Nicolas Altstaedt – Creation (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Nicolas Altstaedt - Creation (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Nicolas Altstaedt – Creation (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:21 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

Forty years have passed since Gidon Kremer created a little musical oasis in the Austrian town of Lockenhaus in 1981. The violinist’s open-minded attitude has left its mark on this event, which has become a must in the concert calendar, and the cellist Nicolas Altstaedt, who took up the torch in 2012, continues the same philosophy. For this fortieth anniversary, he has decided to call on composers who have come to Lockenhaus or had works performed there in the past ten years. Hence the programme contains two premieres – the cello concertos of Raphaël Merlin and Helena Winkelman – but also short pieces by Erkki-Sven Tüür, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Lera Auerbach, Patkop, Maja Ratkje, Matan Porat, Kurt Schwertsik and Johannes Fischer. Musical postcards that celebrate the anniversary while foreshadowing the next forty years!
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Fazil Say, Nicolas Altstaedt – 4 Cities (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Fazil Say, Nicolas Altstaedt - 4 Cities (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Fazil Say, Nicolas Altstaedt – 4 Cities (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:35 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Warner Classics

This bracingly eclectic recital opens with Fazıl Say’s Four Cities, a musical celebration of four Turkish locations the composer describes as “full of personal memories”. Originally a BBC commission, it was premiered in June 2012 during the City of London Festival by Nicolas Altstaedt and José Gallardo.
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Nicolas Altstaedt, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra & Hannu Lintu – Sebastian Fagerlund: Cello Concerto “Nomade” & Water Atlas (Live) (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Nicolas Altstaedt, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra & Hannu Lintu – Sebastian Fagerlund: Cello Concerto “Nomade” & Water Atlas (Live) (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:17 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

During the 2010s, Sebastian Fagerlund focused on a series of orchestral compositions and concertos, making one single excursion into vocal music: the opera Höstsonaten (Autumn Sonata, 2017). One of his most important works, the opera has influenced his subsequent music, with an increase of long melodic lines alongside his signature rhythmic drive and energy. Dedicated to Nicolas Altstaedt, Fagerlund’s cello concerto Nomade consists of six movements played without a break – a journey by the cellist-wanderer through various landscapes, moods and events depicted by the orchestra.

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Nicolas Altstaedt – Beethoven: Complete Works for Fortepiano and Violoncello (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Nicolas Altstaedt – Beethoven: Complete Works for Fortepiano and Violoncello (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:24:23 minutes | 2,36 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

Beethoven’s output for fortepiano and violoncello is fascinating because it covers every period of his career, from early to late, with references to Bach in Op. 69 and Op. 102 No. 2 and an especially innovative and amazingly modern musical language. For this complete set, which includes the Variations on a theme from Handel’s “Judas Maccabaeus” and the Variations on a theme from Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte”, Nicolas Altstaedt was keen to record on an instrument with gut strings, a Guadagnini from Piacenza dated 1749, and using a Classical bow.

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Nicolas Altstaedt, Pekka Kuusisto, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Dima Slobodeniouk – Salonen: Cello Concerto & Ravel: Sonata for Violin and Cello (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Nicolas Altstaedt, Pekka Kuusisto, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Dima Slobodeniouk - Salonen: Cello Concerto & Ravel: Sonata for Violin and Cello (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Nicolas Altstaedt, Pekka Kuusisto, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Dima Slobodeniouk – Salonen: Cello Concerto & Ravel: Sonata for Violin and Cello (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 57:20 minutes | 978 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

Nicolas Altstaedt presents here his version of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s monumental Cello Concerto, originally composed for Yo-Yo Ma, and given its Finnish premiere by Altstaedt under the composer’s direction. In partnership with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Dima Slobodeniouk, he reveals its full expressive dimension here: “The first movement opens with what, in my sketchbook, was called “Chaos to line”’, says Esa-Pekka Salonen. Chaos, a metaphorical comet, a rhythmic mantra with congas and bongos, a wild dance… Salonen goes on to say of the third movement: “I imagined the orchestra as some kind of gigantic lung, expanding and contracting first slowly, but accelerating to a point of mild hyperventilation which leads back to the dance-like material”.

The coupling is the famous Ravel’s Duo (to give it the original title used at its premiere), which Nicolas Altstaedt and Pekka Kuusisto have been performing and refining ever since 2010, and which it was high time to record.
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Nicolas Altstaedt – Schoenberg: String Trio – Regamey: Quintet (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Nicolas Altstaedt – Schoenberg: String Trio – Regamey: Quintet (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 49:56 minutes | 871 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

Under the artistic direction of Nicolas Altstaedt, this multi-award winning series in collaboration with the Lockenhaus Festival continues to bring to light great works of chamber music by composers who are already well known or still awaiting discovery. Schoenberg was in his early seventies when he composed his String Trio op. 45 in 1946, completing it after suffering a terrible heart attack. He told Thomas Mann that the trio reflected his physical and psychological condition of that period. The composer Constantin Regamey, born in Kiev in 1907, is little known. A Swiss of Polish descent, he was also a pianist, music critic and writer, who was appointed lecturer in Indian philology at Warsaw University in 1936. He joined the Polish Resistance in 1942 and it was at this time that he wrote his Quintet for clarinet, bassoon, violin, cello and piano.

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Ian Bostridge, Antonio Pappano, Vilde Frang, Nicolas Altstaedt – Beethoven: Songs & Folksongs (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Ian Bostridge, Antonio Pappano, Vilde Frang, Nicolas Altstaedt – Beethoven: Songs & Folksongs (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:05 minutes | 1,02 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics

Conductor Antonio Pappano gladly trades in his conductor’s baton for his piano keys in this recording during which he accompanies some of the greatest voices in music today. He plays in perfect complicity with English tenor Ian Bostridge in this exciting program devoted to a selection of Beethoven’s Lieder.

The centrepiece of this album is, of course, An die ferne Geliebte (“To the distant beloved”), which is considered to be the first ever Lieder cycle in the history of music. The six poems depict an unknown woman that the composer had idealised from their very first encounter, quickly followed by their separation. His longing for her caused him so much torment that even the joyous awakening of spring could not take away his melancholy in this heart-rending lover’s lament.

The other twenty or so Lieder on this album, including the famous Adelaide, which was also set to music by Schubert, are a testament to Beethoven’s mastery of the lied and popular songs, which he liked to harmonise. Ian Bostridge and Antonio Pappano interpret these rare gems with sensitivity and sophistication. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Details of original recording : Recorded 2–4.X.2019, St Jude-on-the-Hill, London (England)

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Gidon Kremer, Nicolas Altstaedt – Sofia Gubaidulina: Canticle of the Sun (2012) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Gidon Kremer, Nicolas Altstaedt – Sofia Gubaidulina: Canticle of the Sun (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:09:18 minutes | 600 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series

Two major works by Sofia Gubaidulina comprise this album: “The Lyre of Orpheus” (composed in 2006), for violin, percussion and string orchestra, and “The Canticle of the Sun” (1997, rev. 1998), for violoncello, chamber choir, percussion and celesta. Both pieces were recorded at the Lockenhaus Festival in, respectively, 2006 and 2010.

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