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#bruckner24 Symphony #1 (1891)
BRUCKNER ORCHESTER LINZ · MARKUS POSCHNER
Anton Bruckner finally received the award of an honorary doctorate of the University of Vienna on 11 December 1891. For Bruckner, receiving the doctorate fulfilled a long-time wish. He had spent most of his life pursuing academic credentials and applied for honorary doctorates at Cambridge University in 1882 and at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Cincinnati in 1885. Two days later, Hans Richter conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in the first performance of the second or so-called “Vienna” version of the composer’s First Symphony which he had dedicated to the university in gratitude for the degree. The changes Bruckner made in the revised version of the First Symphony are not as extensive as those he made to the Third, Fourth and Eighth Symphonies during the late 1880s and early 1890s. His revisions to the First Symphony did not affect the overall form of any of the movements. He changed many details of orchestration, articulation, and phrase length, some of which are difficult to notice on first hearing. The 1891 autograph score is, nevertheless, the composer’s final word on how he wanted his First Symphony to be performed and understood.
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MILOSLAV KABELÁČ - COMPLETE CHAMBER MUSIC
Jan Vogler · Sarah Willis · Albrecht Mayer Markéta Janoušková Andre Schoch · Robert Kolinsky (a.o.)
Miloslav Kabeláč (1908–1979) is a Surprised-by-Beauty composer of the first water whose eight symphonies and grand orchestral Passacaglia Mystery of Time absolutely merit being brought nearer to the repertoire after having spent decades out in the cold. Anyone who has explored these will unlikely be able to resist this offering of his collected chamber music that ranges through all five decades of his composing career, from conventional to experimental forms, from the early Horn- or Cello Sonatas via his Suite for Saxophone to his dramatic chamber cantata Osudová dramata člověka. It's hardly surprising that we find Kabeláč-enthusiasts like Albrecht Mayer, Sarah Willis, and Jan Vogler among the performers on this 3CD-Set.
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#bruckner24 Symphony #2 (1872)
ORF VIENNA RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA · Markus Poschner
Bruckner’s Second Symphony is a rare enough encounter in its 1877 version, but it’s virtually unperformed in the 1872 original version. This is not owing to some deficiency of the earlier ideas compared to the later alterations. It’s mainly habit and convenience because to get new parts and re-learn something ostensibly known, that differs in a great many details, means an extra expense of effort and resources. That’s a shame, really, because it is decidedly worth discovering the original, not-yet-ironed-out rawness of Bruckner’s early masterpiece, which was something unheard of at the time – but needn’t remain unheard now.
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JOSEF LABOR
OLIVER TRIENDL · Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz · Eugene Tzigane
Besides the well-known Left Hand Piano Concertos by Korngold, Prokofiev, Ravel and others, this very first Concert of Josef Labor marks the beginning of this genre in 1915. One-Handed pianist Paul Wittgenstein ordered it already during his captivity in Russia where he lost his right arm but determined to forward his pianistic career. Labor was part of Johannes Brahms’s close circle of friends. At the age of three, he lost his sight due to smallpox. For him composition was a luxury, insofar as he had to rely on the help of a scribe who had to commit the work to paper. Labor’s music is very skillfully composed, always sensuous, and first and foremost melodious; it does not require a too complete concentration on itself. These World Premiere Recordings marks an highlight of Capriccio's Labor-Edition which focused already since years on this sensitive Music of an mostly forgotten composer.
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ERNST VON DOHNÁNYI - Solo Piano Works
SOFJA GÜLBADAMOVA (Original Bösendorfer Piano with the Clutsam Keyboard of Ernst von Dohnanyi, 1910)
Ernst von Dohnányi was interested in various inventions throughout his life, so it is not surprising that around 1909–1910 he became one of the main promoters of pianos with a semi-circular keyboard. At that time, they had long been experimenting with creating the most comfortable keyboard possible, with all its parts being at the same distance from the pianist, and being able to play it with the same body and hand position at the bottom, middle or top of the keyboard range. It seems that the Viennese Ludwig Bösendorfer started making pianos with a concave keyboard (Bogenklaviatur) only in 1910, and Dohnányi used them exclusively in the territory of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. After Dohnányi moved home to Budapest at the end of 1915, one of his own pianos was the short Clutsam-Bösendorfer, which is currently owned by the Budapest Museum of Music History. This CD offers the first recording of this special instrument after a long time restoration.