City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra – CBSO Sounds New (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra – CBSO Sounds New (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:28:18 minutes | 1,38 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © NMC Recordings

When the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra marked its Centenary in 2020, there was never any question that new music would be at the heart of the celebrations. The orchestra marked its 100th year by commissioning 20 emerging composers to write short orchestral works to be played throughout the 2020 season – but then Covid-19 intervened.

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Stephen Hough, City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons – Dvořák & Schumann: Piano Concertos (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Stephen Hough, City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons – Dvořák & Schumann: Piano Concertos (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:10 minutes | 1,26 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

Two more rich piano concertos from the unparalleled Stephen Hough and the CBSO (they’ve already won Gramophone’s Record of the Year award twice). The eminent Andris Nelsons conducts, making his Hyperion debut. Schumann and Dvořák each wrote just one piano concerto, the latter being performed here in its fearsomely challenging original version.

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Akiko Suwanai, City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo – Sibelius & Walton: Violin Concertos (2003) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Akiko Suwanai, City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo – Sibelius & Walton: Violin Concertos (2003)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:41 minutes | 1,21 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Decca Music Group Ltd.

“Suwanai’s Sibelius was as evocative as it could have been. With a rare ability to combine precision and long-bowed resonance, Suwanai is an obvious match for this serious work…hers was a performance that reached deep into the heart of the music.” (The Scotsman, October 2011)

The full orchestra assembled for the evening’s centrepiece, Bruch’s Violin Concerto No 1 in G minor. Akiko Suwanai, a tall, imposing violinist of striking stage presence, raised her bow for a sombre, intense descent of notes at the start: this was big-boned, noble playing, with its rhythmic life taut and rigorous. Long-sighted phrasing gave an equal sense of wide tracts of space and time in the slow movement. The strength of every idea was beautifully placed and poised before a finale thrilling in its perfection of pitch and pacing. “ (The Times, May 2011)

“Seeing such a talented young violinist play this, the last of Mozart’s five authentic violin concertos, with such an instrument was pure joy. As Akiko took her lead from the Maestro, her great skill and lyricism went in perfect partnership with the Philharmonia, who allowed her to articulate the themes of Mozart’s work with a maturity seldom seem in one so young.” (Gazette, April 2011)

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City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, University of Birmingham Voices – Stanford: Requiem (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, University of Birmingham Voices – Stanford: Requiem (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:24 minutes | 1,29 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

Recorded in association with a live performance from Birmingham’s Symphony Hall in 2022, this account of Stanford’s Requiem from Martyn Brabbins and massed Birmingham forces thrillingly captures all the grandeur and intimacy of a neglected choral epic.

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Jennifer Pike, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Edward Gardner – Mendelssohn in Birmingham, Vol. 4 (2016) MCH SACD ISO

Jennifer Pike, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Edward Gardner – Mendelssohn in Birmingham, Vol. 4 (2016)
SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 & 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz  | 01:07:20 minutes | 3,43 GB | Genre: Classical | © Chandos

For this new recording of orchestral works by Mendelssohn, the CBSO and its principal guest conductor, Edward Gardner, join the violinist Jennifer Pike, who made a remarkable debut at Carnegie Hall this year. She here performs the Violin Concerto in E minor, the piece that launched her career thirteen years ago when she became the youngest-ever winner of the BBC Young Musician of the Year Award. Her first album on Chandos (CHAN10667: sonatas by Frank, Debussy, and Ravel) was praised by Classic FM as ‘one of the most outstanding début albums of recent years’. The music of Mendelssohn is probably more highly valued and widely loved today than it has been at any period since his lifetime. Yet one still sometimes hears the allegation that he failed quite to fulfil the promise of those miraculous youthful masterpieces, the Octet, completed at 16, and the Concert Overture A Midsummer Night’s Dream, of a year later. This recording contains two of his later works, which most roundly confute that accusation: the Incidental Music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1843), in which he managed to recapture and amplify the unique magic of his early years, and the Violin Concerto in E minor (1844), which has retained its standing among the three or four greatest of its genre ever since.

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City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra & Edward Gardner – Schubert: Symphonies, Vol. 3 (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra & Edward Gardner – Schubert: Symphonies, Vol. 3 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:54 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

For the third volume in their cycle of Schubert’s symphonies, Edward Gardner and the CBSO turn to the first and fourth symphonies. Composed in 1813, when Schubert was just sixteen, the First Symphony admirably demonstrates the young composer’s grasp of symphonic form and technique, and whilst the influences of Haydn, Mozart and early Beethoven are clearly audible, the spirit of Schubert’s own distinctive voice is certainly in evidence.

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City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Edward Gardner – Schubert: Symphonies, Vol. 2 – Nos. 2 & 6 & Italian Overtures (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Edward Gardner – Schubert: Symphonies, Vol. 2 – Nos. 2 & 6 & Italian Overtures (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:15:53 minutes | 1,26 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

For the second volume in his Birmingham Schubert symphony cycle, Edward Gardner turns to the Second and Sixth Symphonies. Composed between December 1814 and March 1815, the Second Symphony is not only a response by Schubert to the works of Beethoven, and especially the Prometheus Overture, but also strives to push the conventional symphonic boundaries, most notably in the extended exposition of the first movement. Completed in February 1818, the Sixth Symphony was the first to be titled “Große Sinfonie” (grand symphony) by Schubert, a mark of his growing confidence in his work in the symphonic idiom. The two Overtures were composed at the same time as the Sixth Symphony, and are clearly modelled on the overtures of Rossini, whose music was all the rage in Vienna at that time.

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City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra & Edward Gardner – Mendelssohn – in Birmingham, Vol. 5 (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra & Edward Gardner – Mendelssohn – in Birmingham, Vol. 5 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:53 minutes | 1,31 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

Edward Gardner’s Mendelssohn in Birmingham series continues with an album that collects eight overtures.

As on the previous volumes, a reduced-size CBSO joins Gardner in Birmingham’s Town Hall, where Mendelsohn himself conducted many of the UK premieres of his own orchestral works.

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City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla – The British Project (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla – The British Project (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:55 minutes | 1,22 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra continue The British Project with the release of works from William Walton’s opera Troilus and Cressida. The recording comprises the four-movement Symphonic Suite reworked and arranged from the original operatic score by Christopher Palmer. The CBSO and its charismatic conductor convey all the charm, swagger, and sumptuous sonorities of this music in a performance captured live at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie.

Troilus and Cressida contains some of William Walton’s most seductive music, as can be heard in the new e-album from Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla and the CBSO – their second for The British Project on Deutsche Grammophon. Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla has enjoyed exploring British music since her appointment as the CBSO’s Music Director five years ago. Her recent Birmingham seasons have featured scores by composers who worked with the CBSO in the decades following its foundation in 1920, from Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett to Ruth Gipps and Thea Musgrave. She and her orchestra launched The British Project last October with an interpretation of Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem.

William Walton, born in 1902, forged a strong relationship with the CBSO. He conducted the orchestra in the world premiere recording of his Sinfonia concertante two months after the end of the Second World War and his music remains central to its repertoire. In 1947 he began work on his first grand opera, Troilus and Cressida, a tragic love story based on Geoffrey Chaucer’s eponymous poem and set during the tenth year of the Trojan War.

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City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla – The British Project – Walton: Troilus & Cressida (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla – The British Project – Walton: Troilus & Cressida (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 31:36 minutes | 542 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

Tragic love story: Following her acclaimed album of Benjamin Britten’s “Sinfonia da Requiem”, Lithuanian star conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’s latest release is dedicated to a composition by William Walton that has hardly caught the eye in this country so far: the opera “Troilus and Cressida”. The stage work is full of energy, drama and surprising twists. Premiered in 1954 at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, the opera soon fell into oblivion and is no longer present on the schedules of the big houses. The publisher of William Walton must have guessed what was in the work, because after the composer died in 1983, his publisher encouraged the music writer and arranger Christopher Francis Palmer to an orchestral suite with the musical highlights of the opera.

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City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla – The British Project – Britten: Sinfonia da Requiem (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla – The British Project – Britten: Sinfonia da Requiem (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 20:11 minutes | 342 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla ist zweifelsohne eine der spannendsten Künstlerinnen der Gegenwart und hat sich mit ihren brillanten Interpretationen längst einen Namen gemacht in der Dirigentenszene. Erst jüngst wurde ihr Album “Weinberg: Symphonies Nos 2 & 21” mit dem City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Gidon Kremer und der Kremerata Baltica bei den Gramophone Classical Music Awards 2020 als “Album des Jahres” ausgezeichnet; gerade erhielt sie zudem den OPUS KLASSIK-Preis als “Dirigentin des Jahres”. Nun erscheint beim gelben Label ein weiteres Album der aufstrebenden litauischen Dirigentin mit dem Titel “The British Project”. Es spielt das City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, auf dem Programm steht Brittens “Sinfonia da Requiem”. Das digitale Album ist ab 16. Oktober erhältlich.

Benjamin Brittens “Sinfonia da Requiem” – Ein klingendes Abbild ihrer Zeit

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Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra – Weinberg: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 7; Flute Concerto No. 1 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra – Weinberg: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 7; Flute Concerto No. 1 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:21:01 minutes | 1,33 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

There is a special magic in the music of the Polish-Jewish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg. After her acclaimed Deutsche Grammophon debut ‘Weinberg: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 21’ in 2019, the exceptional conductor continues her very personal mission to make Weinberg’s important work accessible to the widest audience possible in outstanding recordings with ‘Weinberg: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 7’ and ‘Flute Concerto’.

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Akiko Suwanai, City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra – Sibelius & Walton: Violin Concertos (2003) MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Akiko Suwanai, City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra – Sibelius & Walton: Violin Concertos (2003)
SACD Rip | SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 & 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 61:03 minutes | Scans included (PDF) | 3,6 GB
or FLAC 2.0 Stereo (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/96 kHz | Scans included (PDF) | 1,3 GB
Features Stereo and Multichannel Surround Sound | Decca/Philips # 470622-2

Award-winning violinist Akiko Suwanai is backed by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo for this recording of compositional works by Sibelius and Walton. In 1990, Suwanai was the youngest winner of the International Tchaikovsky Competition following a second place award in the Queen Elizabeth Music Competition in 1989. The performances display warm virtuosity, captured with brilliant sound quality.

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