Czech Philharmonic Choir of Brno, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 ‘Pathetique’ (2016) DSF DSD64

Czech Philharmonic Choir of Brno, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 ‘Pathetique’ (2016)
SF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 58:02 minutes | 2,31 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Digital Booklet |  © Channel Classics Records B.V.B.V.

When Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky stepped onto the stage in Saint Petersburg on 28 October 1893 to introduce his Sixth Symphony to the public, he was received with a roar of applause. Less than an hour later the astonished audience was left dumbfounded. How could a symphony begin so softly and end even softer? And what about the second movement, with its undanceable waltz, and the third one with its unstoppable march? Nine days after the premiere, Tchaikovsky died in a city ravaged by cholera. Tchaikovsky himself considered the symphony to be the best he had ever written, and with it he said farewell to music, indeed to life itself. Rumours have never ceased to circulate about this unexpected end. For example, according to a controversial theory of the Russian musicologist Alexandra Orlova, the composer was forced to commit suicide. A secret council of honour is said to have sentenced Tchaikovsky thus because of a scandalous relationship with his young nephew; that he was reported to have died of cholera was no more than a pretence to conceal the true course of events. This theory has since been refuted. When the composer drunk a glass of unboiled water in the company of his brother Modest and nephew Vladimir Davidov, who warned him of the dangers, he replied “I am not afraid of cholera.” Did he know what he was doing? Is this the import of the dark, deathly sound of the menacing bassoons at the beginning of the symphony? Was the Pathétique indeed his message of farewell? And especially the final movement, Adagio, with its downward pull, in which all that holds on to life is swallowed up as if by a morass? Depressions overshadowed not only Tchaikovsky’s final years, but much of his life as well. Among the reasons for this was his homosexuality. In his younger years he was very nearly driven to suicide by an unhappy marriage, which was dissolved on medical advice. In his last symphony, the tragedy of the composer’s life seems to be captured in music.

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Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Rachmaninov: Symphony No. 2; Vocalise No. 14 (2010) DSF DSD64

Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Rachmaninov: Symphony No. 2; Vocalise No. 14 (2010)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz  | Time – 01:04:35 minutes | 2,51 GB | Genre: Classical
Source: ISO SACD | © Channel Classics Records B.V. | Front Cover, Booklet

Sergey Rachmaninov (1873-1943) – Symphony nr. 2 in e op. 27 (1907) …….In 1907 Rachmaninov had withdrawn with his family to Dresden in order to work in complete isolation. This is where the Second Symphony was created. It had its highly successful premiere in the Marinsky Theatre of St. Petersburg in January of 1908. Like his other symphonies, the work begins with a motto-like theme reminiscent of Russian Orthodox liturgical music. Out of this a long-spun, mournful melody develops and serves as a constant motive throughout the first movement. The second movement is a lively scherzo, but there is a hint of menace in the horns introductory Dies Irae motive. Half way through the movement, the dizzying fugato is momentarily silenced for an episode of passionate romanticism. The Adagio is the most famous movement, and the most consistently described with superlatives. It is a miracle of melodic invention. The beautiful clarinet melody seems endless and appears to grope forward in a kind of trance, searching for words to express its love. Is it entirely fortuitous that the atmosphere is that of the love scene in Rachmaninovs opera, “Francesca da Rimini”? The Finales mood is stormy and once again brings forward all the previous themes, but this time arranged in new constellations, leading to an effective conclusion.

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Miah Persson, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Mahler: Symphony No. 5 (2013) DSF DSD64

Miah Persson, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Mahler: Symphony No. 5 (2013)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 01:14:12 minutes | 2,93 GB | Genre: Classical
Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Digital Booklet |  © Channel Classics Records B.V.

The Fifth is the most Jewish of all Mahler’s symphonies. The first movement takes usto the unmistakable mood of Jewish lamentation, the finale to the childlike visionof messianic joy.As we know, Mahler converted to Catholicism. Views may differ as to whether hisdecision was opportunistic or a question of religious conviction. Christianity plays animportant part in much of Mahler’s music, though not in this particular work.Perhaps I may take the liberty of referring briefly to my own family. My ancestors(like Mahler’s) were merchants in a small shtetl in the Habsburg Empire. They wereobservant Jews. My grandfather, three years older than Gustav Mahler, decided toleave this religious lifestyle behind him when he went to study in Vienna. My fatherand his brothers were brought up without any religious education. They adoredGoethe, Mozart, Beethoven and Richard Wagner. One of the four brothers convertedto Catholicism when he married a daughter of a converted family. Later, underNazi occupation, when it seemed for a while that converting might help them avoiddeportation, two of my uncles and an aunt became Catholics; the other members of thefamily did not.Whether or not these decisions were opportunistic was never discussed in myfamily. Nobody cared – these were considered unimportant, personal decisions, partlydictated by circumstances. Converts or no converts, nobody practised any religion andeverybody adored culture. And they all hummed tunes like those in Mahler’s FifthSymphony. –Iván Fischer

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Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Mahler: Symphony No. 6 (2006) DSF DSD64

Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Mahler: Symphony No. 6 (2006)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 01:18:19 minutes | 3,11 GB | Genre: Classical
Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Digital Booklet |  © Channel Classics Records B.V.

After the dress rehearsal, Mahler paced back and forth in the greenroom, wringing his hands and sobbing. He was beside himself. In the last movement he had let his ‘hero’ be killed by three violent blows of fate, a sort of Old Testament prophecy of the destruction of humanity by a higher power. In the score he symbolically notated three dull thuds made by a hammer on a wooden box which he had had especially built. But after the premiere he removed the third blow in measure 783. And as a symbol of the last remains of earthly existence he brought in the characteristic sound of cowbells, the last sounds which echo from the valleys and meadows on the highest summits of the world. They were meant to sum up the whole of human experience, from childlike innocence and wonder to fury, despair, and destruction. His Sixth Symphony is the most merciless and uncompromising portrayal of this vision….

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Miah Persson, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Mahler: Symphony No. 4 (2009) DSF DSD64

Miah Persson, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Mahler: Symphony No. 4 (2009)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 56:40 minutes | 1,03 GB | Genre: Classical
Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Digital Booklet |  © Channel Classics Records B.V.

There is a unique purity and transparency in Mahler’s 4th Symphony. The enchanting slay bells take us to his inner child, to his dreams of angels, fairy tales, angst and pure, divine love. This child-like symphony needed a different orchestra: no dark tuba, no heavy trombones, no large arsenal of massive brass. A chamber orchestra in fact, where the clarinets act as mock trumpets, the solo violin tunes his strings sharper in order to scare us and the lightness of the whole orchestra lifts us up to his lovely, childish vision of paradise. –Iván Fischer

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Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Mahler: Symphony No. 2 ‘Resurrection’ (2006) DSF DSD64

Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Mahler: Symphony No. 2 ‘Resurrection’ (2006)
DSF Stereo DSD64, 1 bit/2,82 MHz | Time – 01:22:19  minutes | 3,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover | ©  Channel Classics Records B.V.

‘Resurrection’ (1894) is a gigantic work of enormous proportions, extreme contrasts, and a score that surpasses even his First Symphony from two years earlier. Ten horns, eight trumpets, two harps, organ, five percussionists, two vocal soloists (soprano and alto), as well as a large mixed chorus, fill the podium. And behind all this, invisible, is a ‘Fernorchester’ (distant orchestra) as a symbol of ‘the resurrection’. The work lasts for some 80 to 85 minutes, twice as long as Brahms’s Fourth or the Franck and D’Indy symphonies of the same period. And relative to a Haydn or Mozart symphony, there is a tripling in size. Only Bruckner approaches it in the length department with his Fifth and Eighth, each lasting about 75 minutes. But then Mahler, in this symphony, is dealing with the themes of life, death, and resurrection, and he took whatever space he felt that he needed. There is a strangely sharp contrast between the untroubled key of C major and the dark and turbulent contents of the work. It has been suggested that the theme of life, death, and resurrection was borne in on Mahler on the occasion of the funeral of the great conductor Hans von Bülow in 1894. In any case, the words of Klopstock that were read on that occasion are the same ones that Mahler used that year for the apotheosis (last movement) of his Second Symphony: “Aufersteh’n, ja aufersteh’n wirst du, mein Staub, nach kurzer Ruh unsterblich Leben wird der dich rief gegeben.” (Thou shalt arise, yes, arise, my dust, after a brief slumber, thou shalt be called to immortal life). And Mahler expanded the text further with his own words: “O glaube, mein Herz. Es geht dir nichts verloren. Dein ist was du gesehnt. Dein, was du geliebt, was du gestritten. O glaube: Du wardst nicht umsonst geboren. Hast nicht umsonst gelebt, gelitten.” (O have faith, my heart. Nothing shall be lost to thee. What thou hast longed for is thine. Thine remains, what thou hast loved, what thou hast battled for. O have faith: thou wast not born for nothing. Thou hast not suffered in vain.) From liner notes (Clemns Romijn)

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Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Mahler: Symphony No. 1 ‘Titan’ (2012) DSF DSD64

Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Mahler: Symphony No. 1 ‘Titan’ (2012)
DSF Stereo DSD64, 1 bit/2,82 MHz | Time – 55:28 minutes | 2,2 GB | Genre: Classical
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 55:28 minutes | 975 MB
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover | ©  Channel Classics Records B.V.

‘In full sail’ (Mahler’s original title for the second movement) could be a motto for the whole symphony. Here is the young Mahler, full of optimism. We hear his loveof nature and beauty, and his childhood memories. Fragments of distant military music, birdsong and Yiddish folk tunes come to his yet untormented mind. These episodes are real jewels, especially the Viennese trio in the second movement, the briefKlezmer music, then the Schubert-like Lied (did he have the Lindenbaum in mind?) in thethird; and the poetic, gentle melody that interrupts the stormy final movement.Admirable too is the architecture, as the composer completes his journey from hell to paradise, “dall’inferno al paradiso”, in the footsteps of his idol Beethoven. Mahler was in his late twenties when the world made acquaintance with his first symphony. It was in the Hungarian capital Budapest, and circumstances were difficult.In the diffuse acoustics of the Vigadó Hall, surrounded by hatred and mistrust, Mahler experienced his first major flop. Since then, at each performance I feel that we Hungarians have a moral duty to convince audiences that this is a perfect and exceptionally beautiful masterpiece. –Iván Fischer

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Iván Fischer and Budapest Festival Orchestra – Mahler Symphony no. 3 (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Iván Fischer and Budapest Festival Orchestra – Mahler Symphony no. 3 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:35:48 minutes | 1,86 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Channel Classics

I love the whole symphony but from the second movement two favorite moments, two details, spring to mind. First, the recapitulation when the solo violin takes flight, like a buzzing bee around a flower, and then accidentally finds itself in a wonderful modulation to E major. The second is the ending. The flowers, that move and dance elegantly against the wind, suddenly expose their Tristan-like soul. From the vast first movement I would choose the huge, yawning creature’s (Pan’s?) first appearance. Conducting the Scherzo I am always carried away by the inserted episodes which interrupt the post horn – first by a group of baroque birds, then rococo ones flying up from the pages of a Mozart piano concerto. What an ingenious and unpredictable use of different styles! Finally, the endless melody of the last movement moves me every time with its intimate beauty and honesty. There is something divine in the wealth of this great masterpiece. Iván Fischer

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Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer – Mahler: Symphony no. 5 (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer – Mahler: Symphony no. 5 (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:14:12 minutes | 2,03 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Channel Classics

After the highly acclaimed recordings of Mahler Symphonies no. 1, 2, 4 and 6 Iván Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra now recorded the Fifth Sympony with its famous Adagietto in F major for strings and harp – one of the most intimate pieces that Mahler ever wrote for the orchestra.

According to Fischer the Fifth is “the most Jewish of all Mahler’s symphonies. The first movement takes us to the unmistakable mood of Jewish lamentation, the finale to the childlike vision of messianic joy.”

Iván Fischer is founder and Music Director of the Budapest Festival Orchestra. This partnership has become one of the greatest success stories in the past 25 years of classical music. Intense international touring and a series of acclaimed recordings for Philips Classics, later for Channel Classics have contributed to Iván Fischer’s reputation as one of the world’s most visionary and successful orchestra leaders.

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Iván Fischer & Budapest Festival Orchestra – Brahms: Symphonies Nos. 1, 2, 3 & 4 & other works (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Iván Fischer & Budapest Festival Orchestra – Brahms: Symphonies Nos. 1, 2, 3 & 4 & other works (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 04:14:59 minutes | 8,10 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Channel Classics

Above the album worked the ‘Iv’an Fischer & Budapest Festival Orchestra – Brahms: Symphonies Nos. 1, 2, 3 & 4 and Other Works (Digital Box Edition) ‘, and his release took place on 2021. The album has got songs with a total duration of more than an hour. A compilation is a compilation of original music.

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Iván Fischer & Budapest Festival Orchestra – Beethoven: Symphony No. 1 & Symphony No. 5 (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Iván Fischer & Budapest Festival Orchestra – Beethoven: Symphony No. 1 & Symphony No. 5 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:01:46 minutes | 2,89 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Channel Classics Records

Beethoven’s First Symphony, though rooted in his classical examples Haydn and Mozart, was nothing less than a turning point in the symphonic tradition and can be seen as a fitting farewell to the eighteenth century, as an exploration of new horizons, and as an energetic statement conceived so as to surpass his esteemed predecessors. (…) The Fifth Symphony is the ultimate proof of Beethoven’s immortality. For who does not know the world-famous theme? Short-short-short-long. According to his friend and first biographer Anton Schindler, these first bars signify fate knocking at the door. He records that the composer told him: ‘I will grasp fate by the throat’. (from: liner notes by Clemens Romijn )

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Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Antonin Dvorak – Symphony No. 7 & American Suite (2010) DSF DSD64

Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Antonin Dvorak – Symphony No. 7 & American Suite (2010)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 58:05 minutes | 2,32 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover | © Channel Classics Records B.V.

The 7th Symphony is among the greatest masterpieces. Symphonies, which start in a minor and end in a major key, like Beethoven’s fifth, Mahler’s first and many others take us from sadness to happiness, from tragedy to jubilation. But here Dvořák sustains the D minor to the very end: he turns to D major only in the final six bars! It is an extraordinary structure, an incredible development creating irresistible excitement.
There are many hidden treasures among Dvořák’s works and it is a particular pleasure for me to present the beautiful Suite for Orchestra in A major on this disc. I think it should be performed more often in concerts, and I sincerely hope that this recording will inspire orchestras to extend their Dvořák repertoire with this composition of enchanting beauty, lyricism and freshness. —Iván Fischer

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Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Antonin Dvorak – Symphonies Nos. 8 & 9 ‘From the New World’ (2010) DSF DSD64

Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Antonin Dvorak – Symphonies Nos. 8 & 9 ‘From the New World’ (2010)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz  | Time – 01:18:18 minutes | 3,09 GB | Genre: Classical
Source: ISO SACD | © Channel Classics Records B.V. | Booklet, Front Cover

This pair of symphonies was written solely to satisfy Dvořák’s own poetic muse. In the keys of G major and its relative minor, E minor, they can be regarded as representing two sides of the same coin. The Eighth, composed in Dvořák’s summer residence at Vysoká deep in the Bohemian countryside, is indisputably “From the Old World” and rooted in Central Europe — “a work singing of the joy of green pastures, of summer evenings, of the melancholy of blue forests, of the defiant merry-making of the Czech peasants”, to quote the conductor Václav Talich, while the Ninth, composed in the claustrophobic surroundings of New York and intended as a greeting “From the New World”, is steeped in the composer’s “unappeasable yearning for his native soil”

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Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Antonin Dvorak – Slavonic Dances, Opp. 46 & 72 (2010) DSF DSD64

Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Antonin Dvorak – Slavonic Dances, Opp. 46 & 72 (2010)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 01:10:14 minutes | 2,78 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover | © Channel Classics Records B.V.

Whereas the first set had featured predominantly Czech dances (with the exception of the second which evoked the Ukranian dumka — not, strictly speaking, a dance), the second set is more broadly Slavonic, incorporating Slovak, Polish, Serbian and Russian elements in addition to Dvorák’s favourite melancholy dumka strains. In these sixteen highly varied and colourful dances, Dvorák had fulfilled his original brief to perfection, creating stylised, even idealised dance fantasias which inter – mingle folk elements with his own inspired melodies so effectively, so disarmingly and so artistically that for the most part they have defied attempts by musicologists to uncover the folk sources. Dvorák justified his approach in 1894:

‘From the rich stores of Slavonic folk music, in its Hungarian [i.e. Slovak], Russian, Bohemian and Polish varieties, the composers of the day have derived, and will continue to derive, much that is charming and novel in their music. Nor is there anything objectionable in this, for if the poet and painter base much of their best art on national legends, songs and traditions, why should not the musicians?’

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Pieter Wispelwey, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Antonin Dvorak – Cello Concerto, Symphonic Variations (2007) DSF DSD64

Pieter Wispelwey, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Antonin Dvorak – Cello Concerto, Symphonic Variations (2007)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz  | Time – 01:02:38 minutes | 2,49 GB | Genre: Classical
Source: ISO SACD | © Channel Classics Records B.V. | Recorded: December 2006, Palace of Arts, Budapest

Dvorak’s career was a worldwide success. He wrote his cello concerto in New York, it was rehearsed in Prague and premiered in London. Always full of tender feelings for his home country he lived an international life. He avoided speaking German though when possible and would never accept a job in Vienna. His cello concerto would become hugely popular all over the world and has occupied a significant place in the gallery of 19th century masterpieces. It took him four months to write but that reflects a freshness, a rise and shine attitude rather than the neurotic speed of city life. No teutonic bombast (Berlin), no Mahlerian pathos (Vienna), but healthy abundance of energy. Dreams but no Freud, profundity but no Angst. The orchestra is large and powerful, but this most symphonic of cello concertos doesnt become a David and Goliath freak show. The tuttis can be seen as the background for a journey. The landscapes, by night or day, under moon or sunlight are sometimes awesome but never hostile and occasionally the hero revels in a heart-warming village party. There is also room for reflection and intimacy; the solo cello is beautifully supported both in song and prayer. (…) –Pieter Wispelwey

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