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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.
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MAX REGER
Anke Vondung · Tobias Berndt · Chorus Musicus Köln · Das Neue Orchester · Christoph Spering
In celebration of the 150th Anniversary this Album focus on still less-known but exceptional sensitive and impressive Choral Symphonic and Orchestra songs by Max Reger. With these works, Reger entirely adhered to the trend of the time; the large-scale idea, which would have had no place in the operas of the period, is transferred to the concert hall, so to speak, and is as far removed from the "simple" orchestral song as some of Mahler's Rückert-Lieder. The Hebbel Requiem, Op. 144b includes audible parallels with Johannes Brahms‘s German Requiem and was Reger’s memorial for the German soldiers killed in the war.
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#bruckner24 Symphony #2 (1877)
BRUCKNER ORCHESTER LINZ · Markus Poschner
This Complete Versions Edition includes all versions published or to be published under the auspices of the Austrian National Library and the International Bruckner Society in the Neue Anton Bruckner Gesamtausgabe (The New Anton Bruckner Complete Edition)
"What nonsense”, grumbled Otto Dessoff after a read-through (to determine its repertoire-worthiness for the Vienna Philharmonic) of Bruckner’s Second Symphony. This doomed the work to a life of revision. The first version was written in 1871 when the Second was still the Third Symphony because the Zeroëth, then still the Second, hadn’t been annulled yet. Despite Bruckner managing a well-enough regarded premiere of this version, he set about to rework it during his period of revision in 1877 where he and his eager helpers set about to radically trim any perceived fat. The result, which we know as the second version, changed most in the Finale, where a full 193 bars were pruned. This version follows Bruckner’s cuts unflinchingly which cannot, however, alter the Symphony’s expansive proto-Brucknerian structure first heard here. And then that marvelous Adagio in this lyrical sister of the First Symphony!
