Neemi Järvi

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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