Matt Haimovitz, MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra & Dennis Russell Davies – De Hartmann: Cello Concerto (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 36:09 minutes | 384 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone
Cellist Matt Haimovitz, the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra and its chief conductor Dennis Russell Davies present the first commercial recording of Ukrainian unsung composer Thomas de Hartmann’s cello concerto. De Hartmann was an important compositional voice in his own time, connected to the greatest musicians and artists of his era, but has sunk into oblivion after his death in 1956.
Read more
Filharmonie Brno, Dennis Russell Davies – Philip Glass: Symphony No.12 “Lodger” (from lyrics by David Bowie and Brian Eno) (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 39:26 minutes | 812 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Orange Mountain Music
Symphony No.12 “Lodger” represents the conclusion of a thirty year artistic collaboration for Philip Glass using elements of music and texts by David Bowie and Brian Eno. It premiered in January 2019 with vocalist Angélique Kidjo, organist James McVinnie and John Adams conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Philip Glass began his path as a composer of symphonies in 1992 at age of 55 with “Low Symphony” based on music by Bowie and Eno. It was followed in 1995 by Symphony No.4 “Heroes” also based solely on the music of Bowie and Eno. Over two decades later, after Bowie’s death in 2016, Glass returned to the idea of concluding the trilogy by approaching the album Lodger as a symphonic subject. This world-premiere recording from Filharmonie Brno and conductor Dennis Russell Davies features Angélique Kidjo and organist Christian Schmitt.
Read more
Dennis Russell Davies, London Philharmonic Orchestra – Miguel Kertsman: 3 Concertos & Chamber Symphony No. 2 “New York of 50 Doors” (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:41 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naxos
Brazilian-American composer, Miguel Kertsman, writes in numerous genres embracing classical music, jazz, progressive rock, electronica and film, bridging these diverse elements to craft a unique sound world. Concerto Brasileiro explores lyricism and modernity through solemn chorale-like writing and seductive dances laced with Brazilian folk rhythms. Uncommon sonorities, haunting themes and ethereal landscapes mark out the Concerto for Violin, Horn, Shofar and Orchestra, while traditionalism and experimentation define the Journey for Bassoon and Orchestra. Chamber Symphony No. 2 explores and celebrates New York’s rich cultural diversity.
Read more
ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Dennis Russell Davies – Weill: Propheten (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:04:47 minutes | 619 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © CapriccioNR
The score of The Prophets, intended as the last act of The Eternal Road, was the last that Kurt Weill composed in Europe and his last extensive setting in German, before he personally and professionally adopted the language of his new home, America. Musically, he drew on all his previous great works, from Mahagonny and the Seven Deadly Sins to his Second Symphony. At the same time, he foreshadowed some of his soon-to-be-written works for Broadway. In 1998 David Drew devised the concert adaptation of this act, of which this is the premiere’s recording. The Four Walt Whitman Songs, meanwhile, were a product of the war years and reveal Weill at his most touchingly American, fusing American theater song with the German Lied, Berlin with Brooklyn.
Read more
Dennis Russell Davies, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana – Maderna & Berio: Now, and Then (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:32 minutes | 1,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM
Don’t be fooled by the album cover: the music recorded here is NOT Maderna, but Frescobaldi, Gabrieli and a few other composers from the same era, only orchestrated by Maderna. Among these late Renaissance and baroque works, as re-written, can be found, as a kind of pillar whose meaning in the album rather defies comprehension, theSequenza XII by Berio which was initially conceived for a guitar solo and transcribed by the composer for guitar and chamber orchestra under the name of Chemins V. The whole work is about orchestrations, re-editions, translations from other eras. When it comes to Maderna and other old composers, the interest is neither musicological nor historical, as the orchestrations were done in the 20th Century, with 20th-Century orchestral techniques. Maderna’s work, dating from the 1950s to the 1970s, bears witness to the widespread interest in masters from the past, with new editions, exhumations, rediscoveries; and Monteverdi was played without overmuch concern for period instruments – even if Hindemith, for example, tried to perform L’Orfeo with what old instruments he was able to gather… Seen from this point of view, the Maderna orchestrations are almost recompositions, although without ever betraying or travestying the manuscript, as Stravinsky did with Pergolese: it sticks, for example, to a “baroque” orchestra from our times, without instruments which did not exist at the time. A truly interesting recording.
Read more
Hungarian Radio Children’s Choir, Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, Dennis Russell Davies – Witold Lutosławski, Béla Bartók: Musique funèbre (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:00:45 minutes | 566 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series
Dennis Russell Davies has had a long-running and highly productive association with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra – documented on exceptional ECM recordings of repertoire from Mozart to Kancheli – and is currently the orchestra’s Conductor Laureate. Here he leads them through spirited performances of Bartók’s “Divertimento”, “Romanian Folk Dances” and “Seven Songs” (on which the orchestra is joined by the Hungarian Radio Children’s Choir.) This selection of lively Bartók pieces is viewed through the prism of Wittold Lutosalwaski’s “Musique funèbre”, written in memory of the great Hungarian composer, and first performed on the 10th anniversary of Bartók’s death. It’s an important, and moving, piece (and one which also led to international recognition for Lutoslawski).
Read more![Bruckner Orchester Linz, Dennis Russell Davies - Isang Yun : Sunrise Falling (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/09/15/m5p022g99e0za_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Bruckner Orchester Linz, Dennis Russell Davies – Isang Yun : Sunrise Falling (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:27:56 minutes | 2,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © PentaTone
Uncompromising in his life as he was in his music, Korean composer Isang Yun (1917–95) held fast to his dream of a united Korea, even as he was unjustly accused of espionage for North Korea and sentenced to imprisonment and death. From a life of unimaginable oppression and torture emerges music of raw emotional power, heard on Iang Yun – Sunrise Falling, a centennial commemoration of Yun’s life and music from the Pentatone Oxingale Series. Maestro Dennis Russell Davies, a longtime collaborator and advocate for Yun, curates the programme and conducts the Bruckner Orchestra Linz. A cellist himself, Yun’s fascinating, highly autobiographical Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra (1975/76) anchors the album. In a live performance, cellist Matt Haimovitz tackles the controlled chaos of Yun’s score, bursting with passion, despair, and new timbral textures, such as the use of a plectrum to emulate the Korean zither, the kŏmun’go. Yun’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra no.1 (1981) features violinist Yumi Hwang-Williams, who reflects upon her own emotional return to Korea in 2015, where she performed the work at a festival in honour of Yun. The double album also includes the orchestral Fanfare and Memorial, and additional illuminating solo works by Yun performed by pianist Maki Namekawa, Hwang-Williams, and Haimovitz. 100 years after Isang Yun’s birth, the two Koreas still teeter on a razor’s edge, with ever more global ramifications. His music opens the gate to a lost, united land, with Yun’s own heart bleeding but ever hopeful.
(more…)