Charles Castronovo, Munich Radio Orchestra & Ivan Repušić – Puccini: I Canti – Orchestral Songs & Works (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:25 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BR-Klassik
Established in 1952, the Munich Radio Orchestra has developed into a body engaged in a wide spectrum of musical activity. There have been gala concerts and opera concert performances in particular, under the direction of Marcello Viotti, as well as a Paradisi Gloria series devoted to the sacred music of the 20th century, concerts for children and young people, and theme evenings.
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Munich Radio Orchestra & Ivan Repušić – Giacomo Puccini: Orchestral Works (Crisantemi, Preludio sinfonico, Capriccio sinfonico) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 26:44 minutes | 468 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BR-Klassik
Puccini’s purely instrumental compositions, whether for orchestra or in the field of chamber music, were almost all written while he was still a student at the Milan Conservatory from 1880 to 1883. These works reflect the musical spirit of the time that shaped the young composer: the melodic influences of his teacher Amilcare Ponchielli and also the impressions left on him by the music of Richard Wagner. At the same time, however, these pieces already point ahead to Puccini the opera composer. It seems only logical, therefore, that many of the themes echoed in them subsequently reappeared in his stage works and became much more famous there than in their original form.
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Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks & Ivan Repušić – Giuseppe Verdi: I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 02:05:21 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BR-Klassik
Ivan Repušić made his debut as principal conductor of the Munich Radio Orchestra in September 2017 with Giuseppe Verdi’s “Luisa Miller”. It was followed by “I due Foscari” in October 2018 and “Attila” in October 2019 (the complete recordings have already been released by BR-KLASSIK on CD 900323, 900328 and 900330). His successful cycle of early masterpieces by the Italian opera composer continues with the recent concert performance on April 23, 2023 of Verdi’s stage work “I Lombardi” – also at the Prinzregententheater in Munich. Authentic fluidity and vocal splendour are provided here once again by outstanding performers and the Bavarian Radio Chorus. The Munich Radio Orchestra plays under the direction of Ivan Repuŝić. – This highlight of Munich’s musical life from the early part of this year has now been released by BR-KLASSIK as a double CD.
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Ivan Repusic, Munich Radio Orchestra, Stanko Madic – Peteris Vasks: Viatore, Violin Concerto “Distant Light” & Symphony No. 1 “Voices” (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:11:29 minutes | 767 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BR-Klassik
“The works on this album are for chamber-music string ensembles: his first symphony “”Balsis – Voices”” (1991), the haunting violin concerto “”Tālā gaisma – Distant Light”” (1996/97), and the piece “”Viatore” (the traveller; 2001), dedicated to Arvo Pärt, here in a version for eleven solo strings by the conductor, church musician and arranger Stefan Vanselow. The Münchner Rundfunkorchester plays under its chief conductor Ivan Repušić, and the concerto soloist is Stanko Madić, first concertmaster of the MRO. During the critical phase that accompanied the emancipation of the Baltic states from the Soviet Union, Vasks’ symphony “”Balsis”” was commissioned by the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, and it premiered on September 8, 1991 in Kokkola, Finland. Its three sections are dedicated to the voices of silence, the voices of life and the voice of conscience. – The Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra “”Tala gaisma””, commissioned by the Salzburg Festival, is dedicated to Gidon Kremer, who premiered it with the Kremerata Baltica on August 10, 1997 in Salzburg. It is a sound epic rich in contrasts, with three great virtuoso solo cadenzas, tonal carpets of chords, elements of folklore, and full of dramatic gestures. – Viatore, the tribute to Arvo Pärt that Vasks composed in 2001, describes man in the loneliness of his existence as a restless wanderer – from his arrival in this world to his adolescence, his first love, and his eventual disappearance.”
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Munchner Rundfunkorchester, Ivan Repusic – Verdi: Attila (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:41:21 minutes | 1011 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BR-Klassik
Verdi strongly adhered to Italian patriotism and Attila is one of his works that goes to show it. A drama with a particularly inventive melodic invention, it aptly confronts the barbarian Attila, not devoid of greatness and humanity, the Roman general Ezio with his ambiguous character (“You will have the universe; but let Italy remain mine”) and the allegorical figure Odabella, an emblem of the Italian female fighters.
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Münchner Rundfunkorchester & Ivan Repušić – Suppé: Overtures (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 59:27 minutes | 605 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BR-Klassik
Directly after Johann Strauss the Younger, Franz von Suppé is one of the most famous Austrian composers of the 19th century to have paid special tribute to the so-called light muse. His oeuvre includes nearly three dozen operettas and light operas as well as countless farces and comedies, which he loosened up by framing them with musical numbers. This was the typical repertoire of Old Viennese folk theatre, which he imaginatively enriched in his various capacities as Kapellmeister at the Theater in der Josefstadt and as “”chief composer and conductor”” at the Theater an der Wien, as well as on other stages of the Austrian capital later on. His most famous operettas are “”The Beautiful Galatea”” (1865), “”Fatinitza”” (1876) and “”Boccaccio”” (1879). Although most of his stage works have now been forgotten, his sparkling, animated, captivating and thrilling overtures are supremely vivacious, conveying this composers skill, his imagination in inventing catchy melodies, and also his creative abilities where design or instrumentation are concerned. Overtures such as “”Light Cavalry””, “”Poet and Peasant”” or “”Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna”” were indispensable parts of Viennese operettas golden age and have remained a regular feature of the citys musical life (e.g. the Vienna New Year’s Concerts) to this day. As Chief Conductor of the Münchner Rundfunkorchester, Ivan Repuic has selected some of Suppés best-known and most popular overtures for his new studio production. This album is paving the way for next years 200th anniversary of the composers birth.
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Dejan Lazić, Muenchner Rundfunkorchester & Ivan Repušić – Istrian Rhapsody – Dejan Lazić (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:10 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BR-Klassik
“The folk music of the Croatian peninsula of Istria is as characteristic as it is extraordinary. Its melodies, harmonies and rhythms are unique, and sonorously expressed by the sopila – a traditional shawm instrument – as well as through choral singing and folk dances. The music with its asymmetrical rhythms is based on the so-called ‘pentatonic Istrian scale’, which consists of major and minor seconds and is thus clearly different from the other musical styles of Croatia. Numerous non-Istrian musicians and composers have been fascinated by it – among them the Croatian composer Natko Devcic, with his ‘Istrian Suite’ for orchestra (1946), or the young Croatian pianist and composer Dejan Lazic with his ‘Concerto in Istrian Style for Piano and Orchestra’ op. 18 (2014/2021) or his ‘Alterations on the Istrian Folk Hymn’ op. 29 (2022). Natko Devcic was one of Croatia’s most important composers and music educators, leaving a lasting impression on subsequent generations of musicians. His most lasting success as a composer came with his ‘Istrian Suite’ for orchestra from 1946, which uses Istrian folk music as a source of inspiration and as a link between Slavic late Romanticism and the avant-garde. Dejan Lazic’s five-movement ‘Concerto in Istrian Style for Piano and Orchestra’ op. 18 is closely connected to Istrian music, with its melodies, harmonies and rhythms, and features the ‘Istrian scale’ as well as the typical melodies played in thirds. The central movement of the concerto is an extended cadenza in which Lazic – who has already composed cadenzas for piano concertos by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven and also arranged Brahms’ Violin Concerto op. 77 for piano and orchestra – demonstrates his diverse experience in this field. Lazic’s ‘Alterations on the Istrian Folk Hymn’ op. 29 were written for the present CD and are dedicated to the Munich Radio Orchestra and its principal conductor Ivan Repusic. The song ‘Draga nam je zemlja’, composed by Ivan Matetic Ronjgov, was and continues to be sung as a folk hymn in Istria, and in his work Lazic has taken its melody as the basis for a theme and twelve variations with coda for orchestra.
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Bavarian Radio Choir, Munich Radio Orchestra, Ivan Repušić – Verdi: I due Foscari (Live) (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:41:36 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BR-Klassik
Ivan Repušic, who made his debut as principal conductor of the Münchner Rundfunkorchester in theautumn of 2017 with Giuseppe Verdi’s “Luisa Miller”, now presents a lesser-known masterpiece by the famous Italian opera composer. The concert performance of Verdi’s early stage work “I due Foscari” was recorded on November 25, 2018 at the Munich Prinzregententheater.
Verdi’s early masterpiece “I due Foscari” was the first opera he wrote for the Teatro Argentina in Rome. He had already worked on the material (Lord Byron’s drama “The Two Foscari”), and, after a first subject had been rejected by the Roman censors, Verdi returned to it and had the libretto written by Francesco Maria Piave. Although the opera’s premiere on November 3, 1844 was only moderately successful, the work was still frequently performed up to the 1870s. It was rediscovered during the early 1950s and has since become a fixed part of the international opera repertoire.
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Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Münchner Rundfunkorchester & Ivan Repušić – Arvo Pärt: Choral & Orchestral Works (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 59:22 minutes | 602 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BR-Klassik
Time flows and stands still in this contemplative music that sounds old and new and yet neither old nor new, naive art and higher mathematics, a child’s game, a glass bead game, like first steps and last words – all rolled into one. The compositions that Arvo P”art has been writing for almost half a century defy any labelling or ideology. In his anachronistic art, the Estonian composer – who emigrated from the Soviet Union with his family in 1980 and found a refuge in (West) Berlin – chose the path of renunciation, reduction, and voluntary poverty. The most famous testimony to this musical conversion is undoubtedly Fratres (“Brothers”), which was written in 1977 but has appeared in all kinds of different instrumentations and versions over the years. In its ascetic austerity and almost liturgical solemnity, Fratres is reminiscent of a communal prayer or a spiritual act.
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Uladzimir Sinkevich, Munich Radio Orchestra & Ivan Repušić – Pēteris Vasks: Orchestral Works (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:16:51 minutes | 823 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BR-Klassik
All the works of the Latvian composer Peteris Vasks on this release are written for string orchestra: the three connected compositions Musica serena (2015), Musica dolorosa (1983) and Musica appassionata (2002), and also Vasks’ Concerto No 2 for Violoncello and Strings, also known as “Klatbutne” (“Presence”, 2011-2012).
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