Ryoko Morooka, Stepan Simonian, Ralph Evans, Efim Boico, Gil Sharon, Niklas Schmidt, Fine Arts Quartet – Dvořák: String Quartet No. 2, Bagatelles & Rondo, B. 171 (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:15:04 minutes | 748 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naxos
Antonín Dvořák is revered as one of the greatest composers of late 19th-century Romanticism. He is celebrated for the kind of poignant melodies redolent of Czech folk music found in the utterly charming Bagatelles and Rondo – the haunting tunes and harmonic twists of which represent the distinctive style that brought him international fame. Less known is that during the years 1868–70 Dvořák composed in a style so wild for the time that it foreshadowed the modernistic innovations of Schoenberg and his contemporaries. Dvořák’s Second Quartet reveals fascinating examples of early experimentation before his transition into the harmonious Slavic style for which he is so beloved.
Read moreNiklas Schmidt & Stepan Simonian – Gesänge des Lebens (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]
Niklas Schmidt & Stepan Simonian – Gesänge des Lebens (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:47 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Fontenay Classics
It is an imaginary concert program comprising an enormous emotional spectrum from the extremely intimate (Malinconia, Waldesruhe, Prayer, etc.) to the virtuoso and life-affirming (Rondino, L‘abeille, and Andaluza); it is also a journey through disparate musical regions from North to South, from Finland to Spain, that poses some of the great questions of human existence: questions of meaning and duration, of inner peace, memory, and salvation. For years, the works I have selected here have always fascinated me with their inner greatness or melancholy beauty. Each of them is an homage to the virtuoso and lyrical possibilities of the cello and, not least, to the fantastic interpreters who have shaped my life as a musician – Emanuel Feuermann, Pau Casals, Gregor Piatigorsky, Gaspar Cassadó, Pierre Fournier, Mstislav Rostropovitch, and Arto Noras, to name only a few. Poe- tic moments of quiet contemplation encounter life-affirming, extremely sensual music of direct corporeal power.
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