Jun Markl

Residentie Orkest Den Haag, Jun Märkl – Saint-Saëns: Dances & Ballet Music (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Residentie Orkest Den Haag, Jun Märkl - Saint-Saëns: Dances & Ballet Music (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

This album presents a selection of Saint-Saëns’ incidental music and music from his operas. From Samson et Dalila – the only one of Saint-Saëns’ operas to remain in the repertory – we hear two memorable and adrenalin-fuelled dances including the famous Bacchanale. Henry VIII drew from the composer music of regal solemnity with plenty of colourful scoring, praised by Gounod. The lukewarm reception to Étienne Marcel came as a bitter disappointment to Saint-Saëns but the customary ballet includes a strong element of delightful 14th-century pastiche. The incidental music to the play Parysatis received tumultuous acclaim at its premiere in 1902 and includes the delightful Airs de ballet flecked by the use of crotales (antique finger-cymbals).
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Jun Märkl – Camille Saint-Saëns : Symphonic Poems (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · December 2, 2023 · Comments off

Jun Märkl - Camille Saint-Saëns : Symphonic Poems (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

The reputation of Camille Saint-Saëns is recovering from decades of self-serving modernist depredations, and it’s becoming clear that much of his prolific output contains gems that are on a plane with his comparative handful of popular works. Here the popular one is the final Danse Macabre, Op. 40, but the rest of the program is so strong that the delightful Halloweener has the flavor of an encore. The program doesn’t even consist entirely of symphonic poems. Two of the best finds are the adjacent Serenade and Rigaudon, Op. 93, Nos. 1 and 2, perfectly formed apotheoses of Baroque genres that embody the neoclassic idea well in advance of its actual beginnings (sample these, which are not commonly played). The symphonic poems themselves are fun and evocative enough that you might have a shot at guessing them without titles or other guidance. Two deal with the young Hercules, and make you wish Saint-Saëns had written an opera on this theme. The glittering Phaéton, Op. 39, serves as an overture to match the closing Danse Macabre and lays out the sufficiently silky tones of the Orchestre National de Lille with its German conductor, Jun Märkl. A thoroughly enjoyable three-quarters of an hour of music.
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Tianwa Yang, ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra & Jun Märkl – Prokofiev: Violin Works (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 16, 2023 · Comments off

Prokofiev first became fascinated by the violin upon hearing the playing of his private teacher, Reinhold Glière. A dozen years later Prokofiev wrote his Violin Concerto No. 1 – a work of contrasting open-hearted lyricism and whimsical playfulness that features a wild central Scherzo with dazzling technical gymnastics. By contrast, the Violin Concerto No. 2 is emotionally reserved and sardonic with an inspired plaintive and long-arching slow movement. Composed to an official Soviet commission for an ensemble piece to be played by talented child violinists in unison, the witty and upbeat Sonata for Solo Violin can also be played by a single performer.

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Tonkünstler Orchester & Jun Märkl – Mussorgsky: Bilder einer Ausstellung & Other Works (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · October 10, 2023 · Comments off

Might you have a reliable original edition of Modest Mussorgsky’s «Pictures at an Exhibition» for piano, that I could borrow? The request was made by Maurice Ravel in February 1922 to his friend «Calvo», full name Michel Dimitri Calvoressi, a Marseille-born British music critic and author with Greek roots. In the letter Ravel went so far as to underline the words «édition originale de Moussorgsky». So at least as far back as Ravel we have had this problem, one that Jun Märkl is even today all too aware of: the quest for the original Mussorgsky has always been difficult. Back then, Calvo was clearly unable to help the composer. Ravel, who had been delighted to receive a commission from the conductor Serge Koussevitzky for an instrumental arrangement of the piano cycle, had to content himself with the edition published in 1886, after Mussorgsky’s death, under the aegis of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov – a version we now know to contain a number of corrections, typos and printing errors. The reasons for this can be found in the personal fate of the composer and in the well-meaning and in some cases essential retrospective editing of his oeuvre.

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