BBC Symphony Orchestra / Edward Gardner VERKLÄRTE NACHT

 

VERKLÄRTE NACHT

 

Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Choirs / Edward Gardner BRITTEN Peter Grimes

PETER GRIMES

Sara Jakubiak / Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra / Edward Gardner SCHOENBERG Erwartung - Pelleas und Melisande

                                        ERWARTUNG - PELLEAS UND MELISANDE

Eric Lu BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 4 CHOPIN Sonata No. 2 - Balade No. 4

Warner Classics and Askonas Holt are proud to announce the signing of 20-year old American pianist, Eric Lu, winner and Dame Fanny Waterman Gold Medallist at the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition 2018.

As part of this year’s coveted prize the winner receives worldwide management with Askonas Holt – one of the world's leading arts management agencies, and an international album release on Warner Classics – one of the foremost global classical music recording companies. This is the first time a record label and a management agency partner with ‘The Leeds’ to create a ground-breaking portfolio prize designed with long-term career development in mind.

The recording deal is a corner-stone of its new prize package, designed to redefine what a music competition can offer young performers. Both, Warner Classics and Askonas Holt, aim to ensure that the winner has the opportunities, support and advice to develop a significant long-term international career.

Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra / Edward Gardner BRAHMS Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3

The Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra under its Chief Conductor, Edward Gardner, embarks on a new Brahms cycle with this first instalment, containing the first and third symphonies. Recorded in Surround Sound in Bergen’s Grieghallen – the orchestra’s home – in October 2018, these two symphonies show the orchestra at the very top of its game, offering rich, strong, and supple string playing matched by outstanding ensemble work across the orchestra.

Edward Gardner approaches Brahms from his knowledge and experience of the chamber music, and aware of Brahms’s ties to Schumann. Inspired by the joy and excitement surrounding live performances of the symphonies with the Bergen Philharmonic, he states that ‘the combination of the personality of the orchestra, the Chandos Sound, and [Brahms’s] great music produces something special’.

Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Choirs / Edward Gardner BERLIOZ Grande Messe des Morts

With this surround-sound recording of Berlioz’s Requiem, Edward Gardner and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra tackle the infinite and the immeasurable.

All the grandiose, striking beauty of the Requiem’s large-scale ceremonial is encapsulated by first-class vocal and orchestral forces, fully utilising the spatial possibilities of Grieghallen in Bergen. The matching of space and sonority was one of Berlioz’s lasting obsessions, one experience in St Paul’s Cathedral in London throwing Berlioz into a delirium of emotion from which he took days to recover. His Grande Messe des morts, notorious for its requirement of four brass bands in addition to a large orchestra and chorus, taken here from live concerts, has often been seen as one of the most emotionally powerful works of its kind.

Setting a solemn and austere, even ascetic text, the music is not that of an orthodox believer but of a visionary, inspired by the dramatic implications of death and judgement.

“… it is Gardner’s handling of the quieter movements , with their often sparse textures and archaic polyphony, that marks his performance as something special. While taking care never to let the music flag, he finds a poetry and sensitivity to Berlioz’s often strange musical language that is deeply moving without ever cloying. It’s a reading steeped in feeling for the early Romantic soundworld that Berlioz helped to establish, and Gardner restrains the strings from excessive vibrato to maximise expressive effect. To sample some of the most exquisite sounds, try the opening of the ‘Hostias’ or ‘Agnus Dei’… one of the most thoughtful and compelling accounts of the Grande Messe des morts in the catalogue. A huge achievement!” (Europadisc)

Louis Lortie / BBC Philharmonic / Edward Gardner SAINT-SAËNS Piano Concertos Nos. 1, 2 and 4

Having already mastered such French concertos as Poulenc’s on record, the French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie and Edward Gardner now explore with the BBC Philharmonic the vigorous and progressive world of Camille Saint-Saëns, offering the first of two volumes to contain his complete piano concertos.

The brilliance, virtuosity, and technical perfection of Louis Lortie’s playing encapsulate these unusual, yet exhilarating works. While the spirited, unconventional Concerto No. 1 centres round a slow movement consisting of a dialogue between the sober orchestra and virtuosic piano, the technical requirements of No. 2 are so high that Saint-Saëns himself after its premiere admitted that his fluent technique was not quite up to the challenge. Finally, the unusual form and mixed musical ideas of No. 4 make for a uniquely dramatic, passionate, and dream-like experience.