Sir Simon Rattle

Berliner Philharmoniker, Sir Simon Rattle – Dvořák: Tone Poems. The Golden Spinning-Wheel, The Wood Dove, The Noon Witch & The Water Goblin (2005/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:23:46 minutes | 704 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Warner Classics International

These orchestral ballads, directly programmatic and inspired by verbal rather than purely musical stimuli, represent something of a change of direction for Dvořák, away from the Viennese classicism of his idol Brahms and his circle towards a freer, more operatically influenced orchestral style closer to that of Liszt and Smetana. This was deplored by many of Dvořák’s more classically inclined admirers such as Eduard Hanslick, who wrote that ‘with this detailed programmatic music Dvořák has stepped on a slippery slope’. More significant, though, was the positive influence these works were to exert on such younger Czech composers as Suk, Novák, Foerster and above all Janácˇek, whose music often reflects the rhythms and intonation of the Czech language, continuing Dvořák’s pioneering practice in The Golden Spinning-Wheel.
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Berliner Philharmoniker & Sir Simon Rattle – Dvorák: Tone Poems (2005/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:23:46 minutes | 705 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics International

From the included liner notes by Andrew Huth:

Dvorák returned to Bohemia from his last American visit in April 1895 and for the rest of his life divided his time between Prague and his small property at Vysoká, making occasional trips abroad to conduct or attend performances of his music. Aged at this time fifty-three, he was internationally famous and in a position to write more or less what he wanted. Between the spring of 1893 and the end of 1895 he had completed some of his finest instrumental works – the Ninth Symphony (‘From the New World’), the Cello Concerto and three string quartets – but he now seems to have made a conscious decision to turn away from ‘pure’ instrumental music. An intensely patriotic man, he was always anxious to be appreciated as a Czech artist, and in the last decade of his life concentrated on giving musical expression to subjects that were both national and dramatic. His real ambition was to write a successful national opera to stand alongside the works of Smetana: Rusalka, composed in 1900, broadly realised this aim.

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Berliner Philharmoniker, Sir Simon Rattle – Debussy: La Mer (2005/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:18:46 minutes | 649 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics

Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic’s perfumed, pictorial 1964 recordings of Debussy’s Prélude à L’après-midi d’un faune and La mer have come to be revered – and rightly so, as they possess a remarkable frisson. Rattle’s interpretations, recorded live, are markedly less urgent; with nary a noise from the audience, one might even mistake them for studio recordings. Yet these new accounts, too, have the ability to engross and sometimes even astonish. Note, for example, the sinuous swoop of the flutes and clarinets at the beginning of ‘Jeux de vagues’ in La mer, or the shimmering rustle of strings at 1’00” in the Prélude – both almost tactile sensations.

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Berliner Philharmoniker, Sir Simon Rattle – Bruckner: Symphony No. 9 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:17:11 minutes | 749 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings

Anton Bruckner is a composer with an unmistakable musical language: darkly glowing, overwhelmingly beautiful, but also energetic and innovative. For the Berliner Philharmoniker, this music has been part of their artistic identity for over a hundred years. The orchestra now presents Bruckner’s symphonies in an exclusive edition, recorded over the last ten years together with some of the foremost Bruckner interpreters of our time.
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Berliner Philharmoniker, Sir Simon Rattle – Brahms: Ein deutsches Requiem, Op. 45 (2007)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:07:06 minutes | 582 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Warner Classics International

The German Requiem is Brahms’ largest single composition and a pivotal work in his own creative life. It bears little relation to the Messa da Requiem of Catholic liturgy. Less a requiem for the dead, it is more an act of consolation for the bereaved. Brahms told Karl Reinthaler, the choirmaster (and trained theologian) who helped prepare the work’s premiere in Bremen in 1868: ‘I could easily dispense with the word “German” and replace it with “Human”.’ Like Heinrich Schütz in his 1636 burial mass, Musikalische Exequien, Brahms sets German- language texts drawn from the Bible. Many are familiar from Protestant funeral rites used in Germany and elsewhere; the emphasis, however, is very much Brahms’s own.
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Berliner Philharmoniker, Sir Simon Rattle – Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique (2008)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:15:59 minutes | 628 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Warner Classics International

Any mention of the name Hector Berlioz inevitably brings to mind his most famous work, theSymphonie fantastique. Written in 1830, the year of the ‘July Revolution’ that defeated the post-Napoleonic monarchy in France, this symphony (Berlioz’s first) is itself a revolution in sound and concept. Here we see the 27-year-old composer taking a bold step into the future, rejecting the symphonic canon of the past, and creating in its place a new hybrid genre that blended elements drawn from the world of opera with more traditional forms and compositional devices belonging to the world of instrumental concert music. Berlioz referred to this unique genre – part symphony, part opera – as the ‘dramatic symphony’.
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Berliner Philharmoniker, Sir Simon Rattle – The Asia Tour (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:38:43 minutes | 4,27 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Sir Simon Rattle’s last Asia tour as chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker was a triumph, and is documented here in selected audio and video recordings. At the heart of this edition are audio recordings of the two final concerts at the legendary Suntory Hall in Tokyo – the musical and emotional highlight of the tour. “The quality of the orchestra delighted audiences,” said one critic. “It was a virtuoso display of ensemble playing that is simply indescribable.”
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Berliner Philharmoniker, Sir Simon Rattle – Mahler: Symphony No. 6 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:22:05 minutes | 1,33 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

The end of an era and a musical highlight: Simon Rattle’s farewell as chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker with Gustav Mahler’s stunning Sixth Symphony was given a standing ovation by the audience.

On 14 November 1987, the young Simon Rattle first took to the conductor’s podium of the Berliner Philharmoniker. “I had the feeling that I would find my voice that day,” says Rattle in retrospect. At the same time, the young conductor demonstrated his total mastery of this vast work with its brutal eruptions. The fact that Mahler’s work was also part of this farewell concert had a symbolic as well as a musical dimension: it brought both a circle to a close and also a great chapter in the history of the Berliner Philharmoniker to an end. At the same time, the performance reminded us that performances of Mahler’s music marked highlights of the Rattle era on numerous occasions. The tumultuous applause expressed not only enthusiasm for a uniquely intense, multi-faceted performance but also gratitude for 16 fulfilling years.
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Berliner Philharmoniker, Sir Simon Rattle – Mahler: Symphony No. 8 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:18:18 minutes | 787 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Symphony No. 8 in D major by Gustav Mahler was mainly composed between late 1887 and March 1888, though it incorporates music Mahler had composed for previous works. It was composed while Mahler was second conductor at the Leipzig Opera, Germany. Although in his letters Mahler almost always referred to the work as a symphony, the first two performances described it as a symphonic poem and as a tone poem in symphonic form respectively. The work was premi`ered at the Vigad’o Concert Hall, Budapest, in 1889, but was not well received Mahler made some major revisions for the second performance, given at Hamburg in October 1893; further alterations were made in the years prior to the first publication, in late 1898. Some modern performances and recordings give the work the title Titan, despite the fact that Mahler only used this label for the second and third performances, and never after the work had reached its definitive four-movement form in 1896.
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Berliner Philharmoniker, Sir Simon Rattle – Mahler: Symphony No. 7 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:16:08 minutes | 736 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

This Gustav Mahler edition brings together Berliner Philharmoniker recordings from the last ten years. It includes the nine completed symphonies and the Adagio of the Tenth, whose performance under the direction of Claudio Abbado on the 100th anniversary of Mahler’s death is one of the highlights. In addition to chief conductor Kirill Petrenko and his predecessor Sir Simon Rattle, the edition features other outstanding Mahler interpreters closely associated with the orchestra: Gustavo Dudamel, Bernard Haitink, Daniel Harding, Andris Nelsons and Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
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