ORCHESTRA SYMPHONIQUE BIENNE/ROSNER
Wagner en Suisse (ATMA)
The title of this new CD is Wagner in Switzerland, but it also contains the music of Richard Strauss, who fled Germany for the relative peace and quiet of the Alpine country a century after Wagner’s first flight from creditors and irate husbands.
Overall this is a gorgeous album, marked by the utter clarity of the interpretations.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
The historically noteworthy piece on the disc is the world-premiere recording of Wagner’s re-working of the Overture to Gluck’s opera Iphigénie en Aulide (Wagner pretty much re-wrote Gluck’s work) that was discovered in the Central Library in Zurich in the late-1990s. Wagner’s version adds heft to the orchestral sound, which might have been nice in the mid-19th century, but sounds heavy-handed now.
Much more satisfying are the original, chamber-sized arrangement of the Siegfried Idyll Wagner wrote to wake his mistress (later wife) Cosima von Bülow on Christmas Day, 1870, at their hideaway villa, Tribschen (now the Wagner Museum). Thomas Rösner, music director of the Bienne Orchestra until this season, takes the piece at a good clip that suits the music very nicely.
The disc includes a video of the orchestra members performing the piece in the Tribschen stairway for which Wagner’s piece was originally intended.
Other Wagner goodies on the album are his revised Faust Overture and an arrangement of one of his Wesendonck-Lieder, Traüme (Dreams), for violin, nicely played by Daniel Kobyliansky.
Louise Pellerin’s oboe is a lighter-than air presence in Richard Strauss’s sweet and playful 1946 Oboe Concerto. Strauss, who turned 80 in 1944, caught a second wind when he crossed the border from war-ravaged Germany into Alpine sunshine. This gorgeous, three-movement concerto is a great example of his final creative burst. The orchestra matches its soloist with light and limpid navigation on Strauss’ endless modulations. It’s a treat from beginning to end.
For full details on the disc, click here.
Here are the Bienners, gathered at Tribschen to work their Siegfried magic:
ST. PETERSBURG STATE SYMPHONY/LANDE
Weinberg, Symphony No. 6 (Naxos)
It’s been a generation since the fall of the Iron Curtain, but there’s still a great mass of excellent music from within its former borders that remains virtually unknown elsewhere.
Thanks to a potent, coherent performance by the St. Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra under its music director, Vladimir Lande, here is one of those treasures.
Mieczyslav Weinberg (1919-1996) was born in Poland, but fled to the Soviet Union during the German occupation in 1939, remaining there for much of the rest of his life as Moisey Vainberg.
A protégé of Dmitri Shostakovich’s, Weinberg wrote, among other pieces, 26 symphonies and 17 string quartets. The five movements of Symphony No. 6, from 1963, are textbook examples of gorgeous thematic development and limpid orchestration – all written in heavily shadowed style of Shostakovich.
Three of the movements contain poems set for high voices, sung with uneven results by the boys of Russia’s oldest choir school, the 309-year-old Glinka Choral College.
The album opens with a 1949 medley, Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes, that, despite its folk roots, is no more cheerful than the symphony, while also showing the composer’s deft hand at shifting moods as smoothly and colourfully as a kaleidoscope.
This disc is about appreciation rather than enjoyment.
For full details, as well as audio samples, click here.
Here is young Lithuanian conductor Dainius Povilionis conducting a strong performance (with probably is the Lithuanian National Orchestra) of Weinberg’s Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes:
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
