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#bruckner24 Symphony #1 (1868) 'Linz'
BRUCKNER ORCHESTER LINZ · Markus Poschner
By his own reckoning, Bruckner began his career as a professional composer when he was thirty-nine years old. With a mere exercise for a symphony under his belt – the unnumbered one in F minor – he was now ready to write his first true symphony. The world was not. First performed in 1868 in Linz – badly – the work flopped and was put aside until nine years and five symphonies later, when it was gently adjusted. A subsequent performance in 1884 was Bruckner’s “most successful Viennese performance to date”, prompting, perplexingly, a thorough revision that would be the 1891 “Vienna” version. This recording uses the unadulterated 1868 “Linz” version.
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GIJA KANCHELI
Elisaveta Blumina · Hartmut Schill · Robert-Schumann-Philharmonie
It was never even an unofficial club of composers like the Russian “Mighty Handful” or the French “Les Six”. And yet, there are striking commonalities among a group of Soviet composers all born in the 1930s. They were hailed from ethnic minorities in the Russia-dominated Soviet Union and they defied the cultural-political directives which eventually led them to find a post-ideological musical language – guided by a personal faith – that enchants listeners to this day with its unique beauty. Giya Kancheli, born in Tbilisi in 1935, is one of them. A fellow composer called him “an ascetic with the temperament of a maximalist – a restrained Vesuvius.” The works on this disc – for and with the piano – display exactly that side of his: To be able to make time seemingly stand still… while continuing to dance.
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#bruckner24 Symphony #5
ORF VIENNA RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA · MARKUS POSCHNER
Among Bruckner’s Symphonies, the Fifth is his contrapuntal masterpiece; the grandest until the Eighth. The tour-de-force of a finale gives us an idea of what the finale of the Ninth might have been like. Its magnificent dark and halting opening with the descending bass line – so effectively recalled in the finale – is inimitable. Although long available only in a disfigured version by Franz Schalk, it is also distinct for never having been the subject to revision or, perhaps, even doubt on the part of Bruckner – who never heard it performed with an orchestra. And yet, when Bruckner wrote this masterpiece, he was still far from establishing himself as a composer in Vienna and his spirits were as low as ever, writing a friend that “my life has lost all joy and delight – in vain and for nothing.” A radiant pinnacle from amid darkness.
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Henze - Das Floß der Medusa
ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra · Cornelius Meister
Théodore Géricault’s larger-than-life painting The Raft of the Medusa has stimulated a great many artists ever since its creation in 1819. Also Hans Werner Henze and his Librettist Ernst Schnabel were inspired by Géricault and wrote a political oratorio on the painting’s tragic historical subject in 1967. Notable for its harsh and bright sounds, tender depiction of suffering, scathing irony, and gripping dramaturgy, the agitation at the failed premiere lifted the work into the canon of great classical scandals.
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NIKOLAI · ALEXANDER · IVAN TCHEREPNIN
Siobhan Stagg · Giuseppe Mentuccia · MICHELANGELO QUARTETT
For more than a century, the members of the Tcherepnin family shaped European music history. All started with Nikolai Tcherepnin (1873-1945) followed by his son Alexander (1899-1971) and finally Ivan (1943-1998) who continued the family tradition of composing already in the third generation. Influenced of their time but still in a traditional and innovative way, these recordings show us the different characteristic styles from late romantic to modernity.
