Hannes Minnaar, The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend – Beethoven: The Complete Piano Concertos (2017)
DSD64 (.dsf) 1 bit/2,8 MHz | Time – 169:59 minutes | 3,76 GB
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time – 169:59 minutes | 3,21 GB
Source: SACD-R, Challenge Classics # CC 72763 | Artwork: Digital Booklet(s)
Here is the box containing Beethoven’s five Piano Concertos performed by Hannes Minnaar and The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Jan Willem de Vriend. So far two single volumes had been issued: while the one including Concertos nos. 4 & 5 was acclaimed by Gramophone as: “beginning a Beethoven cycle with the Fourth and Fifth Concertos is a bold move but one that pays off in all sorts of ways”, the same magazine welcomed the disc with Concertos nos. 1 & 2 for “its pleasing mix of finesse and drive”. Now the box also offers the so far unissued Concerto #3. Despite the very large number of recordings already made of this musical corpus, Minnaar and de Vriend have proved that they have something new and totally their own to say about this collection of masterpieces. And it is indeed the peculiar blend of sheer energy and esprit de finesse that can be identified as the distinctive brand or these recordings.
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Eric Vloeimans, The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jurjen Hempel – Evensong (2013)
DSF Stereo DSD128/5.64 MHz | Time – 01:01:46 minutes | 4,87 GB | Genre: Classical, Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: spiritofturtle.com | Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Records / Northstar Recordings
This album is a unique collaboration between Eric Vloeimans and a full scale classical orchestra. Together with the orchestra and conductor Jurjen Hempel, Vloeimans strikes a bridge between many different styles, from classical to jazz, from western to eastern.
The principle work on this album is in fact Vloeimans’ very own trumpet concerto, Evensong in four movements which he wrote in collaboration with composer and arranger Martin Fondse. The piece Lex was written as the film score to the film Auditie/Audition (2011) an animation film about Lex van Weeren (1920-1996), a Jewish trumpet player and orchestra conductor who survived Auschwitz because he became the camp orchestra conductor and trumpet player in the camp orchestra. Waterfront was written for an open air concert at the Kralingse Plas lake and was in fact inspired by the music Leonard Bernstein wrote for the Oscar award winning film On the Waterfront. It has all the elements we expect from a film score: a long opening shot, introduction of the main character, suspense and high-energy action scene, to wind up with the finale: the title song. About the piece Requiem, Vloeimans states: I had no firm plans to write a classical requiem. Nothing serious had happened in my life that would call for an elegy. But magic went its own way, and things happened as they did: the composition ultimately wrote itself and became this Requiem. Your Majesty is a piece originally written for the film Majesteit, a film about the Dutch queen Beatrix, that wound up not being used in the film. I later recorded this piece in a rock version with Kytecrash and played it with the band of the Dutch Royal Marines in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.
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The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend – Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 2 “Lobgesang” (2013)
DSF Stereo DSD128/5.64 MHz | Time – 01:02:32 minutes | 5,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Records
It is June 1840, you are in the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, the church where the famous composer Johann Sebastian Bach was once kapellmeister. You are there to attend the premiere of a piece of music on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg. The successful composer Felix Mendelssohn will conduct his own music. Mild excitement takes hold of you; you feel that it is going to be a magnificent concert, with orchestra, choir, soloists. Finally, it starts. The trombones begin with a regal theme that resounds through the church. The orchestra takes over the theme. You are immediately swept up by, immersed in the music — an overwhelming experience.
That must certainly have been the experience of the audience at this first performance of Mendelssohn’s symphony-cantata, as he liked to describe it. That the beginning of the piece is so overawing, by the nature of the theme and scoring of wind instruments, is not something you immediately expect from a composer such as Mendelssohn. He is known more for refinement, a cultivated melancholy that is fascinating, but does not threaten to make off with you. And of course, there is the virtuosity, which never stoops to affectation and always remains functional.1 As impressive as the regal trombone theme is, other passages of Lobgesang have probably moved audiences more deeply.
Read more![Hannes Minnaar, The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend - Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 4 & 5 - Complete Piano Concertos, Vol. 1 (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/352.8kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/25/0889176549366_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Hannes Minnaar, The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend – Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 4 & 5 – Complete Piano Concertos, Vol. 1 (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/352.8 kHz | Time – 01:10:17 minutes | 3,36 GB | Genre:
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | ©
Beethoven wrote five concertos for piano and orchestra. It doesn’t sound like much; his near-contemporary Mozart composed 27. But although it may be a bit smaller, Beethoven’s contribution is a true monument in the history of music. He used the first two concertos to move away from his example, Mozart (whose last piano concerto was from 1791, while Beethoven completed his first in 1795); in Concerto no. 3 Beethoven carved out new dimensions for the genre’s dramatic possibilities. And Concertos nos 4 and 5 have proved to be unmatched in their genre: the radiant Concerto no. 4 is worshipped by experts and aficionados alike, while no. 5 is the all-time favourite of the public at large. Almost 25 years passed between Beethoven’s first sketches for a piano concerto and the double line he drew under his last one. His piano concertos thus show a development covering more than half of the composer’s life.
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![Hannes Minnaar, The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend - Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 - Complete Piano Concertos, Vol. 2 (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/352.8kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/25/0608917271225_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Hannes Minnaar, The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend – Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 – Complete Piano Concertos, Vol. 2 (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/352.8 kHz | Time – 01:04:57 minutes | 3,11 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Classics
Before we listen to the young Dutch pianist Hannes Minnaar play Beethoven’s first two piano concertos, it is perhaps interesting to see how another young pianist may have played them once, long ago — a German who lived in Vienna, a headstrong and temperamental genius. His name? Ludwig van Beethoven. His pupil, the famous composer of etudes and sensitive observer Carl Czerny, once described his playing: “[…] characterised by passionate strength, alternated with all the charm of a smooth cantabile. The expressiveness is often intensified to extremes, particularly when the music tends towards humour […] Passages become extremely daring by use of the pedal […] His playing does not possess that clean and brilliant elegance of certain other pianists. On the other hand, it was spirited, grand and, especially in the adagio, filled with emotion
and romanticism.”
Strength. Smoothness. Humour. Focus on these aspects and you will come close to Beethoven. Minnaar, De Vriend and The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra play the concertos in reverse order: first 2, then 1. A bit odd. Or isn’t it? Artistically, it is highly defensible: introduced as it were by the more balanced, more modest Piano Concerto no. 2, no. 1 radiates all the more festiveness (trumpets, clarinets and tympani have come to join the orchestra). Perhaps the lovely, gentle, almost feminine B flat major of Concerto no. 2 would not have been able to hold its own after the male and martial C major. But there is something else
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![Consensus Vocalis, The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend - Bach, J.S.: Matthäus-Passion, BWV 244 (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/352.8kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/21/8S66aeK.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Consensus Vocalis, The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend – Bach, J.S.: Matthäus-Passion, BWV 244 (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/352.8 kHz | Time – 01:51:35 minutes | 5,61 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Records
On 11 March 1829 the 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn conducted a performance of the St. Matthew Passion in the concert hall of the Singakademie in Berlin, almost 100 years after the work had last been played. Some 900 people were in attendance, and the performance was so successful that it was repeated twice, on 21 March and on Good Friday, 17 April 1829.
Mendelssohn was given the score of the St Matthew Passion for his 15th birthday, 3 February 1824, or else as a Christmas present in 1823. He knew of the score as one of Zelter’s pupils and as a member of the Singakademie, which had a few chorus parts from the St Matthew in its repertoire. Zelter, the conductor of the Singakademie, found the work too diffi cult to be performed in public. Mendelssohn, however, had a different opinion. In 1828 he set to work on the score, making changes in line with the day and age and the instruments then commonly used. Mendelssohn meant many of his changes to provide a better understanding of what, in his opinion, formed the heart of the passion story.
After its successes in Berlin, the St Matthew Passion was performed in a number of German cities. In 1841 Mendelssohn gave a performance in Leipzig, where he was then Kapellmeister, in the Thomaskirche, the church where the work had fi rst been performed. For its performance in 1841, Mendelssohn again made alterations to the score, but fewer than in 1828/1829.
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