Vasily Petrenko, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra – Rachmaninov: Symphony 2 & Dances from Aleko (2012) SACD ISO + DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

Vasily Petrenko, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra – Rachmaninov: Symphony 2 & Dances from Aleko (2012)
SACD Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 72:57 minutes | Basic Scans included | 2,01 GB
or DSD64 2.0 Stereo (from SACD-ISO to Tracks.dsf) > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | Basic Scans included | 1,78 GB
or FLAC Stereo (carefully converted & encoded to tracks) 24bit/96 kHz | Basic Scans included | 1,46 GB
2014 | Warner Music Japan # WPCS-12630

For the second installment of their Rachmaninoff symphonies cycle for EMI, Vasily Petrenko and his Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra cover the most popular and significant of the corpus, the Second Symphony in E minor. Also to the disc added the three delightful fragments from Rachmaninoff’s early opera Aleko (1892) – The Women’s Dance, Intermezzo and the Men’s Dance – are offered as appetizer.

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Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko – Tchaikovsky: Symphonies Nos. 1, 2 & 5 (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko – Tchaikovsky: Symphonies Nos. 1, 2 & 5 (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:57:57 minutes | 2,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Onyx Classics

The eagerly awaited Tchaikovsky Symphony cycle from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Vasily Petrenko gets underway with Symphonies 1, 2 & 5. In 2015 The Tchaikovsky Album with Petrenko and the RLPO, released to coincide with the orchestra’s 175 anniversary, became one of the best-selling classical CDs in the UK and met with fulsome praise from reviewers. Volume I of the Symphonies looks set to replicate that success and indeed critical acclaim.

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Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko – Tchaikovsky: Symphonies Nos. 3, 4 & 6 (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko – Tchaikovsky: Symphonies Nos. 3, 4 & 6 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:09:39 minutes | 2,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Onyx Classics

Petrenko’s Tchaikovsky promises to be one of the most important orchestral releases of 2017. Universal praise from reviewers for the first volume of Symphonies 1, 2 and 5 bodes well for this eagerly-awaited release: Gramophone gave Volume One an Editor’s choice and it reigned as a top 10 UK Classical chart title for 7 weeks in 2016.

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Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko – Dmitry Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 ‘Leningrad’ (2013/2015) DSF DSD64

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko – Dmitry Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 ‘Leningrad’ (2013/2015)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 01:19:07 minutes | 3,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: ProStudioMasters | Booklet, Front Cover | © 2xHD

Three weeks after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Shostakovich volunteered with the Home Guard in Leningrad. As the siege of the city intensified, he worked on his Seventh Symphony, completing three movements before being forced to leave Leningrad and travel east by train. The work was completed in December that year. Initially he gave each movement a programmatic title, but later withdrew them, leaving this epic work as an emblem of heroic defiance in the face of conflict and crisis: ‘I dedicate my Seventh Symphony to our struggle against fascism, to our coming victory over the enemy, to my native city, Leningrad.’ Shostakovich’s epic Seventh Symphony is a study in defiance and survival, written largely in the ruins of the besieged city in 1941. Its reputation has fluctuated over the years, with its immediate post war reputation largely low. But in recent years it has taken its rightful place in Shostakovich’s symphonic canon. As one of the Twentieth Century’s most recorded symphonists, the composer has been the subject of many recordings.

The award-winning Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra is the UK’s oldest continuing professional symphony orchestra, dating from 1840. The dynamic young Russian, Vasily Petrenko was appointed Principal Conductor of the orchestra in September 2006 and in September 2009 became Chief Conductor.

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Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko – Dmitry Shostakovich – Symphony No. 4 (2013/2016) DSF DSD64

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko – Dmitry Shostakovich – Symphony No. 4 (2013/2016)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 01:04:52 minutes | 2,56 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: AcousticSounds | Booklet, Front Cover | © 2xHD

Completed in 1936 but withdrawn during rehearsal and not performed until 1961, the searing Fourth Symphony finds Shostakovich stretching his musical idiom to the limit in the search for a personal means of expression at a time of undoubted personal and professional crisis. The opening movement, a complex and unpredictable take on sonata form that teems with a dazzling profusion of varied motifs, is followed by a short, eerie central movement. The finale opens with a funeral march leading to a climax of seismic physical force that gives way to a bleak and harrowing minor key coda. The Symphony has since become one of the most highly regarded of the composer’s large-scale works.

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Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko – Dmitry Shostakovich – Symphonies Nos. 2 & 15 (2012/2015) DSF DSD64

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko – Dmitry Shostakovich – Symphonies Nos. 2 & 15 (2012/2015)
DSF Stereo DSD64, 1 bit/2,82 MHz | Time – 01:06:53 minutes | 2,64 GB | Genre: Classical
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:06:53 minutes | 1,18 GB
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: AcousticSounds | Booklet, Front Cover | © 2xHD | Naxos

This album was mastered using 2xHD’s proprietary system. In order to achieve the most accurate reproduction of the original recording they tailor their process specifically for each project, using a selection from their pool of state-of-the-art audiophile components and connectors. The process begins with a transfer to analog from the original 96kHz/24-bit resolution master, using cutting edge D/A converters. The analog signal is then sent through a hi-end tube preamplifier before being recorded directly in DXD using the dCS905 A/D and the dCS Vivaldi Clock. All connections used in the process are made of OCC silver cable.

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Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko – Shostakovitch: Symphonies 6 & 12 (2011) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko – Shostakovitch: Symphonies 6 & 12 (2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:09:13 minutes | 609 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naxos

Shostakovich’s Sixth and Twelfth Symphonies both had their origins in large-scale projects about Lenin, though the Sixth was eventually to emerge as one of the composer’s most abstract and idiosyncratic symphonies. The long, intensely lyrical and meditative slow movement that opens the work is one of the composer’s most striking. The Twelfth, one of the least played of Shostakovich’s symphonies in the West, became less a celebration of Lenin’s legacy than a chronological depiction of events during the Bolshevik Revolution. ‘The playing is fabulously crisp and committed, while the interpretations combine atmosphere and a sense of proportion – to the benefit of the youthful First, which receives an eerily effective performance, free of exaggeration.’

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Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko – Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 ‘Leningrad’, Op. 60 (1941) (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko – Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 ‘Leningrad’, Op. 60 (1941) (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:10 minutes | 1,33 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naxos

Three weeks after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Shostakovich volunteered with the Home Guard in Leningrad. As the siege of the city intensified, he worked on his Seventh Symphony, completing three movements before being forced to leave Leningrad and travel east by train. The work was completed in December that year. Initially he gave each movement a programmatic title, but later withdrew them, leaving this epic work as an emblem of heroic defiance in the face of conflict and crisis: ‘I dedicate my Seventh Symphony to our struggle against fascism, to our coming victory over the enemy, to my native city, Leningrad.’

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Boris Giltburg, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko – Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 3 & 4, Opp. 37 & 58 (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Boris Giltburg, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko - Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 3 & 4, Opp. 37 & 58 (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Boris Giltburg, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko – Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 3 & 4, Opp. 37 & 58 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:09:56 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Naxos

For 19th-century audiences Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 was the most loved of all his piano concertos, a work in which the balancing of high drama, tenderness, lyricism and humour is most pronounced and in which a coda resolves inner tensions with brilliance and triumphant grandeur. Piano Concerto No. 4 is the most introspective and poetic of the concertos. The simplicity of its opening piano statement gives way to an unprecedented dialogue in the central movement between a heartfelt piano and an austere unison string orchestra, before the infectious energy of the dramatic finale.
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Esther Yoo, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra & Vasily Petrenko – Barber, Bruch (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Esther Yoo, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra & Vasily Petrenko – Barber, Bruch (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:24 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Universal Music Ltd.

A blend of intelligent musicianship and artistic authenticity.

First studio recording with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) and Music Director Vasily Petrenko.

Violinist Esther Yu releases Barber, Bruch, an album of recordings of Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto in G minor and Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (conducted by Vasily Petrenko).

This is his first studio album in six years since his second album of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto (2017) and his first recording with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Music Director Vasily Petrenko. In addition to the two violin concertos, it features Bruch’s Adagio appassionato, written for Joachim, and Vieuxtemps’ Yankee Doodle Variations (Memories of America). The recording was made at the Watford Coliseum with Henry Woodhall, creator of many masterpieces, and producer Christopher Alder, who has won ten Grammys and made many best-selling albums.

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George Li, London Philharmonic Orchestar & Vasily Petrenko – Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 – Liszt: Solo Piano Works (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

George Li, London Philharmonic Orchestar & Vasily Petrenko – Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 – Liszt: Solo Piano Works (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:04:40 minutes | 849 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics

George Li gained international attention in 2015 when he won the silver medal in the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Now he has recorded one of Tchaikovsky’s greatest and best-loved works, the Piano Concerto No 1 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Vasily Petrenko. The New York Times has called him a “real revelation” in the work. It is complemented by three solo pieces by Liszt, a composer who featured on his debut Warner Classics recital, judged “a winner” by International Piano magazine.

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Vasily Petrenko – Shostakovich : The Complete Symphonies (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Vasily Petrenko – Shostakovich : The Complete Symphonies (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 11:43:07 minutes | 8,82 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naxos

This box set is a compilation of the individual recordings in the Shostakovich cycle released by conductor Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra between 2009 and 2013. The recordings have been widely praised, and the price here is certainly right. A sampling of the set will confirm the positive opinions: Petrenko has several major strengths, and he is likely to emerge as the primary pick in this repertory among recordings by younger performers with no direct roots in Shostakovich’s own orbit. Petrenko seems to delve deeply into the psychological layers of Shostakovich’s music, emphasizing the duress that can be heard in the Symphony No. 5, Op. 47, if the conductor pushes and pulls the tempi. The early symphonies have lots of bite, and the big, Mahlerian ones are rich in detail. Petrenko works well with very fine soloists in the vocal symphonies, and Naxos backs him with clear sound in Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall. Sure, there are a few blemishes – notably the shapeless performance of the unexpectedly humorous Symphony No. 15, Op. 141 – but nothing ought to be perfect, and this is a set that will give many hours of listening for years to come.

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Vasily Petrenko – Shostakovich : Symphonies No.2 & No.15 (2012) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Vasily Petrenko – Shostakovich : Symphonies No.2 & No.15 (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:06:55 minutes | 1,10 GB | Genre: Symphonic Music
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naxos

There’s a lot to like in this recording of Shostakovich’s Second and Fifteenth symphonies with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra led by their young conductor, Vasily Petrenko. First is the pairing of these two works, one a brash early piece in which the composer tried to reconcile the demands of Communist propaganda (the work’s subtitle refers to the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution), and the other his deeply gloomy swan song in the symphonic form. Despite the gulf that separates them, with the central events of 20th-century history flowing through it, the two works are recognizably products of the same pen. The brisk performance of the Symphony No. 2, Op. 14 (“To October”), is quite strong, with the long ascent from the depths of the work’s almost inaudible opening very well controlled and the choral finale and its ridiculous text never overdone. The big question mark here is the Symphony No. 15 in A minor, Op. 141, which is drained of both its gloom and its gallows humor looking back at various kinds of Romantic music (the quotation from the William Tell Overture is curiously flat in affect). Instead, Petrenko seems to want to make it into a modernist work in the vein of its companion on the album; tempos are brisk, dynamics compressed, and contrapuntal artifice sharply chiseled. To those who grew up on the gloriously lugubrious recording of this symphony by Maxim Shostakovich (who ought to know what it’s all about), Petrenko’s reading may be maddening. Yet great works change over time, and perhaps that’s what’s happening with this one. This album is part of a complete cycle of Shostakovich’s symphonies, and even if you don’t buy what’s being done with the Fifteenth here, you may well be intrigued enough to check out other releases in the series.

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Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko – Zemlinsky: Die Seejungfrau, Schreker: Der Geburtstag der Infantin (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko – Zemlinsky: Die Seejungfrau, Schreker: Der Geburtstag der Infantin (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:28 minutes | 1,29 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PM Classics Ltd.

In Vienna, Alexander Zemlinsky and Franz Schreker conducted experiments that could be seen as a middle road between the rigorous writing of Brahms, the orchestral opulence of Richard Strauss and the dodecaphonic radicalism of Schönberg, Berg and Webern. Unfortunately their experiments were cut short when the Nazis came to power and banned their music. Vasily Petrenko’s colourful and imaginative conducting reminds us of these two composers’ central importance for the history of early 20th-century music.

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Simon Trpčeski, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko – Prokofiev: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 3 (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Simon Trpčeski, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko – Prokofiev: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 3 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 52:29 minutes | 910 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PM Classics Ltd.

The chief draw on this release by Simon Trpceski is the Piano Concerto No. 1 in D flat major, Op. 10, composed while Sergey Prokofiev was still a student in St. Petersburg. Prokofiev thought highly enough of the work to premiere it in Moscow himself, and indeed it’s a student work of the best kind, brash and overflowing with confidence. Consider and sample the broad opening and, after about a minute, the angular music, a kind of second theme, seems as though it comes from an entirely different composition and dares you to imagine how it can be integrated with the opening. Prokofiev goes on to do just that, of course, and it was music like this that antagonized conservative listeners and, in an age when such antagonism was box office gold, did much to propel Prokofiev’s early career. In its broader outlines the work is not so dissimilar to the better-known Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26, one of the peaks of Prokofiev’s neoclassic output. The performances by Trpceski and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Vasily Petrenko are very strong, capturing the exuberance of the Piano Concerto No. 1 and delivering a crowd-pleasing, sparkling Third with no hint of the mordant quality many attach to the work. The Overture on Hebrew Themes, Op. 34bis, is a fine, little-known entr-acte. A crowd-pleasing Prokofiev release.

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