François-Xavier Roth

Gürzenich-Orchester Köln & François-Xavier Roth – Bruckner: Symphony No. 4 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:09:36 minutes | 2,33 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Myrios Classics

After the tremendous success of the 7th Symphony, François-Xavier Roth and the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln continue their Bruckner complete symphonies cycle. The “Romantic”, as Anton Bruckner himself entitles his 4th Symphony, was composed in 1874 in the midst of a period of personal defeat. And he immediately doubted his work, describing some parts as “unplayable” and finding “the instrumentation here and there overloaded and too turbulent”. It was only years later, after numerous revisions, that the Fourth was premiered and Bruckner achieved the success he had longed for with the public of the time.

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Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, François-Xavier Roth – Mahler: Symphony No. 5 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:10:45 minutes | 624 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Immortalized in Luchino Visconti’s cinematic masterpiece Death in Venice, Mahler’s Symphony No.5, with its unforgettable Adagietto, needs little introduction. The composer himself led its premiere some 113 years ago, conducting the Gürzenich Orchestra of Cologne. For this recording, the current members of the very same ensemble are led by their newly appointed General Music Director, François-Xavier Roth.

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Gürzenich-Orchester Köln & François-Xavier Roth – Mahler: Symphony No. 3 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:33:26 minutes | 875 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

The premiere of Mahler’s Third Symphony took place in June 1902 in Krefeld (not far from Düsseldorf), but it was indeed the Gürzenich Orchestra of Cologne which gave that first performance… greeted with acclaim – this was not always the composer’s experience with his masterpieces. Originally conceived as a hymn to Nature, in which the inert chaos of the opening movement is gradually left behind, the work calls for enormous forces (large orchestra, women’s choir, boys’ choir, and contralto soloist) and at each hearing leaves an unforgettable impression on the audience. Such was the case in October 2018, when François-Xavier Roth led the esteemed successors of the work’s first interpreters in this latest Mahler adventure.

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Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, François-Xavier Roth – Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 56:42 minutes | 1,78 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Myrios Classics

Loss, death, and redemption: Anton Bruckner went through a whirlwind of emotions during the two years in which he wrote the Seventh Symphony. The worst theater fire in history left hundreds dead practically next door to his Vienna apartment; Bruckner would have been one of the victims, had he not decided at the last minute to stay at home instead of going to the opera. He still feared that the flames might engulf his apartment and his manuscripts. As he wrote shortly thereafter to a friend: “The inexpressible misery of so many souls makes the blood run cold!” In the Seventh Symphony, Bruckner incorporated all those unsettling impressions, as well as the mourning over the death of Richard Wagner, his admired “ideal.” The work, however, is by no means somber; it’s four movements trace an unswerving path toward redemption. The symphony’s premiere in 1884 in Leipzig was a resounding success and catapulted Bruckner for many years to the forefront of the European music scene. Leading up to the 200th anniversary of Bruckner’s birth in 2024, François-Xavier Roth and the Gürzenich Orchestra will release the Austrian composer’s complete symphonies in new recordings: the cycle is inaugurated on this recording with the Seventh Symphony. François-Xavier Roth’s approach to Bruckner is lean and light-footed; the sonority remains transparent at all times. He calls Bruckner “a trailblazer of Modernism.” Roth creates an unforgettable musical experience with the Gürzenich Orchestra, which has been closely associated with Bruckner’s symphonic output for well over a century. These recordings of acclaimed live concerts from the Cologne Philharmonie are all processed in audiophile high-resolution DXD technique.
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