Marc Albrecht – Korngold: Much Ado About Nothing Suite & Symphony in F-Sharp Major (2010/2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:37 minutes | 1,30 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PENTATONE
Korngold began working on his 1st symphony in Vienna in 1951 and completed it in 1952. The work summarized his whole life, which had been lived between two worlds: opera and film and between Europe and the United States. It was intended as a tribute to his “refuge” America and was dedicated to President Roosevelt. Albrecht has been acclaimed for his commitment to 20th century music.
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Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, Marc Albrecht – Franz Schreker: Der Schatzgraber – (2013)
DSF 5.0 Surround DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 02:31:02 minutes | 17,9 GB | Genre: Classical
Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Front Cover | © Challenge Records
Richard Wagner caused a toxic shock in western music. With Tristan und Isolde (1865), Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868) and Parsifal (1882), to say nothing of Der Ring des Nibelungen (1876), he challenged his successors to take up the gauntlet, revive opera and establish a fresh ethical structure for the new generation. The 19th century slid in the 20th and such questions took on an urgent tone, as writers, artists, architects and composers sought to create a utopian present in an increasingly dystopian world. Franz Schreker, a Monaco-born composer who settled in Vienna, provided multiple answers through his kaleidoscopic operas. Looking back to Wagner, while embracing the fashions and forms of his own time, Schreker pondered what an artist should offer to modern society. In his fifth opera, Der Schatzgräber – composed between 1915 and 1918 and premiered in Frankfurt on 21 January 1920 – that crisis of conscience finds voice in mystic medievalism. But, despite those fairy-tale appearances, the questions posed by Schreker’s treasure seeker are as urgent as any found in Tristan, Die Meistersinger and Parsifal.
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Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra & Marc Albrecht – R. Strauss: Ein Heldenleben & Burleske (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:48 minutes | 1,11 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone
While starting his career adhering to Brahms’ “absolute” or “formalist” compositional approach, Richard Strauss rapidly turned into a staunch supporter of Wagner’s Zukunftsmusik, writing a series of iconoclast symphonic poems full of metaphysical allusions. This album features both sides of Strauss’s musical persona with the Burleske in D minor as well as Ein Heldenleben. While the former is a playful, miniature quasi concerto for piano and orchestra, the latter epitomises Strauss’s symphonic style: majestic, virtuosically orchestrated, full of grand ideas, but never without irony. In that respect, Ein Heldenleben has more in common with Burleske than one would expect. Strauss’ arguably satirical self-identification with the hero of his symphonic poem is underlined by recurrent self-quotations from previous compositions. The central role of the solo violin makes it another solo concerto in disguise, albeit less overtly than Burleske.
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Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, Marc Albrecht – Brahms: Piano Quartet Op.25; Schonberg (2015)
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 & 5.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 50:33 minutes | Digital booklet | 2,62 GB
or FLAC 2.0 Stereo (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Digital booklet | 903 MB
or DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 51:03 minutes | 2,01 GB
Features Stereo and Multichannel surround sound | PentaTone # PTC 5186398
The label Pentatone issues a new recording featuring conductor Marc Albrecht and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra presenting Brahms’ Piano Quartet for violin, alto, cello and piano in g minor op. 25 in the orchestration by Arnold Schöenberg. Schöenberg orchestrated the quartet during his exile in California following a commission by Otto Klemperer who premiered it with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. It is more of a re-writing than an arrangement, giving to Brahms’ music a flamboyant and glorious sound: Marc Albrecht’s account is joyful and refreshing, rich in dynamics with fast and brisk tempos that turn the famous final Rondo alla zingarese in a breathtaking orchestral firework.
A real gem serve as a fill up of this CD: it is the Accompaniment to a cinematographic scene a nine minutes piece, seldom performed and seldom recorded, written by Schöenberg in 1929, upon request of the publisher Heinrichshofen. Marc Albrecht successfully brings to life the sense of imminent catastrophe that pervades this music; a catastrophe set to begin with Hitler becoming chancellor of the Reich after the 1933 elections after which the composer emigrated to US. It is an enigmatic piece worthy to be listened, which deserves to be list among Schöenberg’s masterpieces, which finds in this recording a wonderful interpretation.
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Elizabeth Watts, Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, Marc Albrecht – Mahler: Symphony No. 4 (2015)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 57:50 minutes | 2,28 GB | Genre: Classical
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 57:50 minutes | 951 MB
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover | © Pentatone Music B.V.
Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 portrays another side of the composer, different to the one hitherto seen by the general public. No major battles are fought in this symphony; rather, it is a portrayal of a childlike vision of life and a better world in the Hereafter. Mahler’s Dutch friend and colleague, Alphons Diepenbrock, may well have provided the most fitting description of the nature of this symphony and its position within Mahler’s oeuvre: “[…] in his Symphony No. 4, he exclusively praises the sensations of the soul, severed from all earthly ties, from various angles ⎯either as childish yet unearthly merriment, or as the highest ecstasy attained by mystics in bygone years during the contemplation of the divine. However, one should not search for irony here. The work is like a beautiful dream, an indispensable link in the series of Mahler’s nine symphonies that speak sufficiently of harsh reality, and that, according to some, will one day be considered the monumental musical oeuvre of the present day.”
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Marc Albrecht,Arabella Steinbacher – Zemlinsky: Die Seejungfrau & Korngold: Violin Concerto (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:34 minutes | 1,35 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Musical Concepts
Sowohl Alexander Zemlinsky (1871–1942) als auch Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957) waren gebürtige Österreicher und Juden, und beide zunächst als Opernkomponisten in Wien tätig. Der Aufstieg der Nationalsozialisten zwang die zwei Komponisten zur Übersiedlung in die USA, wo es Korngold wesentlich besser erging als Zemlinsky: Ersterer reüssierte in Hollywood als Filmmusik-Komponist, und viele seiner späteren Partituren, darunter das Violinkonzert op. 35 (1945), sind durch die Filmmusik beeinflusst. Zemlinsky hingegen starb fast vergessen wenige Jahre nach seiner Emigration.
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