Tag: Daniel Barenboim

Daniel Barenboim – Encores (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 57:17 minutes | 465 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

To follow up on a monumental project, his last acclaimed recording of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas, Daniel Barenboim has chosen for his new album an intimate and very personal program of his favorite encores, recorded at the Pierre Boulez Hall in Berlin during the lockdown. This new record comes to celebrate not only its eightieth anniversary in 2022 but also its seventy years of stage. The multifaceted musician lavishes his art on gems such as Debussy’s Clair de Lune, Schumann’s Reverie and an array of other masterpieces by Chopin, Schubert, Liszt and Albéniz.

Comments closed

Daniel Barenboim & Wiener Philharmoniker – Neujahrskonzert 2022 / New Year’s Concert 2022 / Concert du Nouvel An 2022 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:43:31 minutes | 1,86 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

It has long been a Philharmonic tradition at the New Year to present a program consisting of the lively and at the same time nostalgic music from the vast repertoire of the family of Johann Strauß and its contemporaries. These concerts not only delight the audiences in the Musikverein in Vienna, but also enjoy great international popularity through the worldwide television broadcast, which now reaches over 90 countries.

Comments closed

Daniel Barenboim – Franz Schubert – Piano Sonatas (2015/2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24bit/96kHz | Time – 05:51:15 minutes | 5,54 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

Somewhat surprisingly, Daniel Barenboim recorded the 11 complete piano sonatas of Franz Schubert for the first time between 2013 and 2014, thus making this Deutsche Grammophon box set an important first-time release. For admirers of Barenboim’s intellectual depth and clean playing, his approach to these works may be ideal, because Schubert’s music is always vulnerable to overly ripe or sloppy interpretations, and it takes a balance of ideas and emotions to convey the essence of the sonatas. While Barenboim has established himself as a masterful accompanist in Schubert, playing chamber works and lieder cycles, he has touched the solo keyboard works less often. However, these performances of the sonatas are as cogent and competent as if he had specialized in them for decades. Touch is critical in Schubert, and Barenboim’s refined playing shows a remarkable control of dynamics, colors, and shadings, which, together with his eloquent phrasing and careful use of the pedals, make it subtle and compelling for its variety. While the studio recordings are a bit dry, presumably to aid in clarity, the piano has a slightly ringing quality in the upper register and a warm middle to low range, so it has an attractive tone without studio enhancements. Highly recommended.

Comments closed

Camille Saint-Saens – Organ Symphony – Gaston Litaize, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Daniel Barenboim (1976/2003)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz  | Time – 56:20 minutes | 994 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: Qobuz | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon GmbH
Recorded: May 1975, in Studio Medinah Temple, Chicago, United States

This celebrated recording of Saint-Saëns’ Third stands as one of the very few performances to challenge the acclaimed Munch/Boston version on RCA. It features playing of great panache (with a truly high-voltage finale), and if the strings in the first-movement allegro aren’t as tidy as some, Barenboim more than compensates by taking the movement gratifyingly up to speed. The big question for most collectors concerns the remastering, and here I have to say that it strikes me as an unqualified success.

Comments closed

Daniel Barenboim – Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius, Op. 38 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:33:57 minutes | 1,57 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download  | Source: Qobuz | Front cover , Booklet | © Decca

Daniel Barenboim’s ‘The Dream of Gerontius’ is a significant addition to his critically-acclaimed Elgar series with Staatskapelle Berlin. This is Barenboim’s first recording of Elgar’s greatest choral masterpiece. Featuring the finest array of English-speaking soloists: Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Andrew Staples and Thomas Hampson.

The album is released to coincide with Barenboim’s performances of Elgar’s Symphonies 1 & 2 with the Staatskapelle Berlin at the BBC Proms on 15 & 16 July

Comments closed

Staatskapelle Berlin & Daniel Barenboim – Brahms: Symphonies (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:59:46 minutes | 3,02 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

More than 120 years after the death of Johannes Brahms, the answer to this question would seem to be a foregone conclusion. Not even Arnold Schoenberg’s essay “Brahms the Progressive”, famed at least for its title, has done anything substantial to change it. Schoenberg pointed to the asymmetry and irregularity of Brahms’s phrase structure, his stern adherence to and sharpening of Beethoven’s technique of dislodging the “strong” beats until the rhythm as we previously knew it fully dissolves. What we hear as downbeats are more likely to be upbeats, and vice versa.

Comments closed

Daniel Barenboim – Works by Elgar (1975/2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:06 minutes | 787 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Glossa

Can there be a more prodigiously gifted and versatile musician in the world today than Daniel Barenboim? Symphonic and opera conductor as well concert pianist, recitalist, chamber musician, Lieder accompanist par excellence, the Argentinian-born Israeli Renaissance man of music is also one of the most extensively recorded artists of all time. Sony Classical is proud to present the first complete retrospective collection of his albums for CBS/Sony Classical and RCA Red Seal.

Comments closed