BIS SACD
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Label: BIS 1405D Our Price: $8.99 Quantity in Basket: none ARTISTS: Noriko Ogawa, piano  |
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Label: BIS SACD 1206 Our Price: $19.25 Quantity in Basket: none MAURICE DURUFLE: Requiem, Op. 9 (1947) GABRIEL FAURE: Requiem, Op. 48 (1887-91, version with organ by Mattias Wager) Swedish Radio Choir/Fredrik Malmberg Musical settings of the Mass for the Dead have a tendency to dwell on the dramatic high points of the day of judgment and the trumpets of doom (Dies irae and Tuba mirum) – partly for the reason that they really are dramatic high points. With their respective Requiems, Gabriel Fauré and Maurice Duruflé wanted to express something different, something, which Fauré himself described as a ‘trust in eternal rest’. Indeed, when hearing the description of his work as ‘a lullaby of death’, Fauré approved of it. It is the eternal light and peace wished for in the Mass that both composers infused their Requiems with (to the point of actually omitting the more doomladen passages). These qualities are certainly part of the palette of the magnificent Swedish Radio Choir – the favorite vocal instrument of many of the world’s greatest conductors, including Claudio Abbado and Riccardo Muti. The choir’s previous disc on BIS (BIS 1157) consisted of works by Schnittke and Pärt and their performance was described as being ‘of commanding, awesome brilliance…with a virtuosity and commitment that are astounding’ (Int. Record Review) and ‘refulgently passionate’ (BBC Music Magazine). On this disc, the choir, directed by Fredrik Malmberg, is joined by three of Sweden’s foremost singers – all of them represented on previous BIS recordings – as well as organist Mattias Wager, who has also supplied the organ arrangement of Faurés orchestral score. |
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Label: BIS SACD 1482 Our Price: $19.25 Quantity in Basket: none DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906 – 1975): Piano Trio No. 1 in C minor, Op.8; Piano Trio No.2 in E minor, Op.67 ALFRED SCHNITTKE (1934 – 1998): Piano Trio (1992 – arrangement of String Trio, 1985) The highly emotionally charged works on this disc were all three composed during periods of emotional upheaval in the lives of their creators. Shostakovich's father died in the aftermath of the turbulent years of the revolution, and a year later, in 1923, he himself was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Sent to Crimea to recuperate, the sixteen-year old music student fell in love with the daughter of a Moscow professor, and began to compose his First Piano Trio, a passionate work representing a vital stage in his development towards the First Symphony. Twenty-one years later, in the midst of the 2nd World War, Shostakovich completed his Piano Trio No.2. This extraordinarily painful work, was born out of the appalling sufferings of his fellow-countrymen, but also reflects the loss of his closest friend, the writer Ivan Sollertinsky, who died unexpectedly while Shostakovich was working on the trio. Also marked by a close encounter with death, Schnittke's only Piano Trio originated as a string trio. Composing it to mark the centenary of Alban Berg in 1985, Schnittke 'avoided his trademark stylistic confrontations and direct quotations, preferring subtle allusions to the world of the Viennese classics, especially Schubert’, to quote David Fanning’s informative liner notes. Soon after completing the trio, Schnittke suffered the first of a series of massive strokes, but in 1992 he revisited the work, dedicating the version for piano trio to his doctor, Alexander Potapov, 'who saved my life twice'. On a previous disc, the Kempf Trio has released two other Russian piano trios – by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov – in performances described as 'fiery, cogent, intelligent and wholly compelling' (Evening Standard) and 'a triumph' (The Strad). In the present, no less impassioned and passionate program, we hear the swan song of this fine ensemble, which was recently dissolved. |
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Label: BIS SACD 1483 Our Price: $19.25 Quantity in Basket: none Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra/Mark Wigglesworth This disc marks the return of Mark Wigglesworth’s Shostakovich cycle. The series continues with the excellent Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, with which Wigglesworth has enjoyed a longstanding and successful relationship. The fruits of this collaboration are obvious in this recording of Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony - a work which the conductor in his own liner notes describes as ‘a poem of suffering’, quoting the composer. Although written at the turning point of World War II, and to the open disapproval of Stalin’s propaganda machine, the symphony is far from jubilant. Instead, the themes Shostakovich explored - albeit in deepest secrecy - were the pain and the terror, which the Russian people had experienced during the pre-war years. Mark Wigglesworth’s previous Shostakovich interpretations have been highly praised for being “gripping”, “moving” and “compelling”. With the present work - containing what is “possibly the most terrifying music Shostakovich ever wrote” according to Wigglesworth himself - the emotional temperature is no lower, and is brought even higher through the great power and clarity of the SACD Surround Sound format new to this series. Previous installments in the Shostakovich cycle, all with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, are (Please note these previous titles are NOT SACDs): Symphony No. 7, ‘Leningrad’ (BIS 873) Symphony No. 5, 6, 10 (BIS 973/4) Symphony No. 14 (BIS 1173) |
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Label: BIS SACD 1543 Our Price: $19.25 Quantity in Basket: none Netherlands Radio Choir Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra/Mark Wigglesworth ‘The majority of my symphonies are tombstones’ - these words by Shostakovich are quoted by conductor Mark Wigglesworth in the liner notes to his fifth disc of Shostakovich’s Symphonies on BIS. Symphony No. 13, subtitled ‘Babi Yar’, is a case in point. Shostakovich explicitly stated that he wanted the Symphony - and in particular it’s first movement - to be a monument over the 100,000 Jews slaughtered at a ravine called Babi Yar outside of Kiev in 1941. Not just a monument, however: the Symphony was also intended as an indictment against the anti-Semitism that had been brought to its height during the Nazi era, but which also flourished in post-war Soviet Union, with the result that Babi Yar and other atrocities were kept secret by the authorities. This silence was deeply upsetting to Shostakovich, and when he read Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s poem Babi Yar, he decided to set it to music. ‘I cannot not write it!’, he said to a friend. Shostakovich had originally only intended to set this one poem by Yevtushenko, but deciding to create a larger-scaled work he chose four more texts for what was to become a symphony in five movements. As Mark Wigglesworth writes, these poems ‘reveal a huge kaleidoscope of Russian events, emotions and ideas.’ In the realization of this kaleidoscope, Wigglesworth has the support of bass soloist Jan-Hendrik Rootering, the men of the Netherlands Radio Choir, and - of course - the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, with which the previous installment in this series, Symphony No. 8 (BIS-SACD-1483), was recorded, to critical acclaim. The reviewer of BBC Music Magazine put it in the following way: ‘Mark Wigglesworth … stretches the playing of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic to its very impressive limits and remains the finest Shostakovich interpreter of his generation’, describing the result as "a performance which always gives us the full measure of this traumatic masterpiece." |
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Label: BIS SACD 1553 Our Price: $19.25 Quantity in Basket: none DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906 – 1975): Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Op. 43 (1935-36) As conductor Mark Wigglesworth relates in his own liner notes, when Dmitri Shostakovich began working on Symphony No.4, his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk had been a sensational success and the composer was the musical golden child of the Soviet Union. Soon after Stalin himself went to see the opera, however, and immediately wrote an article in the newspaper Pravda that described the twenty-nine year old musician as an enemy of the state. Suddenly Shostakovich's life was turned upside down, but he remained unbowed – much later in life he is reported as having said: ‘Instead of repenting I composed my Fourth Symphony.’ The work was finished in May 1936, but during rehearsals for the first performance Shostakovich suddenly withdrew the symphony. Various reasons for this have been put forward, but an undisputed fact is that life in Soviet at the time was characterized by an almost universal fear brought about by the oppression exercised by the state, a fear that Shostakovich certainly shared: ‘ It was a low that wiped out my past. And my future. The terrible pre-war years. That is what my symphonies, beginning with the Fourth are about.’ The manuscript score of the work was lost during the war, and it was not until well after the death of Stalin that the orchestral parts were rediscovered. The Fourth Symphony was finally performed on December 30 1961, exactly twenty-five years later than originally intended. The present disc is the seventh in Mark Wigglesworth’s complete cycle of Shostakovich’s symphonies and the fourth to feature the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. This partnership has gone from strength to strength, with their Symphony No. 13 (‘Babi Yar’) described as ‘probably the most convincing to have appeared in the West’ in International Record Review, and the coupling of Symphonies Nos, 9 and 12 being designated a benchmark recording in BBC Music Magazine. They now take on this huge work – it calls for an orchestra of 125 musicians and has a duration of well over an hour – that came to form a watershed in a great composer’s life and output. |
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Label: BIS SACD 1563 Our Price: $19.25 Quantity in Basket: none Symphony No.9 in E flat major, Op.70 (1945); Symphony No.12 in D minor, ‘The Year 1917’, Op.112 (1961) Among the many discs released during last year's Shostakovich anniversary, one that received particular notice was Mark Wigglesworth's recording of Symphony No. 13 'Babi Yar' with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra]. In the International Record Review the performance was hailed as 'probably the most convincing Thirteenth to have appeared in the West', while the French magazine Diapason commented on how the various facets of the composer was brought out: 'the scathing humor, the sense of the grotesque, the satiric spirit and the secret messages ... in sum, a vivid and true vision'. Mark Wigglesworth, described in the BBC Music Magazine as 'the finest Shostakovich interpreter of his generation', has already recorded seven of the composer's fifteen symphonies for BIS, beginning this great project with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and continuing with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra – a collaboration which began with the 2005 release of Symphony No.8, in what The Sunday Times described as ‘a fine performance of deep understanding.’ The team now returns with their renditions of Symphonies Nos. 9 and 12. As Mark Wigglesworth observes in his own liner notes, these two works posed serious problems for their creator. Following on the heels of his two great war symphonies, the Ninth was generally expected to be a celebration of Stalin and the imminent victory over the Nazis. Shostakovich wanted to avoid any such programmatic interpretations and therefore came up with what Wigglesworth describe as ‘a pure and perfect, almost neoclassical work’. 16 years later, Shostakovich was commissioned to write a work commemorating Lenin and the 1917 Revolution. |
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Label: BIS SACD 1583 Our Price: $19.25 Quantity in Basket: none DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906 – 1975) Symphony No.11, ‘The Year 1905’, Op.103 (1957) Described in the BBC Music Magazine as ‘the finest Shostakovich interpreter of his generation’, Mark Wigglesworth began his cycle of Shostakovich’s symphonies with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, continuing since 2005 on the other side of the English Channel with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. Previous volumes have all been warmly received by reviewers, who among the ten symphonies released so far have discovered a ‘Fourth that makes a terrific impact’ (Daily Telegraph), a Tenth ‘to rival the very best’ (Gramophone), a Twelfth which is ‘simply masterly’ (Scherzo, Spain), ‘probably the most convincing Thirteenth to have appeared in the West’ (International Record Review), and ‘one red-hot Shostakovich Fourteen’ (ClassicsTody.com). The cycle as a whole has been described as having the ‘particular characteristics of high seriousness, fine detailing and a certain fierceness of articulation’ (Gramophone) as well as benefiting from engineering which is ‘outstanding in its naturalness, brilliance, and impact’ (ClassicsToday.com). On the latest instalment in this series, Wigglesworth and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra perform the composer’s Symphony No.11 ‘The Year 1905’, commissioned by the Soviet authorities in order to commemorate the events on the so-called Bloody Sunday, in January 1905. This massacre of peaceful demonstrators by the tsar’s Imperial Guard inflamed popular feeling, thus contributing to the 1905 Revolution and laying the foundations for the Revolution of 1917. In the symphony these historical aspects come to light through the movement titles (‘The Palace Square’ etc.) and in Shostakovich’s use of several revolutionary songs throughout it. It has nevertheless been suggested that the emotional impetus for the composer may actually have been the use of Soviet tanks to put down another, more recent popular uprising, that which took place in Budapest in 1956. In his own liner notes Mark Wigglesworth discusses this possibility, concluding that ‘Shostakovich writes about emotions and states of mind, rather than specific dates … That is why his music remains both timeless and topical.’ |
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Label: BIS SACD 1638 Our Price: $19.25 Quantity in Basket: none LUCIANO BERIO (1925 – 2003): Solo for trombone and orchestra (1999, rev. 2000); IANNIS XENAKIS (1922 – 2001): Troorkh for trombone and orchestra (1991); MARK-ANTHONY TURNAGE (*1960): Yet Another Set To (2004, rev, 2005) Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra/Peter Rundel Starting with the disc The Virtuoso Trombone (Bis 258), recorded in 1983, Christian Lindberg has been the main protagonist of some 35 discs on the BIS label. But the present disc is surely destined to count as one of the most important. It brings together three of more than 80 concertos that have been dedicated to Christian Lindberg during his unparalleled career. One of the first of these was actually Troorkh (the title derived from trombone + orkhestra) by Xenakis, the result of an encounter in 1985 between the budding trombone soloist and the firmly established and highly regarded composer. Lindberg asked Xenakis for a concerto and got an emphatic ‘No’ for an answer – only to receive the score 6 years later. (In order to perform the demanding work, Lindberg then had to undertake a rigorous stamina-building program lasting two years!) Berio’s SOLO was the result of a collaboration between the composer and Lindberg which included a role especially written for Lindberg in the opera Cronaca del Luogo. SOLO and Troorkh are two of the works that Christian Lindberg has performed most frequently all over the world, but this is the first time he commits his interpretations of them to disc. The last piece on the program is Yet Another Set To by Mark-Anthony Turnage, a work that fully exploits Lindberg’s unique talents, requiring both virtuoso precision, the freedom of jazz delivery and a range of sounds from extrovert projection to intimate lyricism. Written in Turnage’s highly personal and yet accessible idiom it is a work which Lindberg himself describes as ‘one of the most electrifying works I have played’. Lindberg is partnered by the Oslo Philharmonic in fine shape, conducted by Peter Rundel, who collaborated with Lindberg in the first performance of the revised version of Turnage’s concerto performed here. |
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Label: BIS SACD 1809 Our Price: $19.25 Quantity in Basket: none DIETRICH BUXTEHUDE (ca. 1637 – 1707) Toccata in F major, BuxWV156; Praeludium in A minor, BuxWV153 Ciacona in E minor, BuxWV160; Te Deum Laudamus, BuxWV218 Von Gott will ich nicht lassen, BuxWV220; Von Gott will ich nicht lassen, BuxWV221 Praeludium in G minor, BuxWV148; Toccata in D minor, BuxWV155 *Nimm von uns, Herr, Du treuer Gott, BuxWV207 *Ich ruf zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BuxWV196; *Magnificat Primi Toni, BuxWV203 As the composer that Johann Sebastian Bach at the age of twenty walked more than 400 kilometres in order to meet, Dietrich Buxtehude holds a place of honor in the history of music. Luckily, an important portion of his music, mainly vocal works and organ pieces, has also survived. Having spent his childhood and early years in Helsingborg and Elsinore, on either side of the strait that divides Denmark and Sweden, Buxtehude was recruited as organist by the congregation of the great Marienkirche in the wealthy Hanseatic city of Lübeck. On the basis of this, as well as the challenges posed by his organ compositions, it is safe to assume that he was a virtuoso on his instrument. He would also have been a connoisseur of fine organs – the finest of which at the time were to be found in Northern Germany. Two such magnificent instruments still exist in the small towns of Altenbruch and Lüdingworth, some 130 kilometres west of Lübeck, and on them Masaaki Suzuki here performs a varied selection of Buxtehude’s organ works. This ranges from brief chorale preludes to the magnificent Te Deum laudamus and the celebrated Ciaccona in E minor. Although he is most widely known for his on-going, highly praised series of Bach’s cantatas on BIS, Masaaki Suzuki in fact began his professional career as a church organist at the age of twelve, later studying the instrument both in Tokyo and in Amsterdam. For BIS he has previously recorded Bach’s Organ Mass (‘an organist of distinguished musicianship and superior technique’ wrote the American Record Guide) and organ works by Sweelinck, a disc which upon its release was recommended by Gramophone and described in International Record Review as containing ‘performances which are compelling in their stylistic integrity and uncompromising musicianship.’ |
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Label: BIS SACD 1896 Our Price: $19.25 Quantity in Basket: none ARTISTS: Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra / Claus Peter Flor |
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