Sacconi Quartet, Mark Padmore & Charles Owen – Jonathan Dove: In Damascus (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Sacconi Quartet, Mark Padmore & Charles Owen – Jonathan Dove: In Damascus (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:18 minutes | 1,30 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Signum Records

Even though Jonathan Dove is best known as a vocal or choral composer, with operas and works for children forming the backbone of his output, his chamber music reveals similar predilections for narrative, drama, atmosphere and a sense of the personal. His new commission from the Sacconi Quartet, In Damascus, was inspired by the violinist Hannah Dawson s suggestion for a work that should reflect aspects of the conflict in Syria; not because music can offer any political solution, but simply as an expression of empathy, sorrow, even outrage at those terrible events. Featuring a performance by tenor Mark Padmore, the text is taken from prose-poems by Ali Safar that draw on his first- hand experiences in Syria, eloquently translated by Anne-Marie McManus. The Sacconi s present this new work alongside his string quartet work, Out of Time, and his Piano Quintet, performed with pianist Charles Owen.

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Mark Padmore, Kristian Bezuidenhout – Schubert: Winterreise (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Mark Padmore, Kristian Bezuidenhout – Schubert: Winterreise (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:09:14 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

A journey into the Romantic self: It is clear from its genesis that Schubert did not have any strict dramatic action in mind in this song cycle. Unlike Die schöne Müllerin, Winterreise tells no story; it is a journey into the interior, into ever-deeper realms of loneliness. As Peter Gülke has put it: ‘The only progress the wanderer makes is a progress in perception, the agonising discharge of his memories, constantly threatened by regressions. . . . Continually in search of confirmations of his condition, he observes with an all too alert, painfully keen sensibility, and like an egocentric melancholic refers everything to himself or selects objects so that they can serve as mirror images and corroborations.’ To that extent, the sequence of the songs is not of decisive importance, since ‘each of the melancholies he experiences is the worst at the time’ (Gülke again).

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Mark Padmore & Kristian Bezuidenhout – Beethoven: An die ferne Geliebte (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Mark Padmore & Kristian Bezuidenhout – Beethoven: An die ferne Geliebte (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:10:24 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Following their acclaimed Schumann recording, tenor Mark Padmore and fortepiano phenomenon Kristian Bezuidenhout join forces again for this varied and appealing lieder recital of songs by Haydn, ‘An die ferne Geliebte’ Op.98 by Beethoven, and the Masonic Cantata K.619 by Mozart.

Goethe first featured in Beethoven’s output in the early 1790s with the song ‘Marmotte’ and the composer may well have made sketches for Aus Goethes Faust following his arrival in Vienna (just a few years after the publication of the playwright’s original dramatic ‘fragment’). Beethoven’s first established Goethe setting, however, was Mailied, the melody of which he also employed in one of two arias for Ignaz Umlauf ’s Singspiel Die schöne Schusterin. Neue Liebe, neues Leben came into being in 1798–9, though the more famous version dates from 1809, when Beethoven was writing his incidental music to Goethe’s Egmont.

Composer and poet were in correspondence during 1811 and they finally met in 1812; the two, however, were never to be firm allies. Goethe thought that, although ‘his talent astonished me’, Beethoven ‘is unfortunately an utterly uncontrolled personality’. In turn, the composer was rather dismissive of Goethe’s craving of ‘Court air’, though his underlying admiration persisted, taken up by the young Schubert, whose extraordinary flowering of Lieder began on 19 October 1814 with ‘Gretchen am Spinnrade’. From the same period date Beethoven’s most impressive contributions to early Romantic song. He returned to Christoph August Tiedge’s An die Hoffnung around 1813, having originally set the poem in 1804–5. Notwithstanding that song’s soulful appeal, it was a work of 1816 that offered the true benchmark to the ensuing generation: An die ferne Geliebte.

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Mark Padmore – Schubert: Schwanengesang (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Mark Padmore – Schubert: Schwanengesang (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:11:21 minutes | 2,41 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Decca Music Group Ltd.

Two masterful Schubert interpreters, tenor Mark Padmore and pianist Mitsuko Uchida record Schubert’s Schwanengesang and Beethoven’s ‘An Die Ferne Geliebte’ for the first time. With a lifetime of experience with this music, Uchida and Padmore are the perfect duo to interpret this magnificent repertoire.

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Sinfonieorchester Basel, Ivor Bolton & Mark Padmore – Britten: Our Hunting Fathers, Op. 8 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Sinfonieorchester Basel, Ivor Bolton & Mark Padmore – Britten: Our Hunting Fathers, Op. 8 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 28:43 minutes | 431 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Prospero Classical

Ivor Bolton has been principal conductor of the Basel Symphony Orchestra since the beginning of the 2016 / 17 season and has always had a special affinity with British music. The present album with rather unknown music by Benjamin Britten was therefore a very special concern for him from the beginning. The program consists of the early cycle Our Hunting Fathers (with the tenor Mark Padmore), the Quatre Chansons francaises (a stroke of genius by the only 14-year-old) and the suite from the unfortunately rarely performed opera Gloriana, which, by the way, was written for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

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