Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Peter Oundjian – John Adams: Harmonielehre, Doctor Atomic Symphony, Short Ride in a Fast Machine (2013)
SACD Rip | SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 / 5.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 1:10:15 minutes | 3,43 GB
Genre: Classical | Publisher (label): Chandos CHSA 5129
In this new release Peter Oundjian and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra tackle two seminal works by the American composer John Adams. Harmonielehre, a symphony in all but name, is an expansive, richly expressive, and often breathtaking work. It takes its title from a 1911 text by Arnold Schoenberg on harmonic theory and evokes the lush soundworld of that composer’s early tonal period. Also heard throughout the score are echoes of Mahler, Wagner, Strauss, Sibelius, Debussy, Ravel, and Stravinsky. The piece also takes inspiration from some of Adams’s own strange and surreal dreams. The Doctor Atomic Symphony, based on Adams’s controversial opera Doctor Atomic, focuses on the character of the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer as preparations are made for the first test of the atomic bomb. Although played without a break, the symphony falls into three distinct sections: ‘The Laboratory’, ‘Panic’, and ‘Trinity’. The symphony’s concluding section takes its title from the name given to the bomb test site by Oppenheimer himself, with reference to a deeply spiritual John Donne sonnet. This poem is set to music at the end of Act I of the opera and here in the symphony the aria’s intense vocal line is performed by solo trumpet. Also featured on the disc is John Adams’s energetic fanfare Short Ride in a Fast Machine.
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Peter Oundjian – Vaughan Williams: Piano Concerto, Oboe Concerto, Serenade to Music & Flos Campi (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:22:21 minutes | 1,52 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
With this celebratory release completing his fourteen-year tenure as Music Director of the TSO, Peter Oundjian conducts an exquisite Vaughan Williams programme, supported by an all-Canadian cast of star soloists.
In the programme notes of the concert preceding the recording, Oundjian declared: ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams was possibly England’s most significant composer, and he is a personal favourite of mine. This [recording] presents some of his finest works, featuring soloists from the Orchestra as well as some of Canada’s most notable solo artists, and the Elmer Iseler Singers. The lyrical and engaging Oboe Concerto is rarely heard, but it is one of his most inspired works. Serenade to Music showcases his exquisite vocal writing, which also figures prominently in the ravishingly beautiful Flos Campi, so surprisingly scored for solo viola, choir, and chamber orchestra. The Piano Concerto is more dramatic, with a juggernaut opening and a brilliant fugal finale.’
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Tchaikovsky & Khachaturian – Piano Concertos – Xiayin Wang, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Peter Oundjian (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96kHz | Time – 01:15:19 minutes | 1,22 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: theCLASSICALshop | Digital Booklet | © Chandos Records
Recorded: Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow; 8 and 9 November 2015
After a year off the concert platform, Xiayin Wang, a specialist in the romantic repertoire, presents a new recording of two relatively little-played piano concertos: No. 2 by Tchaikovsky, in its much lesser-known yet extremely virtuosic original version, and Khachaturian’s. The disc also marks the 125th anniversary of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, here conducted by its Music Director, Peter Oundjian.
Involving the same forces as Wang’s earlier recording of American concertos (Editor’s Choice in the magazine Pianist), the album follows a performance in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall, described by The Scotsman as ‘breathtakingly athletic’.
Composed more than fifty years apart, these pieces have perhaps only one thing in common, namely an opening grandiosity or grandeur. Yet, while Tchaikovsky in 1879, in his heyday, undercut imperial splendour with a wealth of contrasting material that pointed the way ahead to more experimental, post-imperial concertos such as Prokofiev’s Second, Khachaturian’s folk generalisations, vaguely Armenian or Georgian, remain the consistent thumbprint of a rather heavier style.
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