work. Written against the background of the first world war, the work is a celebration of life itself. Just before the premier in 1916, Nielsen described it as: ‘Music is Life, and, like it, inextinguishable.’ Composed in the usual four movement form, each movement continues from the last without a break. The final movement features two sets of timpani battling each other across the orchestra.
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Mari Eriksmoen, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner – Britten: Les Illuminations – Canteloube: Chants d’Auvergne (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:15 minutes | 1,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
Following successful appearances at the Opéra-comique, in Paris, Grand Théâtre de Genève, Oper Frankfurt, Komische Oper Berlin, and Teatro alla Scala, in Milan, the Norwegian soprano Mari Eriksmoen joins the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Edward Gardner for a interesting album of orchestral songs, coupling Britten’s Les Illuminations and Four French Songs with a selection of Canteloube’s inimitable Chants d’Auvergne. Eriksmoen spent a year studying in Paris, and proves an effective and natural singer in the French language. As she mentions in her programme note: “It is highly demanding to sing in French when it is not one’s native tongue, but I have always felt at home when singing in French and nurture an emotional attachment to the French language”.
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Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra & Thomas Dausgaard – Bruckner – Symphony No. 4 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:12 minutes | 1001 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
After acclaimed recordings of the Third (‘Dausgaard… makes the music sound vital and even revolutionary’, Fanfare) and Sixth (‘This persuasively played work could be no better served’, MusicWeb International), Thomas Dausgaard and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra now present Anton Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, ‘Romantic’ in its second version (1878-1880), the one with which this work has become widely known.
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