Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, François-Xavier Roth – Bruckner: Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, WAB 109 (Original Version) (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 53:00 minutes | 1,74 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Myrios Classics
Anton Bruckner dedicates his 9th Symphony to “Dear God”, knowing full well that his heart disease will kill him.
When he died in October 1896, the news of his death was merely a marginal note in the Viennese newspaper Neue Freie Presse. However, everyone can see from it that his estate contains “sketches for the fourth movement of his ninth symphony”, of which only three movements had been completed. The next day, with the room still unsealed, the souvenir hunters arrive. “Authorised and unauthorised persons” descend on the papers “like vultures”, according to Bruckner’s horrified doctor. Numerous manuscripts are stolen. When the rest is sifted through six days later, there are still 75 score sheets of the Finale of the 9th Symphony – and even these do not remain together.
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Gürzenich-Orchester Köln & François-Xavier Roth – Schumann: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 4 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:16 minutes | 979 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Myrios Classics
The Gürzenich Orchestra and its chief conductor François-Xavier Roth dedicate their first release on myrios classics to two symphonies by Robert Schumann. The album is based on live recordings made at Cologne’s Philharmonie.
In 1841, Robert Schumann finally had the breakthrough he had long dreamed of as an orchestral composer. He created no less than two works that year: his first, the »Spring Symphony«, and a piece he originally conceived as a »Symphonistic Fantasy« and which later turned into his Symphony in D-minor.
The »Spring Symphony« was written in the coldest depth of winter. It is a work of longing which knows only one direction: growth, blossoming, forging a path towards light and new life. The Symphony No. 4 in D-minor, on the other hand, seems far more shadowy and personal, »a work created from the depths of the soul«, as Clara Schumann confided in her diary. The audience, however, failed to warm to the impetuous work, leading Robert Schumann to put it aside in resignation after the first performance. Only ten years later, he revised the work, which then appeared as his Fourth Symphony.
This album combines the »Spring Symphony« with the first version of the Symphony in D-minor – a version preferred by several of Schumann’s friends, including Johannes Brahms. During Schumann’s lifetime, however, it was never performed again. It was the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne which gave its next performance in 1889, under the baton of Gürzenich kapellmeister Franz Wüllner.
François-Xavier Roth also prefers the original version of 1841. »In its sparser instrumentation, it is more radical, demanding extreme dedication from all of us.«
“Schumann at his best!” (F.A.Z.)
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Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, François-Xavier Roth – Bruckner: Symphony No. 3 (First Version, 1873) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:01:45 minutes | 2,06 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Myrios Classics
Bruckner’s Third – a creative history that is unique even for the great Austrian romantic. No other of his symphonies has been revised, reshaped and reissued more often. Yet the first version from 1873, which François-Xavier Roth has chosen for this recording, bristles with boldness and the joy of experimentation. Here, the reminiscence of Beethoven’s Ninth and the works of the dedicatee Richard Wagner is almost tangible.
With this recording, François-Xavier Roth and the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln continue the highly acclaimed Bruckner Symphonies cycle and, with great attention to detail, once again present the “unvarnished” Bruckner, groundbreaking, virtuosic and refined.
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Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, Markus Stenz – Schoenberg: Gurre-Lieder (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:48:00 minutes | 1,90 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records
The Gürzenich-Orchester of Cologne has a pedigree second to none—counting Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss among those who have entrusted it with premieres of their works—and when you hear this new recording the reasons for this are clear. Devastating brass combines with mellifluous winds and strings in a performance of Schoenberg’s late Romantic masterpiece. Markus Stenz conducts a fine line-up of soloists and marshalls the massed choirs in this most epic of works.
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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, Christopher Ward – Rott – Complete Orchestral Works, Vol.1 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 51:50 minutes | 810 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © CapriccioNR
Hans Rott was a composer from Gustav Mahler’s environment who had been unknown or known only by name even to most pundits. Many people have expressed the opinion, perhaps justifiably, that only his tragic fate prevented him from going down in the annals of music as Mahler’s equal and establishing a permanent position in the repertoire. A member of Bruckner’s circle within the music scene in Vienna, he developed a pronounced antipathy towards Johannes Brahms. In view of many of his works, it is difficult to comprehend that during Rott’s lifetime presumably not one of them was performed in public, but that only presentations took place under the aegis of internal conservatory events. With these recordings Capriccio attend to fill the gap with his (some of them reconstructed) orchestral works and document these fascinating world of music for the eternity.
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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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Gürzenich-Orchester Köln & Christopher Ward – Rott: Complete Orchestral Works, Vol. 2 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:17:05 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © CapriccioNR
The 1989 premiere of Hans Rott’s Symphony No. 1 in E major (it was written more than 100 years earlier) introduced the international music world to a composer who had remained unknown, or known by name only, even among experts. His colleagues and friends included the younger composers Gustav Mahler and Hugo Wolf. Besides Wagner, Bruckner was the most important model for Rotts first symphonic work. Written when he was barely twenty years old, the work stands as his magnum opus, his only completed major work, a synthesis of what he had written to date, and a proclamation of what might have been yet to come.
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Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, Dmitrij Kitajenko – Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 1-15 (2005)
12 x DSD64 2.0 | 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | Time: 12:31:40 | 29.7 GB
or 12 x 24-bit/192 kHz | Flac(Tracks) | 14.5 Gb
Classical, Orchesral | Label: Capriccio | 12 SACD-BOX
When this cycle of the symphonies of Shostakovich with Dmitri Kitajenko conducting the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln was released in 2005, Shostakovich cycles were no longer the novelties they had been in the latter years of the twentieth century. There were already several superlative cycles in circulation – the monumental Kondrashin, the modernist Rozhdestvensky, the anguished Barshai – and a pair of superlative cycles nearing completion – the commanding Jansons and the compelling Gergiev – when the Kitajenko – Köln cycle was issued on Capriccio in superaudio sound. Listeners who knew Kitajenko only from his recordings made before the collapse of Communism for Melodiya were caught off guard by his complete mastery of the music, of his grasp of its every nuance of heroism and subtlety of irony, of his understanding of its gradations between pathos and bathos, of his control over its most desiccated melody and its most crushing sonority. Listeners who knew the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln from its tremendous recordings with Wand and Conlon were not so much surprised as pleased to hear the orchestra sound so splendid here. The power of its tone, the brilliance of its colors, the strength of the rhythms, and the depth of its commitment proved no less than the finest orchestras of the former USSR. While longtime Shostakovich listeners were amazed, they found that in the Kitajenko/Köln cycle they had a cycle in the same league as the best that had heretofore been released. Made during the early days of superaudio sound, Capriccio’s sound is incredibly lifelike; when it was released, listeners were stunned by the delicacy of the bells and staggered by the immediacy of the tympani. – by James Leonard
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