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Consolations

Saskia Giorgini

Solo Piano - Released June 9, 2023 | PentaTone

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Pianist Saskia Giorgini found both critical and commercial success with her 2022 recording of Liszt's Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, and this 2023 release, which immediately climbed onto classical best-seller charts, follows directly on the earlier album, with the same Bösendorfer piano and the same recording location, the Lisztzentrum in Raiding, Austria. Listeners will not be disappointed, for Consolations has all the virtues of her first Liszt album and adds a few more. The wonderfully controlled lyricism of the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses recurs in the heavily programmatic title work, where Giorgini's playing hints at the presence of all kinds of stories. She plainly excels in the religious, late Liszt, and there are two wonderful examples here, the Deux Legends, portraits of St. Francis of Assisi praying to the birds, and of St. François de Paule. These are difficult works that combine mysticism with Lisztian virtuosity; annotator Mark Berry is right to stress that Liszt did not fully renounce the virtuosity in his later years, but that is not all. Giorgini is just as good in the flashy Three Caprices-Valses and the reflective Liebesträume, the best-known music on the album. In the Valse-Impromptu, she has an uncanny way of suggesting the feeling of spontaneity that seems to have marked Liszt's own playing. Will Giorgini go on with Liszt? She certainly has the technical and emotional wherewithal to do so and to take on more famous works than these.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Sibelius: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 5 Pohjola's Daughter

Santtu-Matias Rouvali

Classical - Released October 21, 2022 | Alpha Classics

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After the phenomenal critical success of the first two volumes of the complete Sibelius symphonies, the Finnish conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra introduce us to the "green" side of Sibelius who, suffering from health problems and financial worries, moved to the shores of Lake Tuusula just before writing his Third Symphony. His output was powerfully inspired by nature. In April 1915, when the world was in chaos, he wrote in his diary of the appearance of sixteen swans over the lake and noted down their cry, which inspired the great horn theme of the Fifth Symphony’s finale. © Alpha Classics
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Sibelius: The Seven Symphonies

Lorin Maazel

Classical - Released September 1, 2015 | Decca Music Group Ltd.

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Dvořák: Piano Trios Nos. 3 & 4

Christian Tetzlaff

Chamber Music - Released October 5, 2018 | Ondine

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Sibelius : Symphonies 1 - 7

Sir Simon Rattle

Classical - Released September 11, 2015 | Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

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César Franck: Violin Sonata, Piano Trio No.1 & Piano Quintet - Vierne: Piano Quintet

Trio Wanderer

Chamber Music - Released May 26, 2023 | harmonia mundi

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French chamber music is, in general, underexposed, notwithstanding the popularity of Franck's Piano Quintet in F minor and Violin Sonata in A major. Those two works receive strong performances here from a subset and an expanded version, respectively, of the Wanderer Trio. The players capture the over-the-top quality of both works, the exceptional difficulty and range of the piano part in the sonata, and the emotional extremes of the Quintet, but what makes this double album a must for chamber music lovers is the presence of the other two works on the album, both of them much less common: the Piano Quintet in C minor, Op. 42, of Louis Vierne and Franck's Piano Trio No. 1 in F sharp minor, Op. 1, No. 1. The Vierne quintet is a revelation. The booklet makes much of Vierne's indebtedness to Franck, and indeed, Franck's cyclical procedure and his general combination of contrapuntal density with intense expressivity are present. Yet the work is wholly characteristic of Vierne. It often has the flavor of Vierne's better-known organ music (sample the Larghetto sostenuto slow movement), and it has a distinctively somber tone resulting from its origins as a memorial piece for the composer's son, dead in World War I. The Franck F sharp minor trio, one of several early Franck trios, is in a Mendelssohnian vein, but Franck's melodicism was fully present even at this early date (1839). The program as a whole sustains interest over its length, and Harmonia Mundi's sound from the Théâtre Auditorium de Poitiers is resonant and idiomatic, not damaging the players' properly extreme dynamic range. An exciting chamber music release.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Rachmaninoff & Brahms

Yuja Wang

Classical - Released September 2, 2022 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

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Pianist Yuja Wang, clarinettist Andreas Ottensamer and cellist Gautier Capu‡on have earned a reputation as a "super-trio", having given performances worldwide that reveal the instinctive, almost telepathic bond of musical communication that exists between the three players. This album includes visionary interpretations of Rachmaninoff's Cello Sonata Op. 19, Brahms's Cello Sonata No. 1, Op. 38 and the same composer's Trio for piano, clarinet and cello, Op. 14. © DGG
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Sibelius 2 & 5

Orchestre Metropolitain

Classical - Released March 1, 2024 | Les Disques ATMA Inc.

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Liszt: "Athanor", Totentanz & Piano Concertos

Beatrice Berrut

Classical - Released April 27, 2018 | Aparté

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Athanor. A mysterious name to designate, in alchemy, the long-combustion furnace that produces the philosopher’s stone. This matrix, which symbolises the quest of one who seeks to the Absolute, is a metaphor of Liszt’s approach. With the patience of the alchemist who pursues the perfection of the material, the virtuoso composer and pianist has long matured the genesis of his two Piano Concertos and of the Totentanz: in fact, more than 20 years separate the first sketches of their publication. These three major works are each crossed by a powerfull and captivating leading theme, and driven by a logic of transformation: the Totentanz uses the theme and variations form while the concertos are unifyed by a unique theme that nourishes the whole musical flow through its metamorphoses. Pianist Beatrice Berrut, who was already venturing on the Lisztian paths in her previous record, testifies here to the infinite invention of the composer: she performs the first Concerto with its last variants noted by Liszt himself on the copy of his pupil Hans von Bülow. © Aparté
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Complete RIAS Recordings (Live in Berlin, 1947-1954)

Wilhelm Furtwängler

Classical - Released May 15, 2009 | audite Musikproduktion

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Antonín Dvořák: The Complete Piano Trios

Guarneri Trio Prague

Chamber Music - Released April 1, 2009 | Praga Digitals

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions 5 de Diapason
The Guarneri Trio Prague plays Dvorák the old-fashioned way, with lots of virtuosity and emotion. In this two-disc set of the Bohemian composer's four piano trios, the Czech group turns in performances as fiery, passionate, and thrilling as the best ever recorded. The group features a lush collective sound, plus an ensemble that's tight enough to use rubato freely, and the musicians clearly feel an affinity for the music of their country's greatest composer. In the F minor Trio, one of Dvorák's most heartfelt chamber works, their playing glows with a searing intensity. In the early B flat major and G minor trios, the Guarneri delivers highly energized readings that make the most of the works' ardent lyricism (while effectively disguising the music's occasional formal excesses). And in the Dumky Trios, six single-movement works set in the archetypical Bohemian dance form, combining deeply melancholic outer sections with wildly exuberant central sections, their performances are hugely affecting and exciting. Though longtime fans of the composer may already have favorite performances of these works, they will surely find much to enjoy here. Listeners who don't already know them but are fond of Dvorák will likely be transported. Praga's sound is close and very vivid. © TiVo
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Sibelius : Complete Symphonies

Paavo Järvi

Symphonies - Released October 24, 2018 | Sony Classical

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions 5 de Diapason
Estonian conductor Paavo Järvi has recorded a lot of Sibelius: there are at least a couple of complete symphony sets as well as single recordings. In general, he has tended toward the abstract, toward the view that Sibelius, despite his adherence to tonality, was essentially a modern composer with a unique conception of form on both the small and large scales. Consider the finale of the Symphony No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 82, with its popular half-note theme of open fifths and sixths. It's been thought to evoke anything from Thor's hammer to swans taking flight, but here the epic quality of the motif is toned down, and what emerges instead is the depth to which the fifths and sixths are all over this finale. Järvi's recordings of all three of the final symphonies are masterful, and the one-movement Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 105 unfolds with an organic inevitability that's mysterious and miraculous. Perhaps Järvi's approach is a little less desirable in the Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39, a genuinely Tchaikovskian work that is a bit drained of sentiment here, or in the Symphony No. 4 in A minor, Op. 63, which lacks the requisite gloom in this darkest of all symphonies. But the Second and Third symphonies have sweeping power, and the Orchestre de Paris is precise and sharp throughout. The Eiffel Tower on the cover does not exactly say Sibelius, but Järvi conducted this orchestra for several years, and it responds to his every wish. Your mileage may vary, for these readings are toward one extreme in the interpretation of Sibelius, but many will find the last three symphonies to be capstones of Järvi's Sibelius career -- unless he returns to Sibelius again.© TiVo
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Jean Sibelius: Symphonies Nos. 5, 6 & 7

Herbert von Karajan

Symphonies - Released January 1, 2018 | Praga Digitals

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British Tone Poems, Vol. 1

Rumon Gamba

Symphonies - Released February 1, 2017 | Chandos

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The music on the program of this Chandos release is not terribly often programmed, even in Britain, and the title British Tone Poems, Vol. 1, is not one to stir the soul. The six pieces on the program all share the pastoral mood that inspired a British serialist to make light of the Cowpat School. Yet adjust yourself to the rather narrow horizons of this music, and you'll find some gems. Consider the opening Spring, by the almost-forgotten Frederic Austin (who, among other accomplishments, put The Twelve Days of Christmas into the form in which it is known today). It consists of five fleeting glimpses of the season, not profound but immensely tuneful, and it is an all-but-unknown work. Sample its second movement or turn to A Gloucestershire Rhapsody by the hugely underrated Ivor Gurney, who is known mostly for his songs. He wrote this five-movement work shortly after World War I, in which he was hit by poison gas, and shortly before he was permanently institutionalized. Annotator Lewis Foreman suggests that the work has "an elegiac quality absent in the innocent, pre-war sound worlds of Austin, [Henry Balfour] Gardiner, and Vaughan Williams," and even more than that it seems to carry an indefinable intensity. Vaughan Williams is represented by The Solent (1903), one of the early RVW works that has risen in popularity following the end, in 2008, of the composer's ban on their performance within 50 years of his death. The Solent, in case you were wondering, is the little channel between the English mainland and the Isle of Wight. It's significant in Vaughan Williams' oeuvre, containing a clarinet theme at the beginning that recurs in both the Sea Symphony and the Symphony No. 9, from the very end of the composer's life. With fluent, enthusiastic performances by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Rumon Gamba and excellent engineering at the BBC Hoddinott Hall in Cardiff, this is a nice find for lovers of British orchestral music.© TiVo
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Beethoven: String Quartets Nos. 12 & 14

Prazak Quartet

Quartets - Released January 1, 2002 | Praga Digitals

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions 5 de Diapason - Choc du Monde de la Musique - Recommandé par Classica
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Casella: Symphony No. 2 & Scarlattiana

Gianandrea Noseda

Symphonies - Released June 1, 2010 | Chandos

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The Beethoven Journey - Piano Concertos Nos.1-5

Leif Ove Andsnes

Classical - Released September 15, 2014 | Sony Classical

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Released as separate CDs between 2012 and 2014, Leif Ove Andsnes' recordings of Ludwig van Beethoven's five piano concertos and the Choral Fantasy have been brought together in this slip-covered package from Sony. The loose concept behind this project was to show how Beethoven's musical development reflected the events and journeys of his life, from his early Classical period through his heroic, visionary works. This simple theme, a commonplace in Beethoven biography, and Andsnes' speculative commentary, are secondary to the performances, though, which he delivers with a somewhat streamlined and muscular style in his readings with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. While using modern instruments and only approximating a Classical sound in the orchestra's lean textures, Andsnes offers little to appeal to early music enthusiasts, though his concessions to historically informed practice are noticeable. Overall, however, Andsnes' interpretations are fresh and energetic, and there is much in this set to attract mainstream classical listeners.© TiVo
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Sibelius : Symphonies 1-7

The Chamber Orchestra of Europe

Symphonies - Released November 10, 1997 | Fazer Records - Finlandia

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Franz Liszt : Metanoia

Beatrice Berrut

Solo Piano - Released November 4, 2016 | Aparté

Hi-Res Booklets Distinctions 4 étoiles Classica