Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend – Ludwig van Beethoven – Complete Symphonies (2012)
Digital eXtreme Definition FLAC Stereo (tracks) 24-bit/352,8 kHz | Time – 05:40:43 minutes | 25,6 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: spiritofturtle.com | Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Records / Northstar Recordings
Over the past few years, Jan Willem de Vriend and The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra have made CD recordings of all the symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven. This box contains them all.
At an international level, Jan Willem de Vriend is more and more regarded as an outstanding conductor with a new, fresh point of view. As is his vision of Beethoven. Important classical magazines like Gramophone are enthusiastic about the series: “These are strong, thrustful performances which make sense in terms of the music in hand and the orchestra;s own character and competence.
Jan Willem de Vriend has an intense passion for music. He will never stop investigating. Curiosity and eagerness are simply part of him and the way he works. And this means that, in his hands, music from the past comes to life, time and time again. (from the linernotes of Valentine Laout)
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The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend – Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 2 “Lobgesang” (2013)
DSF Stereo DSD128/5.64 MHz | Time – 01:02:32 minutes | 5,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Records
It is June 1840, you are in the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, the church where the famous composer Johann Sebastian Bach was once kapellmeister. You are there to attend the premiere of a piece of music on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg. The successful composer Felix Mendelssohn will conduct his own music. Mild excitement takes hold of you; you feel that it is going to be a magnificent concert, with orchestra, choir, soloists. Finally, it starts. The trombones begin with a regal theme that resounds through the church. The orchestra takes over the theme. You are immediately swept up by, immersed in the music — an overwhelming experience.
That must certainly have been the experience of the audience at this first performance of Mendelssohn’s symphony-cantata, as he liked to describe it. That the beginning of the piece is so overawing, by the nature of the theme and scoring of wind instruments, is not something you immediately expect from a composer such as Mendelssohn. He is known more for refinement, a cultivated melancholy that is fascinating, but does not threaten to make off with you. And of course, there is the virtuosity, which never stoops to affectation and always remains functional.1 As impressive as the regal trombone theme is, other passages of Lobgesang have probably moved audiences more deeply.
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Pauline Oostenrijk, Baroque Academy Of The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend – Vivaldi: Concertos For Oboe, Strings And Basso Continuo (2010)
DSF Stereo DSD128/5.64 MHz | Time – 01:48:50 minutes | 4,31 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Records
In Vivaldi’s oeuvre, there is only one composition of which we are totally certain it was written for Pelegrina. Above the manuscript of the Sonata for oboe, violin, chalumeau and organ, RV 779, Vivaldi wrote the names of the girls for whom the piece was intended: Pelegrina dall’ Obo, Prudenza dal Contralto, Candida dalla Viola and Lucietta Organista*. But since Pelegrina was by far the most accomplished oboist when Vivaldi worked at the Ospedale (the only other oboist mentioned in the archives is one Susanna, in 1726), we can assume that a number of the oboe concertos featured on this CD were also written for, and performed by, Pelegrina. And that is why I would like to dedicate this recording to her.
To you, Pelegrina dall’ Obo, who came into this world with so little; but who managed to breathe colour and lustre into life with that beautiful, yet so obstinate, double-reed instrument; and who inspired one of the greatest Baroque composers to create little gems we can enjoy to this very day.
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Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend – Mahler: Symphony No. 1 ‘Titan’ (2010)
DSF Stereo DSD128/5.64 MHz | Time – 56:24 minutes | 4,44 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Records
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) was just twenty-four and engaged with the Royal and Imperial Theater of Kassel, Germany, as its music director, when he fell in love with one of its sopranos, the young and beautiful Johanna Richter. She so much steered up his feelings that he dedicated his 1884 song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen to her. Four years later, in 1888, another lady infatuated him, but this time she had four children and was married to the grandson of the famous composer Carl Maria von Weber. Moreover, she was the wife of the man who had furnished Mahler with Carl Maria’s unfinished sketches for a comic opera, which led to Die drei Pintos, a mix of Mahler’s own inspirations and rearrangements. On 20 January 1888 the opera was premiered at the Neues Stadttheater in Leipzig with its Kapellmeister Mahler conducting. That same month he started composing his Symphonische Dichtung in Zwei Abtheilungen (Symphonic Poem in Two Parts), later his First Symphony, and finished it in March. Mahler, already the very successful music director of the Hungarian National Opera, conducted the first performance of the work in Budapest on 20 November 1889. It got a cool if not hostile reception, mainly because of the ‘bizarre, vulgar and cacophonic extravaganza’s’ of the last two movements. At least this was how it was felt, with the public and the critics in bewilderment especially after the finale’s unsurpassed ferocity. The final chords were followed by utter silence, until a few members of the audience hesitantly began to applaud, quickly interspersed with demonstrative sounds of disapproval. Mahler left the hall in devastation, roaming through the dark streets, like an ‘outcast’. A few years later he would write to Alma Schindler: “Sometimes it sent shivers down my spine. Damn it all, where do people keep their ears and hearts if they cannot hear that!”
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Combattimento Consort Amsterdam, Jan Willem de Vriend – Haydn: Divertimenti (2009)
DSF Stereo DSD64, 1 bit/2,82 MHz | Time – 58:54 minutes | 2,33 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Records
On May 1 in the year 1761, Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) entered into the service of the princes of Esterhzy. It was an association that would last nearly 30 years and prove fruitful for Prince Nikolaus I and the composer. At first, Haydn was merely the deputy kapelmeister. He was expected, as specified in the contract, to behave, obligingly write whatever music was assigned to him, and comport himself as an example to the other musicians. Additionally, he was to report in livery to the prince each day at noon to receive his instructions for the day.
Several years later, he was named kapelmeister. In this function, he wrote nearly all of the music heard in the court, from piano sonatas to symphonies, violin concertos to operas. Under the influence of the Enlightenment, the relationship between employer and employee began to change in the second half of the 18th century. Previously, a court or church musician was considered a servant who should bow to his superiors and be at all times obedient. But now, a musician — at least, an outstanding one — was seen more as a valued employee who could bring credit to his patron and should thus be fostered. Haydn held an enviable position with the Esterhzys in that regard. To a degree, he had a confidential relationship with Prince Nikolaus, owing in particular to the prince’s unusual hobby: Nikolaus was a passionate player of the baryton. This relative of the viola da gamba was even then uncommon. The baryton, roughly the size of a cello, has six or seven strings that the musician plays upon and an additional nine to twenty strings that provide resonance through sympathetic vibration, lending the instrument its unique muffled sound. Because it was so difficult to play, the instrument never became very popular, and it was largely obsolete by Haydn’s time. As the prince played the baryton, however, Haydn as a matter of course had to compose for it.
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Rudolf Koelman, Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend – Paganini: Violin Concertos 1 & 2 (2009)
DSF Stereo DSD128/5.64 MHz | Time – 02:23:18 minutes | 5,66 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Records
Opera played an important role in the life and works of Niccol Paganini. Opera violinists and composers (Francesco Gnecco, Ferdinando Par) were among his first teachers. At the age of 23 Paganini became leader of the opera orchestra of Bonaparte’s sister in Lucca. When he finally decided to espouse the career of a traveling virtuoso in late 1809 he used to perform in opera houses, eagerly attending their performances and commenting on them in his letters. As to Rossini, he was dernier cri, at least after the sensational success of his “Tancredi” in 1813. No stage in Italy or abroad could afford to ignore him. Paganini procured himself of a score at least of one Duet from this opera and tried to attend as many Rossini- performances as possible. In his own concert bills he accompanied singers singing Rossini’s arias and enriched them with spontaneous improvisations. He also improvised, composed, and performed purely instrumental variations on Rossini’s most popular themes. At least three of these Variations for violin and orchestra, on themes of “Mos”, “La Cenerentola” and “Tancredi”, have come down to us. They seem to have been written down in 1818/19. But since Paganini rarely wrote down or mentioned the dates of his compositions we can never be sure.
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Combattimento Consort Amsterdam, Jan Willem de Vriend – Handel: Concerti grossi Op. 3 (2005)
DSF Stereo DSD64, 1 bit/2,82 MHz | Time – 55:46 minutes | 2,2 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Records
In the first decades of the eighteenth century, London was one of the most important European music centres.
There was a rich courtly life as well as a great deal of music-making among the bourgeoisie. Just like Amsterdam, London was a hub of music pub- lishers and instrument builders. London’s musical life had a strong Italian orientation. It was mainly the Italian composers who were suc- cessful there, especially Arcangelo Corelli. Although his oeuvre is lim- ited to instrumental music and only has six opus numbers, his influence was considerable. For example, the London-based Italian Francesco Geminiani made orchestral arrange- ments of Corelli’s violin sonatas opus 5. Geminiani’s Concerti grossi opus
1 and Corelli’s own Concerti grossi opus 6 were published in many differ- ent arrangements.
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Van Baerle Trio, Residentie Orkest The Hague & Jan Willem de Vriend – Complete Works for Piano Trio Vol. 5 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:13:13 minutes | 653 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Challenge Classics
In 1799, after having made a name for himself with major compositions in the genres of the piano trio, piano sonata, violin sonata, and string quartet, but before finishing his first symphony, Beethoven wrote a work for mixed strings and winds. This piece, the Septet op. 20, would become one of his most popular compositions, with a large number of arrangements, including the one for piano trio on this disc. The form is clearly related to the divertimenti by Mozart, with six movements that alternate fast and slow tempos.
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Liza Ferschtman, Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend – Ludwig van Beethoven – Violin Concerto, Romances (2010)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 00:58:18 minutes | 2,3 GB | Genre: Classical
Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Digital Booklet | © Challenge Records / Northstar Recordings
These are fine, thoughtful performances, noteworthy in several respects. The balance between orchestra and violin is very natural, giving the soloist no special advantage; this, and the fact that the wind instruments are given a particularly prominent profile, imparts an unusual but not unwelcome perspective. The passage in the Concerto’s first movement where the violin soars aloft over a soft string accompaniment (track 1, 11’58”), and where most violinists slow right down, is here played, most delicately, at a speed closer to the basic tempo – and we can hear with unusual clarity the horns intoning the opening drum motif. And when the key-changes and the timpani, along with trumpets, reclaim the motif, the effect is magical.
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Storioni Trio, The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend – Ludwig van Beethoven – Triple Concerto & Archduke Trio (2013)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 01:11:00 minutes | 2,81 GB | Genre: Classical
Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDMusic | © Challenge Records / Northstar Recordings
The piano trio was the ensemble type with which Beethoven opened his series of works published with opus numbers in Vienna in 1795. In his Triple Concerto, published as Opus 56, Beethoven confronts this genre with a large orchestra. Anton Schindler, since 1822 Beethoven’s self-named secretary and also his first, sadly all too often untrustworthy biographer, stated that the piano part of the trio instrumentation was specified for Archduke Rudolf; but the facts do not support this. The Archduke was only sixteen years young when the work was written around 1804, a year marked by the composition of the Third and Fifth Symphonies, Fidelio and the “Appassionata”, and when the Triple Concerto was put to print in 1807 the piece was dedicated not to a schoolboy from the Imperial House, but to another member of the high nobility and confidant of the composer, Prince Lobkowitz.
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Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend – Ludwig van Beethoven – Symphony No. 9 ‘Choral’ (2012)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 01:03:12 minutes | 2,49 GB | Genre: Classical
Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Digital Booklet | © Challenge Records / Northstar Recordings
This is the fifth and final volume in a cycle of the complete symphonies of Beethoven being released by conductor Jan Willem de Vriend and the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra. The new disc features the composer’s 9th Symphony known as the “Choral”, and as with previous recordings in the series it is being made available as a hybrid SACD.
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Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend – Ludwig van Beethoven – Complete Symphonies (2012)
DSD64 (.dsf) 1 bit/2,8 MHz | Time – 05:40:43 minutes | 13,4 GB | Genre: Classical
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/192 kHz | Time – 05:40:43 minutes | 11,2 GB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Artwork: Cover | © Challenge Records / Northstar Recordings
Over the past few years, Jan Willem de Vriend and The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra have made CD recordings of all the symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven. This box contains them all.
At an international level, Jan Willem de Vriend is more and more regarded as an outstanding conductor with a new, fresh point of view. As is his vision of Beethoven. Important classical magazines like Gramophone are enthusiastic about the series: “These are strong, thrustful performances which make sense in terms of the music in hand and the orchestra;s own character and competence.
Jan Willem de Vriend has an intense passion for music. He will never stop investigating. Curiosity and eagerness are simply part of him and the way he works. And this means that, in his hands, music from the past comes to life, time and time again. (from the linernotes of Valentine Laout)
Read more![Hannes Minnaar, The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend - Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 4 & 5 - Complete Piano Concertos, Vol. 1 (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/352.8kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/25/0889176549366_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Hannes Minnaar, The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend – Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 4 & 5 – Complete Piano Concertos, Vol. 1 (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/352.8 kHz | Time – 01:10:17 minutes | 3,36 GB | Genre:
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | ©
Beethoven wrote five concertos for piano and orchestra. It doesn’t sound like much; his near-contemporary Mozart composed 27. But although it may be a bit smaller, Beethoven’s contribution is a true monument in the history of music. He used the first two concertos to move away from his example, Mozart (whose last piano concerto was from 1791, while Beethoven completed his first in 1795); in Concerto no. 3 Beethoven carved out new dimensions for the genre’s dramatic possibilities. And Concertos nos 4 and 5 have proved to be unmatched in their genre: the radiant Concerto no. 4 is worshipped by experts and aficionados alike, while no. 5 is the all-time favourite of the public at large. Almost 25 years passed between Beethoven’s first sketches for a piano concerto and the double line he drew under his last one. His piano concertos thus show a development covering more than half of the composer’s life.
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![Hannes Minnaar, The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend - Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 - Complete Piano Concertos, Vol. 2 (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/352.8kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/25/0608917271225_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Hannes Minnaar, The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend – Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 – Complete Piano Concertos, Vol. 2 (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/352.8 kHz | Time – 01:04:57 minutes | 3,11 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Classics
Before we listen to the young Dutch pianist Hannes Minnaar play Beethoven’s first two piano concertos, it is perhaps interesting to see how another young pianist may have played them once, long ago — a German who lived in Vienna, a headstrong and temperamental genius. His name? Ludwig van Beethoven. His pupil, the famous composer of etudes and sensitive observer Carl Czerny, once described his playing: “[…] characterised by passionate strength, alternated with all the charm of a smooth cantabile. The expressiveness is often intensified to extremes, particularly when the music tends towards humour […] Passages become extremely daring by use of the pedal […] His playing does not possess that clean and brilliant elegance of certain other pianists. On the other hand, it was spirited, grand and, especially in the adagio, filled with emotion
and romanticism.”
Strength. Smoothness. Humour. Focus on these aspects and you will come close to Beethoven. Minnaar, De Vriend and The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra play the concertos in reverse order: first 2, then 1. A bit odd. Or isn’t it? Artistically, it is highly defensible: introduced as it were by the more balanced, more modest Piano Concerto no. 2, no. 1 radiates all the more festiveness (trumpets, clarinets and tympani have come to join the orchestra). Perhaps the lovely, gentle, almost feminine B flat major of Concerto no. 2 would not have been able to hold its own after the male and martial C major. But there is something else
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![Consensus Vocalis, The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend - Bach, J.S.: Matthäus-Passion, BWV 244 (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/352.8kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/21/8S66aeK.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Consensus Vocalis, The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend – Bach, J.S.: Matthäus-Passion, BWV 244 (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/352.8 kHz | Time – 01:51:35 minutes | 5,61 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Records
On 11 March 1829 the 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn conducted a performance of the St. Matthew Passion in the concert hall of the Singakademie in Berlin, almost 100 years after the work had last been played. Some 900 people were in attendance, and the performance was so successful that it was repeated twice, on 21 March and on Good Friday, 17 April 1829.
Mendelssohn was given the score of the St Matthew Passion for his 15th birthday, 3 February 1824, or else as a Christmas present in 1823. He knew of the score as one of Zelter’s pupils and as a member of the Singakademie, which had a few chorus parts from the St Matthew in its repertoire. Zelter, the conductor of the Singakademie, found the work too diffi cult to be performed in public. Mendelssohn, however, had a different opinion. In 1828 he set to work on the score, making changes in line with the day and age and the instruments then commonly used. Mendelssohn meant many of his changes to provide a better understanding of what, in his opinion, formed the heart of the passion story.
After its successes in Berlin, the St Matthew Passion was performed in a number of German cities. In 1841 Mendelssohn gave a performance in Leipzig, where he was then Kapellmeister, in the Thomaskirche, the church where the work had fi rst been performed. For its performance in 1841, Mendelssohn again made alterations to the score, but fewer than in 1828/1829.
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