Tedi Papavrami, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Emmanuel Krivine – Bartók: Violin Concerto No. 2 in B Major, Sz. 112 & Concerto for Orchestra, Sz. 116 (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Tedi Papavrami, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Emmanuel Krivine – Bartók: Violin Concerto No. 2 in B Major, Sz. 112 & Concerto for Orchestra, Sz. 116 (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:16:14 minutes | 1,31 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

After two first recordings released by Zig-Zag Territoires and devoted to Ravel, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, Emmanuel Krivine and the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra devote this CD to two emblematic works from the end of Bartók’s life: the Violin Concerto No.2, first performed in 1939, and the Concerto for Orchestra, premiered in 1944. These are absolutely major works both in Bartók’s catalogue and from this period in the history of music, and are, moreover, close to the universe of Emmanuel Krivine. For the Violin Concerto, it is Tedi Papavrami who was invited by both the Orchestra and by Zig-Zag Territoires. Let us recall the astonishing recording that Tedi Papavrami recently made of Eugène Ysaÿe’s complete violin sonatas for this label.

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Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Gustavo Gimeno – Shostakovich: Symphony No. 1, Scherzi, Theme and Variations & 5 Fragments (2012) DSF DSD64

Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Gustavo Gimeno – Shostakovich: Symphony No. 1, Scherzi, Theme and Variations & 5 Fragments (2012)
Gustavo Gimeno conducts the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg in a fascinating survey of confident, assured and striking orchestral works by the young Shostakovich. This new recording for PENTATONE includes his breathtaking Symphony No.1 op. 10 — the student work which brought Shostakovich international fame.

While indebted to the Russian masters, Shostakovich’s early works nevertheless demonstrate his precocious brilliance, originality and flair and they offer an intriguing glimpse at the evolution of his distinctive, mature style. From the easy going and good humoured Scherzo op. 1, the Tchaikovskian Theme and Variations in B-flat major op.3, or the Stravinskyan Scherzo op. 7, his youthful vitality is never in doubt. But with his Symphony No.1 op. 10 he produced his first masterpiece and found his own distinctive voice. It’s a thrilling work full of sardonic edginess, pained introspection and dramatic outbursts, and closes with a barnstorming finale. Composed 10 years later, the aptly titled Five Fragments for orchestra op. 42 are short, pungent and austere pieces; the arresting style is modernist but the sound is unmistakeably Shostakovich.

Following his acclaimed conducting dbut with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in 2014, Gustavo Gimeno took up the post of Music Director of the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg with the 2015/2016 season. An auspicious collaboration with PENTATONE followed in 2016 and three releases with the orchestra are planned in 2017. “His musical rhetorics are refined, his grip on the structure of the compositions is accurate and convincing” observed Joep Stapel in the NRC Handelsblad, “Gimeno knew how to keep the tension and made the musicians … excel.”

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Charles Castronovo, Ludovic Tézier, Orchestre Philharmonique Du Luxembourg & Gustavo Gimeno – Puccini: Messa di gloria & Orchestral Works (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Charles Castronovo, Ludovic Tézier, Orchestre Philharmonique Du Luxembourg & Gustavo Gimeno – Puccini: Messa di gloria & Orchestral Works (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:09:16 minutes | 2,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Before turning his attention to opera, Puccini wrote a number of wonderful works that are perhaps less well known, even if they already put his full genius on show. This is particularly true of the astonishing Messa di Gloria, whose evocative power and shimmering colours well deserve the exceptional cast on this recording. Indeed, a special passion inspires the soloists and chorus gathered around Gustavo Gimeno and the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg.

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Miah Persson, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg & Gustavo Gimeno – Mahler: Symphony No. 4 in G Major & Piano Quartet in A Minor (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Miah Persson, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg & Gustavo Gimeno – Mahler: Symphony No. 4 in G Major & Piano Quartet in A Minor (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:09 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone

Gustavo Gimeno has been musical director of the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra since 2015. It was around Autumn 2016 that Pentatone announced a series of recordings – technically magnificent, as is par for the course with the Polyhymnia International engineers, who are tending the flame of the old Philips label – for which the Luxembourgeois phalanx was conducted at the Concertgebouw by Mariss Jansons’s former assistant. In recent months, the graphically-sparse series has already kicked off its releases with an album from Bruckner (with some very rare pieces); Shostakovich (with the First) and Ravel (Daphnis et Chloé). Today, Pentatone has published Mahler’s Fourth, teeming with details, broadly coloured with bucolic lyricism.

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Denis Kozhukhin, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg & Gustavo Gimeno – Franck: Symphony in D Minor, FWV 48 & Variations symphoniques, FWV 46 (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Denis Kozhukhin, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg & Gustavo Gimeno – Franck: Symphony in D Minor, FWV 48 & Variations symphoniques, FWV 46 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:59 minutes | 898 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone

The Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg and its Music Director Gustavo Gimeno present a composer portrait of César Franck. The album features the famous Symphony in D Minor, as well as the lesser known, but equally enchanting Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra, with Denis Kozhukhin as soloist. Born in Liege but raised in Paris, Franck synthesized Wagnerism with French musical traditions, resulting in a fine equilibrium between a voluptuous orchestral sound and audacious harmonies on the one hand, and lucidity and graceful charm on the other. While the three-movement symphony follows a from-darkness-to-light trajectory, the delightful Variations oscillate between symphonic poem and miniature piano concerto.

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Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg & Gustavo Gimeno – Francisco Coll: Orchestral Works (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg & Gustavo Gimeno – Francisco Coll: Orchestral Works (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:20:20 minutes | 2,68 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone

The OPL and Gustavo Gimeno continue their acclaimed PENTATONE series of composer portraits with a monograph of a living composer, Francisco Coll. In Coll’s music, the past and present converge in a single space, by realising a contemporary sound world while creatively employing traditional forms and influences, be it a classical genre (Violin Concerto and the “grotesque symphony” Mural) or his musical roots (Four Iberian Miniatures). With pieces composed between 2005 and 2019, the album traces Coll’s spectacular musical development, from his studies under Thomas Adès in London to his present bloom. The lush, sensuous nature of his orchestral writing fully comes to life in these performances. Besides the strong relationship between Coll and conductor Gimeno, this new release also showcases the exceptional violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, for whom he has written several works, including his violin concerto, first recorded here.

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Orchestre Philharmonique Du Luxembourg & Gustavo Gimeno – Stravinsky: L’Oiseau de feu, Apollon Musagète (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Orchestre Philharmonique Du Luxembourg & Gustavo Gimeno – Stravinsky: L’Oiseau de feu, Apollon Musagète (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:17:22 minutes | 2,26 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Post-Romantic dazzle in The Firebird (1910), neo-classical elegance in Apollon musagète (1928): Igor Stravinsky is revealed here in all his diverse genius. Between the shimmering world of Russian folk traditions and the Apollonian cosmos of Greek mythology, he creates two radically different and protean musical universes.

For their second recording with harmonia mundi, Gustavo Gimeno and the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg reveal the splendours of these two major ballets of the early twentieth century.

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Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Gustavo Gimeno – Debussy: La mer, Ibéria, Images & 6 Épigraphes antiques (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Gustavo Gimeno – Debussy: La mer, Ibéria, Images & 6 Épigraphes antiques (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:20 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone

Released in the year of Claude Debussys death centenary, this album demonstrates the exceptional harmonic and coloristic richness of his music. The centerpiece of the album is La Mer (1903-1905), a musical realization of the composers sincere devotion to the sea that revolutionized orchestral composition in the early twentieth-century. Ibéria takes the listener on a trip to Spain, whereas the Six Épigraphes antiques (1914), here performed in the orchestration of Rudolf Escher, evoke ancient Greece and Egypt. The biggest novelty on this album is Colin Matthews new, lush orchestration of Images. Book 1 (1901-1905), one of Debussys most-cherished piano works. With this Debussy collection, the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg and its Music Director Gustavo Gimeno continue their acclaimed PENTATONE series of composer portraits that already featured monographs of Shostakovich, Bruckner, Ravel, Mahler and Stravinsky.

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Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg & Gustavo Gimeno – Stravinsky: Orchestral Works (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg & Gustavo Gimeno – Stravinsky: Orchestral Works (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:44:40 minutes | 1,70 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone

This album offers a testimony to Stravinsky’s overwhelming musical heritage, covering all the phases of his creative life. Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) is twentieth-century music ! More than any other composer, he continued to develop his compositional style throughout his seven-decade-spanning career, innovating and adopting all the most important musical trends of his century. Historically, the musical journey starts with one of the first recordings of the recently rediscovered Funeral Song (1909), composed as a tribute to his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov. The next phase in his development is represented with the raw but tremendously refined Rite of Spring (1913), Stravinsky’s most famous work that created a scandal at its Paris world premiere, and immediately turned him into a star. His Neoclassical style is showcased by Jeu de cartes (1937) and the Concerto in D (1947), whereas Agon (1957) presents Stravinsky’s original take on Schoenberg’s serialism.

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Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Gustavo Gimeno – Shostakovich: Symphony No. 1, Scherzi, Theme and Variations & 5 Fragments (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Gustavo Gimeno – Shostakovich: Symphony No. 1, Scherzi, Theme and Variations & 5 Fragments (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:31 minutes | 1,08 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone

Gustavo Gimeno conducts the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg in a fascinating survey of confident, assured and striking orchestral works by the young Shostakovich. This new recording for PENTATONE includes his breathtaking Symphony No.1 op. 10 — the student work which brought Shostakovich international fame.

(more…)

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Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg & Gustavo Gimeno – Rossini: Petite messe solennelle (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg & Gustavo Gimeno – Rossini: Petite messe solennelle (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:21:40 minutes | 1,32 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone

In Rossini’s Petite Messe sollenelle (1863-1867), sacred tones blend in seamlessly with allusions to his comic operas. “Is this sacred music which I have written or music of the devil?”, the composer tellingly asked himself in a personal letter. Rossini’s enigmatic but highly enjoyable mass demonstrates his rich musical palette, ranging from “archaic” remnants of Bach, Haydn and Mozart to harmonic audacities that point towards the music of Fauré and even Poulenc. Despite this stylistic range, the Petite Messe sollenelle sounds unmistakably Rossinian, and continues to enchant audiences to this day. Initially composed for a small ensemble of singers accompanied by two pianos and a harmonium, the piece is presented here in Rossini’s orchestration.

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Agresta, Barcellona, Barbera, Lepore, Wiener Singverein, Orchestre Philharmonique Du Luxembourg, Gustavo Gimeno – Rossini: Stabat Mater (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Agresta, Barcellona, Barbera, Lepore, Wiener Singverein, Orchestre Philharmonique Du Luxembourg, Gustavo Gimeno - Rossini: Stabat Mater (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Agresta, Barcellona, Barbera, Lepore, Wiener Singverein, Orchestre Philharmonique Du Luxembourg, Gustavo Gimeno – Rossini: Stabat Mater (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:22 minutes | 959 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

For their first recording with harmonia mundi, Gustavo Gimeno and the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg revisit Rossini’s famous Stabat Mater. This work, composed after the premature end of his career in the theatre, has sometimes been criticised for its exuberance and operatic vocal writing. But that is also what makes it a unique and spellbinding work. The team assembled for this recording has perfectly understood this, and dares to present a reading that is as moving as it is exhilarating!
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Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Gustavo Gimeno – Debussy: La mer, Ibéria, Images & 6 Épigraphes antiques (2018) [Official Digital Download DSF DSD64/2.82MHz + FLAC 24bit/192kHz]

Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Gustavo Gimeno – Debussy: La mer, Ibéria, Images & 6 Épigraphes antiques (2018)
DSD64 (.dsf) 1 bit/2,82 MHz | Time – 01:18:04 minutes | 3,09 GB
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:18:04 minutes | 1,31 MB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Digital booklet | © PentaTone

Released in the year of Claude Debussy’s death centenary, this album demonstrates the exceptional harmonic and colouristic richness of his music. Centrepiece of the album is La Mer (1903-1905), a musical realization of the composer’s “sincere devotion to the sea” that revolutionized orchestral composition in the early twentieth-century.

Iberia takes the listener on a trip to Spain, whereas the Six Epigraphes antiques (1914), here performed in the orchestration of Rudolf Escher, evoke ancient Greece and Egypt. The biggest novelty on this album is Colin Matthews’s new, lush orchestration of Images, Book 1 (1901-1905), one of Debussy’s most-cherished piano works.

With this Debussy collection, the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg and its Music Director Gustavo Gimeno continue their acclaimed Pentatone series of composer portraits that already featured monographs of Shostakovich, Bruckner, Ravel, Mahler and Stravinsky.

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