Gewandhausorchester / Andris Nelsons BRUCKNER Symphonies Nos. 2 & 8

 

SYMPHONIES NOS. 2 & 8

Gidon Kremer / Madara Pētersone / Gewandhausorchester / Daniele Gatti MIECZYSLAW WEINBERG Violin Concerto - Sonata for Two Violins

 

VIOLIN CONCERTO - SONATA FOR TWO VIOLINS

Gewandhausorchester / Herbert Blomstedt BEETHOVEN The Complete Symphonies

In celebration of Herbert Blomstedt’s 90th Birthday in July 2017, Accentus Music releases a new Beethoven cycle that captures the spirit of the long-standing partnership between the legendary conductor laureate and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. All nine symphonies, released in a box set containing five CDs, are live recordings made at the Leipzig Gewandhaus between May 2014 and March 2017.

Blomstedt’s interpretations of Beethoven are based on a highly responsible handling of the scores and this conductor’s deep love of the truth, in which everything that is superimposed and overtly effective is fundamentally removed. At the same time however, the performances embrace the ethical conscience of the artist with his deep, almost seismographic musical sensibility and a high expressivity.

Gewandhausorchester / Andris Nelsons BRUCKNER Symphonies Nos. 6 & 9

Andris Nelsons’ revelatory readings of Bruckner’s symphonies are permeated by his understanding of the many contradictions within the composer’s character – not least the opposition between an essential awareness of his own talent and the insecurity that compelled him to rework his scores again and again. Set for release on 3 May 2019, the latest title in the Latvian conductor’s ongoing cycle for Deutsche Grammophon, performed with his Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, prefaces Bruckner’s Sixth and Ninth Symphonies with Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll and Prelude to Parsifal respectively. Light and dark, triumph and tragedy, life and death coexist here in a state of uneasy tension, resolved but never reconciled.

Bruckner’s symphonies are a minefield of multiple versions, confusing revisions and clashes between manuscript and published sources. Nelsons has opted to follow Leopold Nowak’s critical edition for these performances. The Sixth Symphony (1879-81), notable for its structural economy and clarity, was one of Bruckner’s favourites among his own works. Much of the work is striking for its dynamism, but at its emotional centre is the dark and troubled Adagio, whose music, as Nelsons observes, anticipates the soundworld of Mahler. While the Sixth was written within two years and spared from later revision by the composer, Bruckner laboured on his ninth and final symphony for much of the final decade of his life. Nelsons has followed convention to perform the Ninth in its three-movement form. The closing Adagio echoes the rising melody of the so-called “Dresden Amen” in homage to Wagner, who made prominent use of the theme in Parsifal.

As he told Gramophone in April 2018, Nelsons is determined, above all, “to show Bruckner the human being, with all his doubts, obsessions, as well as Bruckner the man who is very religious and lives according to certain strong rules, and how that sometimes conflicts with and sometimes fulfils his approach in his music.”

The Gewandhausorchester players bring the ambiguities inherent in Bruckner’s scores vibrantly to life. The composer is in the orchestra’s collective DNA. It embraced him when it gave the world premiere of his Seventh Symphony in 1884 and made history again soon after the First World War by performing the first complete cycle of his nine symphonies. “The Gewandhausorchester’s ability to play this music is very special”, says Nelsons, “there’s a sensitivity and intimacy that I like very much.”

Ramin Bahrami / Gewandhausorchester / Riccardo Chailly BACH 5 Klavierkonzerte

Performed on piano in a mainstream performance style, the five keyboard concertos of J.S. Bach are given a robust treatment in this 2011 Decca release. Pianist Ramin Bahrami and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, led by Riccardo Chailly, make no concessions to period performance practice or historically informed scholarship, so there's no attempt to render the music in Baroque style. To early music connoisseurs, this disc may be dismissed out of hand for that reason, but listeners who are open to hearing Bach's concertos in modern instrumentation, with a minimum of ornamentation and a fairly straightforward execution, will be more favorably inclined to accept Bahrami's playing. This Iranian pianist specializes in Bach's keyboard music, and his interpretations stem from his intimate involvement with Bach's music from his teens. As a mature performer who plays with energy and assertiveness, Bahrami makes the concertos feel rather urgent in their fast outer movements and alert, if not also restless, in the slow middle movements, so an intense emotional feeling seems to underlie these performances. Yet unlike some modern recordings, where the concertos can sound like Romantic renditions with big expressions and thick, homogenized orchestral accompaniment, Bahrami and Chailly keep textures light and transparent, so something closer to a Classical sound is realized. Recorded live in 2009, the sound is clear and focused, with a bright keyboard tone and vibrant strings, though the orchestra seems mixed at a lower level than the piano. (Blair Sanderson)