![Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Sakari Oramo - Ravel: La valse, M. 72 & Other Works (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/03/04/p7t0457w0ph5a_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Sakari Oramo – Ravel: La valse, M. 72 & Other Works (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:24 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS
Maurice Ravel composed a number of works which have become classics of the repertoire both for solo piano and for orchestra. On the present disc, all except one work were first conceived for piano, which raises the question how it is possible to transfer such pianistic music to the orchestra without making it sound like a mere ‘colourized’ version. Ravel’s orchestral writing was the result of a long apprenticeship and careful study of orchestration treatises as well as scores, notably of works by Rimsky-Korsakov and Richard Strauss. Although his skills as an orchestrator are much admired today, his ability to coax new sounds out of the orchestra wasn’t always appreciated in his own time, however – in 1907 the critic Pierre Lalo complained that ‘in Ravel’s orchestra, no instrument retains its natural sound…’
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![Peter Donohoe, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo - Dora Pejačević: Piano Concerto, Op. 33, Symphony in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 41 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/05/26/vrivsilg3nl9b_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Peter Donohoe, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo – Dora Pejačević: Piano Concerto, Op. 33, Symphony in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 41 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:57 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos
Countess Mária Theodora (Dora) Paulina Pejačević was born in September 1885 in Budapest. Young Dora grew up with all the advantages of an aristocrat: a fairy-tale life of opulent palaces set in idyllic landscapes; privilege, comfort, leisure, and wealth. From an early age she defied convention and walked her own path, one that eventually led her to ‘despise’ the aristocracy. Her father, Count Teodor Pejačević, a lawyer, held several high posts, including that of Civil Governor of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia (1903 – 07). Her mother, Lilla Vay de Vaya, an ‘exceptionally beautiful’ Hungarian countess, was a gifted pianist and singer, and a fine amateur artist. Her parents arranged private lessons with teachers at the Music School of the Croatian Music Institute, at Zagreb, which lead to further instruction in Dresden and Munich. Dissatisfied with the ‘limits’ of her formal studies, Pejačević pursued her own intensive course of self-instruction in composition. Having taken her music education into her own hands, she set off to enrich and broaden her intellectual horizons, travelling to cultural centres in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. During these travels, she came to know the leading artists, poets, and intellectuals of the day. The Piano Concerto was her first orchestral composition, and the first piano concerto by any Croatian composer. She composed the Symphony in F sharp minor during the first world war, whilst also working as a volunteer nurse. For its first complete performance, in 1920, she revised the work, which is here recorded in this final version.
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BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo – Bacewicz: Orchestral Works, Vol. 1 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:50 minutes | 1009 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
The three works on this album were all composed between 1943 and 1953. Despite the extreme experiences and difficulties she faced during this undoubtedly most tragic time in Poland’s history, Grażyna Bacewicz managed to compose outstanding works which constitute splendid testimony to the vibrant creative potency for which she was renowned. Until 1939 her career as a virtuoso violinist and an emerging composer evolved naturally. Trained by the best Polish pedagogues at the Warsaw Conservatory, she went on to acquire an international education thanks to an Ignacy Paderewski Scholarship, which allowed her to pursue her studies in Paris: composition with Nadia Boulanger, violin with André Touret (1932 – 33) and Carl Flesch (1934 – 35). In spite of her soloistic successes she decided to join the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra as its leader, in order that an improved knowledge and understanding of an orchestra should inform her composition. Poland then suffered terribly at the hands of Hitler and Stalin, before coming under the control of the Soviet Union. This album was recorded and released in collaboration with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, a state cultural institution promoting Polish culture around the world and actively participating in international cultural exchange.
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The BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo – Smyth: Mass in D Major & Overture to “The Wreckers” (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:45 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
Ethel Smyth was one of England’s foremost Victorian composers, and a prominent suffragette. She was the first female composer to be honoured with a Damehood. She studied composition with Carl Reineke in Leipzig (alongside Dvořák, Grieg and Tchaikovsky) and then privately with Heinrich von Herzogenberg (who introduced her to Brahms and Clara Schumann). Her Mass in D is her only largescale religious work, although it was certainly composed for the concert hall rather than the church. Scored for 4 soloists, choir, and orchestra, the Mass in D sets the usual six parts of the mass, but is performed with the Gloria at the end, not second, at the instruction of the composer. Her opera The Wreckers, set in mid-eighteenth-century Cornwall, is considered by some critics to be the ‘most important English opera composed during the period between Purcell and Britten’. The Overture sets the scene wonderfully, as well as introducing the main thematic material to follow. Sakari Oramo and his BBC forces are joined by an outstanding quartet of soloists.
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Akiko Suwanai, City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo – Sibelius & Walton: Violin Concertos (2003)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:41 minutes | 1,21 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Decca Music Group Ltd.
“Suwanai’s Sibelius was as evocative as it could have been. With a rare ability to combine precision and long-bowed resonance, Suwanai is an obvious match for this serious work…hers was a performance that reached deep into the heart of the music.” (The Scotsman, October 2011)
The full orchestra assembled for the evening’s centrepiece, Bruch’s Violin Concerto No 1 in G minor. Akiko Suwanai, a tall, imposing violinist of striking stage presence, raised her bow for a sombre, intense descent of notes at the start: this was big-boned, noble playing, with its rhythmic life taut and rigorous. Long-sighted phrasing gave an equal sense of wide tracts of space and time in the slow movement. The strength of every idea was beautifully placed and poised before a finale thrilling in its perfection of pitch and pacing. “ (The Times, May 2011)
“Seeing such a talented young violinist play this, the last of Mozart’s five authentic violin concertos, with such an instrument was pure joy. As Akiko took her lead from the Maestro, her great skill and lyricism went in perfect partnership with the Philharmonia, who allowed her to articulate the themes of Mozart’s work with a maturity seldom seem in one so young.” (Gazette, April 2011)
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Javier Perianes, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo – Grieg: Piano Concerto & Lyric Pieces (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:01 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
Miniatures and large forms.The work of a young musician of 25, the celebrated Concerto of Grieg combines the great Romantic tradition (Liszt was one of its most fervent admirers) and Norwegian folk music, with the halling and springdans of its thrilling finale. Yet the composer never wrote another, for he felt more comfortable writing in miniature forms. In 35 years he produced no fewer than 66 Lyric Pieces, every one a gem, from the truculent March of the Trolls to the poetic meditations of Homesickness and Remembrances.
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Yevgeny Sudbin, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo – Rachmaninoff Piano Concertos 2 & 3 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:15:12 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Oh no, it’s not the program of this album that’s any kind of news – after all, Rachmaninov’s Second and Third piano concertos have been recorded over and over again by dozen pianists since their very composition – but the interpretation of Russian pianist Yevgeny Sudbin, born in 1980 in Saint-Petersburg. Hailed by “The Daily Telegraph” as ‘potentially one of the greatest pianists of the 21st century’, Yevgeny Sudbin released his first album on BIS in 2005. Since then his recordings have met with critical acclaim and have been regularly featured as “CD of the Month” by the highly choosy BBC Music Magazine or “Editor’s Choice” by the none less choosy Gramophone. Sudbin performs regularly in prestigious venues such as London’s Royal Festival Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Tonhalle Zurich, the Avery Fisher Hall in New York. Recent engagements have included performances with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Gewandhaus Leipzig, and Philharmonia Orchestra. His love of chamber music has resulted in partnerships with musicians including Hilary Hahn, Julia Fischer and the Chilingirian Quartet among others. Appearances at festivals include Aspen, La Roque d’Anthéron, Mostly Mozart and Verbier. In 2016 he was nominated Artist of the Year at the prestigious Gramophone Classical Music Awards.
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Sakari Oramo – Elgar – Symphony No.1 (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:17 minutes | 1,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
It was during the winter of 1900–01 that Elgar began to sketch what he hoped would turn into a symphony – his first. But the sketches were quickly absorbed into several shorter pieces, one of which was the Cockaigne overture. Although composed in the rural area of the Malvern Hills, the work is nevertheless an unashamedly populist portrait of ‘old London town’, complete with references to whistling errand boys and a marching band – the composer himself described the music as ‘cheerful and Londony’. As for the First Symphony, seven years would pass before its première in Manchester and subsequent London performance – a triumphant occasion, as described by Elgar’s publisher: ‘After the first movement E.E. was called out; again, several times, after the third… people stood up and even on their seats to get a view.’ For Elgar, the success must have come as an immense relief – the symphony is hugely ambitious in scale and scope, but also seems to have had a personal significance to the composer, who summarized it as follows: ‘There is no programme beyond a wide experience of human life, with a great charity (love) & a massive hope in the future.’ Conducting this all-Elgar programme is Sakari Oramo, the Finnish conductor who has been all but adopted by English music-lovers and orchestras – for ten years he was music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and since 2013 he holds the post as chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Playing here, however, as on the acclaimed 2013 release of Elgar’s Second Symphony, is his ‘Swedish orchestra’, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. But lovers of Elgar’s music can rest assured: in the words of the reviewer on the British web site classicalsource.com ‘there is no need to be concerned that a Finnish conductor and a Swedish orchestra do not “get” Elgar’s music. They do – with power, passion, compassion and authority…’
Read more![BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo - Sibelius: Lemminkäinen Suite etc (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/25/q3wsll5kgtcsa_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo – Sibelius: Lemminkäinen Suite etc (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:11:34 minutes | 687 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos
Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra since 2013, Sakari Oramo has a special affinity with the music of his compatriot the Finnish composer Sibelius, which this recording admirably demonstrates.
Sibelius’s ever-popular Lemminkäinen Suite is complemented here with the early Spring Song and the lesser-known Suite from Belshazzar’s Feast.
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![Renée Fleming, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Sakari Oramo - Distant Light: Barber - Hillborg - Björk (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/23/0002894830419_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Renée Fleming, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Sakari Oramo – Distant Light: Barber – Hillborg – Björk (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:47 minutes | 946 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Decca Music Group Ltd.
‘Distant Light’ is Renée Fleming’s first foray into the hypnotic world of Scandinavian music. For her first new studio album in three years she has chosen to inspire and provoke with a daring mix of music.
The title comes from a poem in a new song cycle dedicated to Renée and here receiving its world premiere recording: Anders Hillborg’s ‘The Strand Settings’.
“At once atmospheric, elegiac and unsettling, the work was crafted with Ms. Fleming’s creamy voice in mind”, wrote the New York Times at its first performance in 2013. One of Sweden’s brightest star composers Hillborg has a close relationship with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic where this recording was made in February 2016 with its principal conductor Sakari Oramo.
Renée couples this with three songs by Björk in specially commissioned orchestrations by the brilliant Swedish composer and arranger Hans Ek, recorded here for the first time.
Why Björk? Both she and Renée are recipients of Sweden’s Polar Music Prize. Both dare to be original. In the fascinating booklet interview Renée talks about her admiration for Björk: “Her originality is breathtaking. She just blazes her own path forward”. Renée chooses the songs which mean the most to her personally and musically.
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Sakari Oramo, Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra – Russian Masquerade (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:27 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Composed in Russia between 1884 and 1917, the four works appearing on this disc all do so in some kind of disguise. Prokofiev and Scriabin both conceived their respective collections for the piano, and it is later arrangers that have adapted them for string orchestra. Rudolf Barshai took on Prokofiev’s Visions Fugitives in 1962, selecting 15 of the 20 brief pieces and arranging them for his own ensemble, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra. Scriabin’s Preludes received a similar treatment in 1999 when the Finnish composer Jouni Kaipainen chose 13 from the original 24, rearranging the order they appear in and transposing them in some cases. As for Anton Arensky (1861—1909), he composed his set of variations as the third movement of a string quartet, taking the theme from a song by Tchaikovsky and letting it undergo a series of transformations. Cheered by the success of the piece, he made his own arrangement for larger forces, a version which remains one of his best-known works. Tchaikovsky’s Elegy, finally, is actually heard here as it was composed, in 1884, but the piece saw the light of day as ‘A Thankful Greeting’ and was renamed ‘Elegy’ only at the time of publication, before making a final reappearance, as part of the composer’s music to Hamlet. The four works are performed by the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, one of Finland’s finest ensembles, conducted by its artistic director Sakari Oramo.
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Anna Patalong, Rosie Aldridge, Samuel Sakker, Benedict Nelson ,The BBC Symphony Orchestra & Sakari Oramo – Alwyn: Miss Julie (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:55:02 minutes | 1,87 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
‘Why has this intense, brilliantly orchestrated, claustrophobically gripping masterpiece been so neglected since its 1977 premiere?’ asked Richard Morrison in The Times of the concert performance in the Barbican that preceded this recording.
Miss Julie is Alwyn’s last large-scale work, written in 197376. Alwyn set his own libretto, based on Strindberg’s 1888 play of that title. The naturalistic drama and lifelike characters of that play appealed to Alwyn from an early age – in fact, he previously attempted to compose an opera on Miss Julie in the 1950s. That attempt failed, because of differences with his then librettist, Christopher Hassall. Alwyn believed that in opera, the action should be self-explanatory, arias should serve a dramatic purpose (as opposed to sheer vocal display), characters should sing to each other and not to the audience, ensembles should be minimised and the text should be set to vocal lines that reflect natural speech patterns. These views were distilled over his extensive career as a film composer, which taught him that music could do more than establish characterisation, suggest mood, and heighten atmosphere: in some cases it could also communicate the unspoken thoughts of an onscreen character even when these were at odds with what he or she was presenting visually.
Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra support an outstanding cast featuring Anna Patalong in the title role in this acclaimed revival of Alwyn’s neglected masterpiece.
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