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Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, James Gaffigan – Prokofiev: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 5 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/352.8 kHz | Time – 58:31 minutes | 3,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Records
Third (and last but one) instalment in James Gaffigan/Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra’s ongoing series of Prokofiev’s complete symphonies.
Nos. 1 and 5 are surely the most famous and beloved of Prokofiev’s symphonies. They were written in a time-span of 27 years (the former in France, the latter in Soviet Union) they display two much different faces of the composer’s musical personality.
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Simone Lamsma, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, James Gaffigan, Reinbert de Leeuw – Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 77; Gubaidulina: In tempus praesens (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/352,8 kHz | Time – 01:13:19 minutes | 2,99 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Challenge Records / Northstar Recordings
The structure of Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto is particularly original, with a sequence of four movements – slow, fast, slow, fast – entitled Nocturne, Scherzo, Passacaglia and Burlesque. The opening movement (Nocturne) is a beautiful song, blossoming from a single melodic fragment. The Scherzo is biting and dazzlingly virtuosic, like a carousel gone wild. The ensuing Passacaglia is, quite simply, the pinnacle of this concerto; a masterpiece – mature, elegiac and highly lyrical. The passacaglia theme is repeated nine times with contrapuntal elaborations. This is followed by a large-scale cadenza that forms a bridge to the finale. The concerto closes with a Burlesque, in which the theme from the Passacaglia has one final, piercing reappearance.
Shortly after the premiere of Gubaidulina’s Offertorium (1981), the Swiss patron of the arts Paul Sacher asked her to compose a further violin concerto for the German soloist Anne-Sophie Mutter, but nothing came of this due to lack of time. It was only in 2007, eight years after Sacher’s death, that Gubaidulina completed In tempus praesens, which was given its première by Mutter at the Lucerne Festival. It is a work of extreme contrasts in which very deep, infernal passages are juxtaposed with extremely high, celestial episodes. Much more so than Offertorium, In tempus praesens is a spectacular work for the violinist, who plays virtually from start to finish and barely has a chance to pause for breath. The virtuosity demanded by the work is never an end in itself.
Pizzicato on Lamsa’s first release on Challenge Classics (CC 72677): “The surround recording from Challenge Classics stands out due to especially brilliant and powerful interpretations and a finely coordinated dialogue between the instruments. This is perfect harmony.”
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Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, James Gaffigan – Prokofiev: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 4 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:13:35 minutes | 651 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Challenge Classics
The Dutch composer, music journalist and novelist Elmer Schönberger once described the Second Symphony as a sub-genre – of a primarily psychological nature, albeit with considerable stylistic consequences: in a first symphony, a composer will more or less reflect the traditions from which he comes, and in a second he will deliberately break away from them. Prokofiev’s Second, composed eight years after the First, appears to be a defiant ode to the modern era, witnessed by the layers of mechanically persistent rhythms, expressionist harmonies, ostensibly unfathomable forms and its very expansive take on tonality. The work was premiered in Paris in 1925, conducted by Serge Koussevitsky.
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Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, James Gaffigan – Rihm: Symphonie “Nähe fern” (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 47:33 minutes | 821 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
If every work of art can be understood as the docile or rebellious descendant of dozens, indeed hundreds of other works of art, the immense majority of Wolfgang Rihm’s compositions fully assume the heritage of the past. This is especially true of ‘Nähe fern’, whose title (‘Distant proximity’) refers to his experience of the four symphonies of Brahms. Each of these pieces for orchestra is a homage profoundly linked with its model, yet at the same time constantly moves away from it. Commissioned by the Lucerne Sinfonieorchester ‘Nähe fern’ was premiered at the Lucerne Festival on 20th August 2012.
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Luzerner Sinfonieorchester & James Gaffigan – Dvořák: Symphony No. 6. American Suite, Op. 98b (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:50 minutes | 1,26 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
“The Americans expect great things of me,’ Dvorák wrote in November 1892 to his friend Josef Hlávka, ‘and the main thing, so they say, is to show them the way to the promised land and kingdom of a new and independent art, in short, to create a national music.”
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James Gaffigan, Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, Paul Jacobs – Bernstein, Barber, Crawford & Ives: Americans (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:00 minutes | 1,36 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
Vivid testimony to the multifaceted partnership of James Gaffigan and the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, their latest release invites us to explore the conductor’s American roots, from the most mischievous (Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story) to the spiritual (Charles Ives’ Symphony No. 3, based on his works for solo organ). With dramatically potent dissonances, Ruth Crawford’s Andante for Strings casts a spell in the form of a hypnotic and restless nocturne, while Samuel Barber’s boldly athletic Toccata for Organ and Orchestra reveals a rarely heard aspect of this well-known master. An electrifying performance!
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James Gaffigan – Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 & Brahms: Nänie (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:22:02 minutes | 1,56 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Sony Classical
The countdown is on for Beethoven’s 250th birthday in 2020. The composer still stands for independence of mind, for revolutionary ideas, for music that reaches far beyond his own time. To celebrate, Sony Masterworks presents this outstanding interpretation of his famous 9th symphony from the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra under the baton of it’s chief conductor James Gaffigan, following up their “Beethoven Project” (complete piano concertos) from autumn 2017. This release also features the orchestra’s version of the famous “Prisoners’ Chorus” from Fidelio, as well as “Nänie” by Johannes Brahms, an unjustly rarely performed masterwork. This highly original combination of one of Beethoven’s best loved symphonies features the exquisite soloists Rachel Harnisch, Ekaterina Semenchuk, Mauro Peter and Hanno Müller-Brachmann.
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Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, James Gaffigan, Ingo Metzmacher, Christoph Poppen, Michael Schonwandt, Markus Stenz, Osmo Vanska – Karl Amadeus Hartmann: Symphonies Nos. 1-8 (2014)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 03:18:13 minutes | 7,86 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Records
Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1905-1963) is one of the most significant but least-known symphonic composers of the 20th century. This set of three hybrid SACDs, issued to mark the 50th anniversary of the German composer’s death, features his eight symphonies played by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and Chamber Philharmonic Orchestras under the batons of several major conductors, including Christoph Poppen, Osmo Vanska, James Gaffigan and Markus Stenz.
One of the most characteristic features of Hartmann’s work is the way in which he forges contrasting stylistic elements and techniques from various periods of music history into a seamless unit. Moreover, one melody is found in all his symphonies, concealed to varying degrees. This melody is based on the Jewish song “Elijahu hanavi” about the prophet Elijah, whom the Jews anxiously await to bring them redemption. This yearning quality lies at the heart of the composer’s music.
Two types of movement, adagio and scherzo, form the unmistakable axis of Hartmann’s symphonic works, and the result is that the musical discourse continually takes place between expansion and energy, monumental stasis and a dynamic primal force toppling everything in its path. Hartmann’s symphonic legacy most certainly deserves its rightful place in the canon, especially in English-speaking countries where it’s been often overlooked.
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Emmanuelle Bertrand, Pascal Amoyel, Luzerner Sinfonieorchester & James Gaffigan – Saint-Saëns: Cello Concerto No. 1 – Cello Sonatas Nos. 2 & 3 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:06:54 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
“That’s it done at last, this blasted sonata! Will it please or not? That is the question.” So wrote Saint-Saëns, not without humour, of his second ‘quadruped’ for cello and piano. He adored the cello, as is shown by much more than the famous ‘Swan’. He wrote three sonatas for it, but unfortunately the last two movements of the Third Sonata have been lost and what is left survives only in manuscript. Emmanuelle Bertrand and Pascal Amoyel play it here with emotion and total respect. The Concerto also included here is today one of the ‘musts’ of the concertante repertory for cello.
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Emmanuelle Bertrand, Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, James Gaffigan – Tout un monde lointain (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 47:40 minutes | 884 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
A bouquet of French cello music.Dutilleux, the centenary of whose birth we celebrate on 22 January 2016, made his appearance on earth just a few months before the premiere of one of Debussy’s final compositions: the Cello Sonata presented on this disc. The filiation is a natural one, for at an early age fate placed Dutilleux under the auspices of the composer of Pelléas and in the vicinity of the cello, which his brother played. Alongside a new recording of the famous Strophes sur le nom de Sacher, Emmanuelle Bertrand joins with her partners in the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester to pay an eagerly awaited tribute to the ‘distant world’ hymned by the poems of Baudelaire and sublimely echoed by Dutilleux, the most sensitive composer of our time.
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Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, James Gaffigan – Prokofiev: Symphonies Nos. 6 & 7 (2016)
DSF Stereo DSD128/5.64 MHz | Time – 01:12:53 minutes | 5,75 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Records
Prokofiev wrote his Sixth Symphony almost straight after the Fifth. The Sixth is quite different from the Fifth, despite the success of the latter at its premiere, which the composer himself conducted in January 1945. Where the mood of the Fifth is triumphant and heroic (the Nazis had almost succumbed to defeat by this stage), the Sixth is more elegiac, less compact and more diffuse. Opinions differ widely on the work’s form; the Russian musicologist Nestiev, one of Prokofiev’s first biographers and of course toeing the Party line as he wrote, argued that the composer had swapped over the exposition and development in the first movement. If this is true, it may explain why the opening seems like a bombardment of motifs tumbling over each other, so that the surfeit of themes only gradually gives way to a semblance of order as the movement progresses.
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Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, James Gaffigan – Prokofiev: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4 (first version) (2015)
DSF Stereo DSD128/5.64 MHz | Time – 38:21 minutes | 4,54 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Records
Sergei Prokofiev has a large reputation, although many of his works are seldom heard. The reason for this is that his music has a certain image, one created to some extent by the composer himself and one from which he found it difficult in later years to distance himself, no matter how hard he tried. One might summarise this image as that of a poker-faced comedian. Compositions that confirm this impression, such as the Classical Symphony, the Third Piano Concerto and some of his early piano works are amongst his best-known works.
He shows a different side in his works for voice; a side that is clearly close to his heart, since even though most of his operas enjoyed little in the way of success during his lifetime, he wrote at least eight of them, with lyricism to the fore and a tendency for declamation and unpredictable forms. The less popular of these include L’Ange de feu, based on the 1907 novel by the writer Bryusov, setting a 16th century tale of the passionate young girl Renata, who becomes obsessed by the devil. She vacillates between fascination and rejection. She can neither circumvent nor defy her own sorcery and is ultimately condemned to death. Prokofiev worked on this piece almost throughout the 1920s. When he realised that a performance was unlikely at the time, and because he was unaccustomed to leaving his musical inventions unperformed, he rearranged the material from the opera into a new symphony, his Third.
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Vadim Gluzman, Luzerner Sinfonieorchester & James Gaffigan – Beethoven & Schnittke: Violin Concertos (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:09 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
After acclaimed recordings of the great Romantic violin concertos by Brahms, Bruch and Tchaikovsky, Vadim Gluzman takes on the work that in the beginning of the 19th century mapped out a new course for the genre: Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61. With this work, Beethoven rejected the idea of a virtuoso display piece with a largely irrelevant orchestral accompaniment. Instead he presented a symphonic reinterpretation of the concerto principle, with soloist and orchestra becoming equal partners in a texture that is interwoven on many levels. Largely forgotten for several decades after the first performance in 1806, it is now considered one of the greatest violin concertos. However innovative Beethoven was in his opus 61, he nevertheless remained true to the tradition of allowing the soloist several cadenzas. Over the years, a number of composers and great violin virtuosos have proposed their own cadenzas for the concerto, with Alfred Schnittke being one of the more unexpected names.
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Oliver Schnyder, James Gaffigan, Luzerner Sinfonieorchester – The 5 Piano Concertos & 4 Overtures (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:26:58 minutes | 4,08 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical – Sony Music
Sony Classical is delighted to bring you the latest album from the sensational pianist, Oliver Schnyder, featuring a selection of Ludwig van Beethoven’s greatest works including his complete piano concertos and selected overtures. Dubbed the “piano poet” and with over 12,000 fans on Facebook alone, Schynder’s aesthetic approach is compared with that of the great pianists Kempff, Schnabel, Fischer and Barenboim. Ludwig van Beethoven stands for independence of mind, for revolutionary ideas, for music that reaches far beyond his own time. The year 2020 marks the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth. The Lucerne Symphony Orchestra with its chief conductor James Gaffigan took this as an occasion to realize the “Beethoven Project.” The result is this truly landmark recording featuring all of his remarkable piano concertos and a selection of his most famous overtures. Oliver appears in the most important concert venues in Europe, North America and Asia such as Wigmore Hall, Concertgebouw, Kölner Philharmonie, Herkulessaal and Carnegie Hall. His chamber music collaboration with violinist Andreas Janke and with the cellist Benjamin Nyffenegger led in 2012 to the founding of the Oliver Schnyder Trio. In 2016, Schnyder was awarded a prestigious Werkbeitrag by the Aargauer Kuratorium. James Gaffigan, Chief Conductor – Hailed for the natural ease of his conducting and the compelling insight of his musicianship, James Gaffigan continues to attract international attention and is one of the most outstanding American conductors working today. Gaffigan also holds positions as Principal Guest Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and was appointed the first Principal Guest Conductor of the Gürzenich Orchestra, Cologne in September 2013, a position that was created for him. Luzerner Sinfonieorchester – Orchestra-in-residence of the renowned KKL Luzern. As Switzerland’s oldest symphony orchestra (founded in 1806), it has gained an international standing that extends far beyond its home territory. Strongly anchored in Lucerne, a city with a worldwide reputation for music, the orchestra offers a number of annual concert cycles and organizes the Zaubersee Festival – Russian Music Lucerne. It also acts as the opera orchestra of the Lucerne Theatre.
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Sergey Prokofiev – Symphonies Nos. 6 & 7 – Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, James Gaffigan (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96kHz | Time – 01:12:53 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: Q0buz | Digital Booklet | © Challenge Records / Northstar Recordings
Recorded: Studio 5, MCO, Hilversum, The Netherlands
Recording dates: 8-10 June 2015 (Symphony no. 6), 29-31 October 2012 (Symphony no. 7)
The harmony in this Sixth symphony is fundamentally tonal, replete with omens and dissonances that sometimes resolve but sometimes testify to his predilection for abrupt shifts of mood, derived from film music, or for unpredictable gear changes from lyrical to more restless melodies. The composer’s choice of instrumentation confirms his feeling for élan and transparency. Prokofiev said virtually nothing of the meaning behind the work. He associated the shadowy sound world with the impact of injuries caused by the War. Prokofiev’s friend, the composer Myaskovsky, confessed that he only began to understand the work properly at the third hearing. Prokofiev was a modernist and a classicist at the same time, and this dichotomy was completely personal and at the same time far from clear. Indeed, it remains a mystery to many people to this day.
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