Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Thomas Dausgaard – Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 ‘Pathétique’ (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:21 minutes | 969 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
These two works from either end of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s career are linked by their tragic endings – the Sixth Symphony with its concluding Adagio lamentoso descending into the deep and gloomy catacombs of a low string sound, and the ‘Fantasy Overture’ Romeo and Juliet closing with a funeral march. Both of them much-loved staples in the concert halls of the world, they appear here in ‘Opening Doors’ – the series conceived by Thomas Dausgaard and his Swedish Chamber Orchestra in order to provide the opportunity of hearing large-scale Romantic symphonic works in a new way, with the clarity that a chamber orchestra can offer. Begun in 2006, the Opening Doors project includes a full cycle of Schumann’s symphonies (‘the most perceptive Schumann cycle in over three decades’, International Record Review), Dvořák’s ‘New World Symphony’ (‘yet another orchestral gem’, klassik.com), and Symphony No. 2 by Bruckner (‘perfectly paced and balanced – and the small orchestra is all to the good in making Bruckner’s stark originality clear’, BBC Music Magazine). These are now joined by Tchaikovsky’s last symphony – completed only a couple of months before the composer’s death in 1893 – a work which to many is the archetype of a true Romantic symphony.
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Swedish Chamber Orchestra & Thomas Dausgaard – Brahms: Orchestral Works (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:50 minutes | 1,25 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
“Begun in 2012 with the release of Symphony No. 1, Thomas Dausgaard’s four-disc traversal of the symphonies of Johannes Brahms is here brought to a close with the composer’s final work in the genre. The E minor Symphony is sometimes described as Brahms’ ‘elegiac symphony’, and has been called ‘one of the greatest orchestral works since Beethoven’. Typical for the composer is the striking degree of motivic relationships throughout the work. This includes the finale in which Brahms demonstrates his full mastery in a towering Passacaglia consisting of 30 variations and a coda. The smallish forces of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra contribute to a transparency and clarity which bring out the finer details of Brahms’ compositional web. As on previous instalments, the symphony is coupled with other works by Brahms. Included on the present disc is another late work, Tragic Overture, which concludes the programme. These two ‘serious’ works frame some of the most rousing and ebullient music Brahms ever wrote, namely his Hungarian Dances. Composed for piano four-hands, the 21 dances became immensely popular, and Brahms arranged three of them for orchestra himself. Having made his own orchestrations of the remaining 18 dances, Thomas Dausgaard has recorded the full set for his Brahms cycle, with the final nine dances included here.”
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Swedish Chamber Orchestra & Thomas Dausgaard – The Brandenburg Project (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:26:24 minutes | 3,77 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Along with Vivaldi’s Seasons or Beethoven’s Fifth, Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos belong to those works that are so well-known that we risk taking them for granted. In order to (re-)discover the special qualities that can inspire us today, in 2001 Thomas Dausgaard and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra decided to contact six contemporary composers, asking each of them to compose a companion piece to one of the concertos. Seventeen years later, in 2018, it was time to present the result, with a performance at the BBC Proms of all the works – new and old.
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Swedish Chamber Orchestra & Thomas Dausgaard – Mendelssohn: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:06:26 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Having begun their collaboration in 1997, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and its conductor laureate Thomas Dausgaard have developed an unusually tight partnership. Nowhere is this demonstrated more clearly than in their cycles of the symphonies of Schumann, Schubert and, most recently, Brahms – performances which have been characterized by reviewers as variously ‘fresh’, ‘vivid’, ‘transparent’ and ‘invigorating’.
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Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Thomas Dausgaard – Schubert: Symphonies Nos 1 & 2 (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:16:39 minutes | 1,28 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © eClassical
On the final disc of a complete cycle, Thomas Dausgaard and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra offer us their readings of Franz Schubert’s first two symphonies. Written between 1813 and 1815, by a composer still in his teens, both works exemplify the influences of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven on the young man – something which was long regarded as a weakness: until well into the twentieth century (with just a few exceptions) their existence was of interest primarily to archivists. They nevertheless contain abundant proof of Schubert’s melodic genius – for instance in the Andante of Symphony No.1 – and other trademarks of the composer are already in evidence: his beloved ‘Wanderer’ rhythm in the finale of the Second Symphony, and throughout his confident and individual handling of form and harmony. The previous three discs in the cycle have met with critical acclaim and distinctions, with many reviewers welcoming the fresh approach towards the undisputed masterpieces (the ‘Unfinished’ and the ‘Great C major’) as well as to the less familiar earlier works. The present disc include two fillers, of which one is the rarely heard Funeral March from the unfinished opera Adrast from 1819-20, Schubert’s second attempt in the genre. Far better known is the closing work, the well-loved ‘Rosamunde Overture’. Composed around the same time as Adrast, it was actually part of the music to the melodrama Die Zauberharfe, but has later become associated with the incidental music to Rosamunde, Fürstin von Zypern, which Schubert would write some three years later.
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Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Thomas Dausgaard – Schubert: Symphonies Nos 1 & 2 (2014)
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 & 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 76:35 minutes | Digital Booklet | 3,52 GB
On the final disc of a complete cycle, Thomas Dausgaard and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra offer us their readings of Franz Schubert’s first two symphonies. Written between 1813 and 1815, by a composer still in his teens, both works exemplify the influences of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven on the young man – something which was long regarded as a weakness: until well into the twentieth century (with just a few exceptions) their existence was of interest primarily to archivists. They nevertheless contain abundant proof of Schubert’s melodic genius – for instance in the Andante of Symphony No.1 – and other trademarks of the composer are already in evidence: his beloved ‘Wanderer’ rhythm in the finale of the Second Symphony, and throughout his confident and individual handling of form and harmony. The previous three discs in the cycle have met with critical acclaim and distinctions, with many reviewers welcoming the fresh approach towards the undisputed masterpieces (the ‘Unfinished’ and the ‘Great C major’) as well as to the less familiar earlier works. The present disc include two fillers, of which one is the rarely heard Funeral March from the unfinished opera Adrast from 1819-20, Schubert’s second attempt in the genre. Far better known is the closing work, the well-loved ‘Rosamunde Overture’. Composed around the same time as Adrast, it was actually part of the music to the melodrama Die Zauberharfe, but has later become associated with the incidental music to Rosamunde, Fürstin von Zypern, which Schubert would write some three years later.
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Thomas Dausgaard, Swedish Chamber Orchestra – Schumann – Symphonies Nos 3 & 4 (2008)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:16:30 minutes | 684 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
For some years, Thomas Dausgaard and his Swedish Chamber Orchestra have been developing their project ‘Opening Doors’, performing symphonies and other orchestral works from the Romantic era with the smaller-than-usual forces of a modern-day chamber orchestra. It has been possible to sample the results of this approach in various music centres around the world during the team’s extensive tours, as well as on disc. The present disc is the fourth of their Opening Doors recordings and at the same time the closing disc of a ‘series within a series’ – a triptych featuring Schumann’s complete symphonies. Previous instalments have been praised for the freshness of the interpretations. ‘A brilliant recording, which overturns common and oft-repeated judgements regarding Schumann the symphonist’ was the reaction of the reviewer on German website Klassik Heute, while the review of the second disc in International Record Review included the following prediction: ‘If the final disc maintains such excellence, this could well be the Schumann cycle to have.’
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Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Örebro, Thomas Dausgaard – Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:09:06 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS Records
Following a series of acclaimed recordings of 19th-century music including complete cycles of the symphonies by Schubert and Schumann, Thomas Dausgaard and his Swedish Chamber Orchestra turn to Felix Mendelssohn. The team’s latest offering unites three of the composer’s four celebrated concert overtures, written between 1826 and 1835 and setting new standards for this emerging genre: Mendelssohn’s overtures are also tone poems, combining a Classical conception with Romantic expressivity. The earliest of the three – A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Mendelssohn composed at the age of seventeen, and his sister Fanny later remarked how Shakespeare’s play had been a constant presence at their home, and ‘how at various ages we had read all the different roles, from Peaseblossom to Hermia and Helena…’ The overture immediately became one of Mendelssohn’s signature pieces, and seventeen years later he returned to it, composing additional incidental music for a stage production of the play. Written for soloists, women’s choir and orchestra, the complete Midsummer Night score is included here. The disc opens with the last of the four overtures to be composed, however: The Fair Melusine, which Mendelssohn wrote after having heard an opera based on the old French tale of the water spirit Mélusine and her sad fate. Actively disliking the opera, Mendelssohn was provoked into his own musical setting of the subject matter in the form of a concert overture. Water – and its depiction in music – also plays an important role in The Hebrides, the closing work on the present recording. Inspired by the poems by Ossian – which captured the imagination of an entire generation at the beginning of the Romantic era – Mendelssohn visited Scotland and the Hebrides in 1829, and already during this trip he sent a postcard to his family, with the overture’s famous opening written down in a four-part setting.
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Martin Fröst, Swedish Chamber Orchestra – Mozart: Ecstasy & Abyss [PRAGUE, 1791] (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:39 minutes | 1,08 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical
Musical maverick Martin Fröst’s most ambitious Sony Classical release yet sees him as both clarinetist and conductor, joining soloists Lucas Debargue (piano), Ann Hallenberg (Mezzo-Soprano) and Elin Rombo (Soprano) and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, of which he is chief conductor, in a double-album of masterpieces capturing the paradox of Mozart’s fragile existence and extraordinary creativity. The album called “Mozart: Ecstasy and Abyss” is now available in CD format. Each of the release’s two albums focuses on a moment in Mozart’s life when the composer appeared to teeter on a knife-edge between triumph and disaster, joy and depression, life and death. It was these moments that brought the music of the most extraordinary beauty and intensity from the composer. Included are Mozart’s sublime Clarinet Concerto, his simmering Piano Concerto No 25 (soloist Lucas Debargue), his joyous Prague and Jupiter symphonies and sparkling arias from the opera’s La clemenza di Tito (with Ann Hallenberg) and Idomeneo (with Elin Rombo). The first album takes its inspiration from a concert Mozart gave in Leipzig in May 1789, a difficult moment in his life marked out by personal, financial and creative pressures. The second album focuses on the composer’s triumphant visit to Prague in August 1791, an ostensibly far happier period. Both albums capture the combination of playfulness and profundity, light and shade, brilliance and tragedy that characterized so many moments in Mozart’s life and career – the dichotomy that sets his best music apart. This release marks Fröst’s recorded debut as a conductor, while he directs the orchestra in his third recording of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto from the Basset Clarinet, the variant instrument for which it was written. Martin Fröst is chief conductor of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and frequently appears with the world’s most distinguished orchestras. In 2014, he became the first clarinetist to win the prestigious Léonie Sonning Music Prize.
Read more![Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet - Beethoven: Piano Concertos (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2023/04/12/kdy4ufjy4rvrc_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet – Beethoven: Piano Concertos (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:08:59 minutes | 2,76 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos
Following his acclaimed recording of sonatas by contemporaries of Beethoven, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet further celebrates the great composer’s anniversary year with this set of the complete Piano Concertos.
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Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Heinz Karl Gruber – Weill: Orchestral Works (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:25 minutes | 1,02 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
The early Kurt Weill works on this album by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and conductor HK Gruber give the lie to any neat division of the composer’s works into popular and classical. Only the expressionistic Symphony No. 1 (“Berlin”), written when Weill was 21, falls clearly into the latter category. One big attraction of the album is the presence of excerpts from Der Silbersee – Ein Wintermärchen, a “play with music” that Weill wrote just prior to his flight from Germany (and whose performances were disrupted by anti-Semitic attacks). It contains music and dialogue in equal measure (here in English), with a dark story of crime and unexpected wealth that is reflected in edgy, ironic music not far from that of The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Weill’s Symphony No. 2, designated a Fantasie symphonique, refers to the composer’s The Seven Deadly Sins, a dance theater piece on which he collaborated with Bertolt Brecht and contains aspects of Weill’s popular style. Both of the symphonies use spare orchestration that is ideally suited to the forces of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, and Gruber sculpts a dry tone that brings out the commonalities among the pieces. As Weill’s music becomes more often performed and appreciated as a unified whole, this BIS release makes a valuable contribution. – James Manheim
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Swedish Chamber Orchestra & Thomas Dausgaard – Schumann: The Symphonies & Overtures (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 03:50:00 minutes | 2,00 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
He takes Schumann’s Allegro molto vivace marking to heart and drives the first movement at a stimulatingly brisk pace. He also makes the most of the score’s dynamic markings, resulting in some pretty explosive contrasts–especially when the timpani loudly strikes or rolls. However, his one bad idea–going for an “authentic” period-style sound–proves fatal. Yes, the increased ensemble clarity and rhythmic acuity is striking, but employing, or simulating the sound of gut strings seriously undercuts the music’s power. The orchestral timbre is overly bright, as if someone had turned the treble way up. This brightness only gets worse in tutti passages, where it becomes strident.
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Swedish Chamber Orchestra & Thomas Dausgaard – Schubert: The Symphonies (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 04:59:42 minutes | 2,61 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
It was only after his death that Franz Schubert’s symphonic works made an impact in music history. In fact, the first public performance of any of Schubert’s symphonies took place at a memorial concert held a few weeks after the composer had passed away, on 19th November 1828. The work that was heard at that occasion was Symphony No.6, D589, the ‘Little C major’, while the two undisputed master works of the series – the ‘Great C major’ and the ‘Unfinished’ – had to wait until 1838 and 1865, respectively, before being performed.
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Swedish Chamber Orchestra & Thomas Dausgaard, Michael Collins – Synergy (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:40 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
On Synergy, flautist Sharon Bezaly and her musician friends demonstrate that one plus one can be much greater than two. Featuring works that celebrate the coming together of like-minded musicians, this project is a reminder, after more than two years of a pandemic that has affected all of us, that true musical synergy can only be achieved ‘face-to-face’, rather than ‘remotely’.
Read more![Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Örebro, Thomas Dausgaard - Bruckner: Symphony No. 2 (2010) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/09/15/eNG1ebc.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Örebro, Thomas Dausgaard – Bruckner: Symphony No. 2 (2010)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:01:38 minutes | 502 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS
On disc as well as in concert, Thomas Dausgaard and his Swedish Chamber Orchestra have attracted a growing international interest. The team regularly visits some of the world’s leading concert venues, and just recently their performance of Schumann’s Second Symphony at the BBC Proms made a great impact on audience and critics alike. Precisely Schumann’s symphonies have featured in Dausgaard’s and the SCO’s series ‘Opening Doors’ on BIS, in which Romantic symphonies are performed with smaller than usual numbers – to great critical acclaim: ‘The most perceptive Schumann cycle in over three decades’ was the verdict in International Record Review. The sequel to the Schumann recordings was a disc combining Schubert’s Unfinished and Great C major Symphonies, described in BBC Radio 3’s CD Review as ‘a crisp, clean account that somehow seems to strip away layers of silt to get a clear view of the colours underneath.’ Dausgaard and the forty-odd members of the SCO now take on a composer whose symphonies often are regarded as the epitome of Romantic grandeur, not to say bulkiness – Anton Bruckner, and his Second Symphony. The recording thus becomes a sort of test of how the ‘Opening Doors’ concept can be applied to music from the High Romantic period. Thomas Dausgaard himself finds in this work ‘a feeling of a very personal prayer – as if Bruckner was meditating and improvising at the organ’ and goes on to describe the experience of performing it with the SCO as ‘a kind of collective chamber-musical improvisation with a strong symphonic undercurrent. I hope Bruckner would have liked it…’
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