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Peter Donohoe, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo – Dora Pejačević: Piano Concerto, Op. 33, Symphony in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 41 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:57 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos
Countess Mária Theodora (Dora) Paulina Pejačević was born in September 1885 in Budapest. Young Dora grew up with all the advantages of an aristocrat: a fairy-tale life of opulent palaces set in idyllic landscapes; privilege, comfort, leisure, and wealth. From an early age she defied convention and walked her own path, one that eventually led her to ‘despise’ the aristocracy. Her father, Count Teodor Pejačević, a lawyer, held several high posts, including that of Civil Governor of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia (1903 – 07). Her mother, Lilla Vay de Vaya, an ‘exceptionally beautiful’ Hungarian countess, was a gifted pianist and singer, and a fine amateur artist. Her parents arranged private lessons with teachers at the Music School of the Croatian Music Institute, at Zagreb, which lead to further instruction in Dresden and Munich. Dissatisfied with the ‘limits’ of her formal studies, Pejačević pursued her own intensive course of self-instruction in composition. Having taken her music education into her own hands, she set off to enrich and broaden her intellectual horizons, travelling to cultural centres in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. During these travels, she came to know the leading artists, poets, and intellectuals of the day. The Piano Concerto was her first orchestral composition, and the first piano concerto by any Croatian composer. She composed the Symphony in F sharp minor during the first world war, whilst also working as a volunteer nurse. For its first complete performance, in 1920, she revised the work, which is here recorded in this final version.
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Francesca Dego, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Dalia Stasevska – Brahms & Busoni Violin Concertos (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:25 minutes | 1,01 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
The celebrated violinist Francesca Dego is joined by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and her regular collaborator Dalia Stasevska for this recording of the violin concertos by Brahms and Busoni. A cornerstone of the repertoire, Brahms’s Concerto dates from 1878, a year after the Second Symphony, and was composed for (and dedicated to) the virtuoso Joseph Joachim. The Concerto takes the standard three-movement form, and as in Beethoven’s Concerto (considered by many as Brahms’s inspiration for the work) the first movement is significant in its length and its complexity. Busoni’s Violin Concerto in its turn is inspired by both Brahms and Beethoven, and like both previous works it is in the key of D major. Premièred in Berlin in 1897 by the Dutch violinist Henri Petri, the Concerto is dazzlingly virtuosic. Francesca Dego writes: ‘To be able to record Brahms’s Violin Concerto is a dream and a milestone for every violinist and I feel that with “my” Brahms I do not want to compete with the many gorgeous versions out there but instead to declare my own love and history with my favourite violin concerto. Busoni’s Concerto, however, is a rarely performed work, brought to the studio only a handful of times. It represents a different kind of responsibility, one that pushed me to want to rediscover every detail of this music as if it had never been played before.’
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BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo – Bacewicz: Orchestral Works, Vol. 1 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:50 minutes | 1009 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
The three works on this album were all composed between 1943 and 1953. Despite the extreme experiences and difficulties she faced during this undoubtedly most tragic time in Poland’s history, Grażyna Bacewicz managed to compose outstanding works which constitute splendid testimony to the vibrant creative potency for which she was renowned. Until 1939 her career as a virtuoso violinist and an emerging composer evolved naturally. Trained by the best Polish pedagogues at the Warsaw Conservatory, she went on to acquire an international education thanks to an Ignacy Paderewski Scholarship, which allowed her to pursue her studies in Paris: composition with Nadia Boulanger, violin with André Touret (1932 – 33) and Carl Flesch (1934 – 35). In spite of her soloistic successes she decided to join the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra as its leader, in order that an improved knowledge and understanding of an orchestra should inform her composition. Poland then suffered terribly at the hands of Hitler and Stalin, before coming under the control of the Soviet Union. This album was recorded and released in collaboration with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, a state cultural institution promoting Polish culture around the world and actively participating in international cultural exchange.
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Tenebrae, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Nigel Short – Symphonic Psalms & Prayers (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:00:26 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Signum Records
The “symphonic” term in this album’s title is to be taken with a grain of salt: Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms (1930) relies on a vast wind section, with only a few cellos and double basses, harp and piano, and no violins nor violas; Schoenberg’sFriede auf Erden (Peace on Earth, 1907) is here given in hits original version for choir a cappella; Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms (1965) only require three trumpets and three trombones in addition to the strings and a rather Broadwayian percussions arsenal. Only the (rare and magnificent) Psalm 23 by Zemlinsky, composed in 1910, uses an almost “normal” orchestra for its time. The album’s symphonic honour is safe! It’s worth noting that Schoenberg’s specular and emotional Friede auf Erden is his last great reasonably tonal work, a masterpiece with a tendency for atonality – although a reasoned atonality, never sought for its own sake – that possesses a considerable expressionistic hue. The BBC Symphony Orchestra accompanies with great delight the phenomenal Tenebrae Choir under the lead of conductor Nigel Short.
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Tasmin Little, BBC Symphony Orchestra & Edward Gardner – Szymanowski & Karlowicz: Violin Concertos (2017)
SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 & 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 01:12:56 minutes | 3,3 GB | Genre: Classical | © Chandos
This SACD recording brings together some of Chandos’ greatest artists in a spellbinding programme.
It follows performances that The Guardian described as ‘a thrilling show of ferocity and feistiness’, given by the same forces in January at the Barbican. After widely acclaimed recordings of Walton’s and Lutosławski’s violin concertos, Tasmin Little again joins the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edward Gardner, in intensely expressive interpretations of the concertos by the Polish composers Karłowicz and Szymanowski.
All were written within the space of a generation (1902, 1916, and 1933), and yet they belong to quite different worlds. One was composed at a time of national occupation, another in the throes of wartime, and yet another at a time of national renewal. The first inhabits the lyrical tradition developed by Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky, the second escapes towards Debussy and the exoticism of Mediterranean influences, while the third is imbued with the folk culture of the Tatra Mountains.
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Tasmin Little, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Edward Gardner – Szymanowski, Karłowicz: Violin Concertos (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:13 minutes | 1,22 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
It follows performances that The Guardian described as ‘a thrilling show of ferocity and feistiness’, given by the same forces in January at the Barbican. After widely acclaimed recordings of Walton’s and Lutosławski’s violin concertos, Tasmin Little again joins the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edward Gardner, in intensely expressive interpretations of the concertos by the Polish composers Karłowicz and Szymanowski.
All were written within the space of a generation (1902, 1916, and 1933), and yet they belong to quite different worlds. One was composed at a time of national occupation, another in the throes of wartime, and yet another at a time of national renewal. The first inhabits the lyrical tradition developed by Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky, the second escapes towards Debussy and the exoticism of Mediterranean influences, while the third is imbued with the folk culture of the Tatra Mountains.
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BBC Symphony Orchestra, John Andrews, BBC Singers – Smyth: Der Wald (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:06:21 minutes | 2,13 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Resonus Classics
For over 100 years the only opera by a woman to have been performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Der Wald
is a taut, brooding drama where the simplicity of village life comes under threat from the uncontrollable desires unleashed by the darkness of the forest.Richly orchestrated, harmonically daring, and demanding a huge expressive range from the cast, the narrative drives relentlessly forward from wedding to tragedy in a single act, observed pitilessly by the eternal spirits of the forest.John Andrews conducts the BBC Singers, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and an international cast in the first ever recording of this work, using Smyth’s English version of the libretto.
BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers, Jiří Bělohlávek – Smetana: The Bartered Bride (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 02:16:16 minutes | 1,37 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | ©
A classic! And yet Smetana was thoroughly irritated by the torrents of praise lavished, in the last years of his life, on this Bartered Bride which had been categorically rejected at its premiere (1866) by a Czech public waiting to hear the genuine national opera. Four versions of the work later, and after many critical complaints (sometimes it was found too long, sometimes too short), it was realised that the composer had given birth to a genre built to last. For nearly 150 years now, The Bartered Bride has triumphed in opera houses all over the world; and in the present recording it is in the hands of a true team of experts.
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BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sir Andrew Davis – Bliss: The Enchantress, Meditations on a Theme by John Blow & Mary of Magdala (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:16:57 minutes | 1,30 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos
Bliss composed The Enchantress in 1951, the year of his sixtieth birthday, for Kathleen Ferrier. The text is a free adaptation of the Second Idyll of Theocritus, made by Henry Reed, and well suited to Bliss’s love of classical Greek authors.
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BBC Symphony Orchestra – Sibelius: Orchestral Works (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:11:34 minutes | 673 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra since 2013, Sakari Oramo has a special affinity with the music of his compatriot the Finnish composer Sibelius, which this recording admirably demonstrates. Sibelius’s ever-popular Lemminkäinen-Suite is complemented here with the early Spring Song and the lesser-known Suite from Belshazzar’s Feast. Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen-Suite (also called the Four Legends, or Four Legends from the Kalevala), Op. 22 in the 1890s. Drawing on material originally conceived for a mythological opera, Veneen luominen (“The Building of the Boat”), the suite focuses on the character Lemminkäinen from the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala.
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Rachel Barton Pine, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Litton – Elgar & Bruch: Violin Concertos (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:16:23 minutes | 747 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Avie Records
Billboard chart-topping violinist Rachel Barton Pine releases her 36th album and fourth for AVIE with her first recordings of two repertory staples, violin concertos by Edward Elgar and Max Bruch. The two works – Elgar’s only concerto for violin and Bruch’s first – straddle the turn of the 20th century but have in common a Romantic hue which Rachel probes with her rich, soulful tone.
The album is dedicated to “the memory of a musical hero and generous friend, Sir Neville Marriner,” who was to have reunited with Rachel on this album. She was fortunate to work with him on the scores, with Sir Neville vividly relating accounts of his teacher Billy Reed, former leader of the London Symphony Orchestra, who collaborated with Elgar on the creation of his violin concerto. Grammy Award-winning conductor Andrew Litton brings his own Romantic pedigree to the recording, as does the BBC Symphony Orchestra and celebrated producer Andrew Keener who himself has overseen award winning versions of the Elgar and Bruch concertos.
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New London Chamber Choir, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Jiri Belohlavek – Suk: The Ripening & Symphony No. 1 (2010/2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:31 minutes | 1,42 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos
The Czech maestro Jirí Belohlávek performs works by his countryman Josef Suk, conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra, with whom he is their Chief Conductor.
As a composer, Josef Suk followed in the tradition of Smetana and Dvorák, the latter of whom was not only his professor at the Prague Conservatory, but also became his father-in-law – Suk married Dvorák’s oldest surviving daughter, Otilie, in 1898, and the death of Dvorák in 1904 and ‘Otilka’ a year later resulted in the composition of one of the composer’s most powerful and deeply felt works, the Asrael Symphony – also recorded by Belohlávek (CHAN 9640).
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Matthias Goerne, The Synergy Vocals, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Josep Pons – Berio: Sinfonia – Mahler: Lieder (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:01:27 minutes | 619 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
This release is dedicated to the pioneer of Italian modernism Luciano Berio. His 5-movement ‘Sinfonia’, is undoubtedly his most well-known work, written for the New York Philharmonic and dedicated to Leonard Bernstein. It has become one of the key works and principle musical manifestations of the 1960s bringing together collage technique and modernism.
A few years later, Berio went on to orchestrate a number of songs on texts from ‘Des Knaben Wunderhorn’, which Mahler had scored for piano and voice, as if they had been written at the time of the later ‘Kindertotenlieder’. A symphonic backcloth tailor-made for the great baritone voice of Matthias Goerne [whose ‘Knaben Wunderhorn’ songs are already available on DVD, with Andris Nelsons, from Lucerne]. His warm, dark voice allows him to capture the sombre and tragic atmosphere of this music like no one else.
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Simon Höfele, BBC Symphony Orchestra & Geoffrey Paterson – Nobody Knows (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 58:48 minutes | 597 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Berlin Classics
One of the most versatile trumpeters in the classical world, Simon Höfele, releases a new album “Nobody Knows” together with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Geoffrey Paterson and Ilan Volkov. On his 4th album on Berlin Classics he plays the trumpet concertos by Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Christian Jost and Toshio Hosokawa, spanning an arc from the 20th to the 21st century and proves once again that the trumpet can do more than just “shine”. “These three works are really important to me. I have played all three before and I was always fascinated by their darkness.”, he explains his choice of repertoire. “This is heavy, almost depressive music, and that applies to all three of these works. This is heavy music in two respects: loaded with gloom, and also not at all easy to play. The is a definitive political message to “Nobody Knows de Trouble I see”, which makes it even more fascinating.”
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