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Dmitri Shostakovich - Film Music Edition
DSO Berlin · RSB Berlin
Dmitri Shostakovich is best known for his symphonies and string quartets, which paint him as a very serious composer, indeed. But he was also one of the most prolific film composers of the 20th century, with 36 films for which he wrote the music and which span virtually his entire professional career. It’s a fascinating panoply that shows Shostakovich from a side that sometimes gets lost when we think of him merely as tormented and dark. There is the truly unburdened humour and coy delight in quirkiness, which we assume must be “ironic” in his concert works. Still, Shostakovich never took composing lightly, and whether he wrote music for cartoons or symphonic “tombstones”, the musical merits are always impeccable.
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Dmitri Shostakovich - The Symphonies
GÜRZENICH-ORCHESTER KÖLN · DMITRIJ KITAJENKO
Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphonies are arguably the most impressive symphonic cycle of the 20th century – certainly, if you don’t count Gustav Mahler. The depth and variety of these 15 Symphonies, so closely tied to Shostakovich’s personality and the times he lived in, make it particularly rewarding to listen to varying interpretations. Dmitrij Kitajenko’s survey, recorded between 2002 and 2004, has found its place among the great such cycles, both for its artistic merits and its reference sonics, the wide dynamics and the impassioned playing from the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne that the native Leningrad native Kitajenko gets from his musicians.
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NIKOLAI KAPUSTIN - Piano Concertos Nos. 2 & 6
Frank Dupree · SWR Big Band · SWR Symphonieorchester · Dominik Beykirch
When the music of Nikolai Kapustin was discovered by a wider audience in the West, it was positively shocking: Who was this Soviet (!) composer, whose music sounded more like an Oscar Peterson improvisation than anything else – but who wrote detailed scores, black with notes?! As we discover more and more of his music and as we again can hear on the present recording, Kapustin developed his style subtly and steadily. He went with the times. As the music that influenced him changed, so did Kapustin’s. The development of Big Band Jazz can be traced in his work. In that sense Kapustin never settled on one style (within the parameters of his unique fusion of jazz and classical, granted) but remained flexible about the musical material and the way he related it to the orchestra.
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Alfred Schnittke - Film Music Vol. 6
Svetlana Mamresheva · Martha Jurowski · Elisaveta Blumina · Maxim Suchanow · RUNDFUNK-SINFONIEORCHESTER BERLIN · VLADIMIR JUROWSKI
Alfred Schnittke’s film music encapsulates almost everything that characterises the Russian composer’s compositional style. A self-described polystylist, he began writing for film in the 1960s, penning 66 film scores between 1962 and 1984 for Soviet film companies. His method of drawing on the past was rejected by the avant-garde but embraced by filmgoers and concertgoers too. Volume six in this CD Edition of Schnittke’s film music presents music from the film series "Little Tragedies" (1979) based on popular novels by Alexander Pushkin. After longtime research conductor Vladimir Jurowski also recorded all parts of the score which have been cancelled at the end for the final Film Version.
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BÉLA BARTÓK - The Piano Concertos
Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin · Christoph Eschenbach
Béla Bartók is one of the unquestionably “great” composers and one of the few modern composers who established themselves in the repertoire. His three piano concertos are central to his biography and musical output, but only the Third, with some generosity, could be considered “popular”. Although well represented on disc, the first two are rare concert program guests. Tzimon Barto sees a problem in an all-too-mechanical approach to these two percussive works: “Even Bartók needs a supple touch. If you bang away at it, without rhythmical buoyancy, of course it will become tedious.” These recordings are his attempt, at doing justice to his Bartók-ideal.
