Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra

Baltic Portraits is the 18th Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra release with Music Director Laureate Paavo Järvi and recorded during Maestro Järvi’s triumphant, ten-year tenure as music director.

The collection of live recordings features late 20th century and 21st century works by noted composers of the Baltic region in Northern Europe including Arvo Pärt, Erkki-Sven Tüür, Aulis Sallinen, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Lepo Sumera.

“I love core repertoire, and Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 is a sweeping example of the Russian symphonic tradition and perhaps the most popular of his orchestral works,” says Paavo Järvi. “It’s particularly exciting to record Rachmaninoff’s lesser-known gems such as the two gypsy dances from Aleko and the charming little Scherzo from 1888.”

This collection features many of George Gershwin's most popular, iconic works such as Rhapsody in Blue, Summertime, An American In Paris, the Cuban Overture, Lullaby, I Got Rhythm, Rialto Ripples Rag and Prelude No. 2. Performers include Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, William Tritt, John O'Conor and Harolyn Blackwell.

In 2001, Glass composed the music for a film called “Naqoyqatsi: Life as War”that was the third film in a trilogy by director Godfrey Reggio that features only images and music. When the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra invited Glass to be a Creative Director of its Boundless Series during the 2011-12 season, Glass thought of his cello-concerto-for-film and its possible life-after-film. The CSO commissioned Cello Concerto No.2 “Naqoyqatsi” and gave the composer the opportunity to have it reborn as a proper concerto.

The resulting recording is drawn from the live performances and is a dynamic seven-movement work, conducted here by long-time Glass champion Dennis Russell Davies with soloist and modern-master Matt Haimovitz.

American Portraits is the 17th CSO recording with Music Director Paavo Järvi, and is part of the year-long celebration of Maestro Järvi’s triumphant, ten-year tenure as music director. The release features works by American composers Jennifer Higdon, Charles Coleman, Carter Pann, Jonathan Bailey Holland and Kevin Puts.

American Portraits is taken from live recordings between 2001 and 2007, and begins with Charles Coleman’s Streetscape, a work commissioned by the CSO that had its world premiere at Cincinnati’s Music Hall on September 14, 2001, Mr. Järvi’s inaugural concert as CSO Music Director.

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Jennifer Higdon’s Fanfare Ritmico, which according to the composer, “celebrates the rhythm and speed (tempo) of life,” was written in 2000 for the The Women’s Philharmonic in San Francisco.

Carter Pann’s Slalom was completed in 1999 and had its premiere with the Haddonfield Symphony in 2000.

Jonathan Bailey Holland’s Halcyon Sun was commissioned by the CSO to honor the opening of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, and had its world premiere in Cincinnati on April 30, 2004.

The final track on American Portraits is Network by Kevin Puts, a work premiered by the California Symphony in 1997. The CSO’s recording was taken from the Orchestra’s performances on March 10, 11 and 12 of 2005.

This latest recording by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and its Music Director Paavo Järvi features two of the best known orchestral works to come out of England in the twentieth century, Gustav Holst's popular suite for orchestra, “The Planets” and The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra by Benjamin Britten.

Composed between 1914 and 1916, Gustav Holst’s seven-movement Planets Suite is renowned for its brilliant orchestral colours, and powerful sound-images. The disc also features the re-issue of the orchestra’s highly regarded recording of Britten’s Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. Originally released alongside the same composer’s Four Sea Interludes from “Peter Grimes” and Elgar’s “Enigma Variations” the review in The Gramophone said: “These are fresh, clean-cut performances, superbly played and vividly recorded, and can be warmly recommended to any collector.”

Paavo Järvi and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s 16 recordings for Telarc, including their excellent March 2009 release of Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony and Tormis’ Overture No 2, have garnered much critical acclaim. Other recent recordings include the January 2008 release of a celebrated all-Prokofiev CD, and the 2007 recording of Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony.

Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 is a work Paavo Järvi and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra know well. Following a performance at Carnegie Hall in 2003, The New York Times wrote, “...the blistering performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10...showed the potential that Mr. Järvi and [the CSO] have, and suggest a powerful chemistry between them....The orchestra played with a transfixing ferocity.” The piece was also featured prominently on a hugely successful CSO tour of Europe in April of 2008 that included sold-out performances in Vienna, Amsterdam and Paris. It was premiered in 1953 following the death of Stalin, and paints a bleak portrait of life under the dictator’s rule. Many commentators believe that the whirlwind-like second movement is a musical representation of Stalin the man, and the havoc and destruction that followed in his wake.

Although Veljo Tormis is mostly recognized for his prolific choral works, his Overture No. 2, which was premiered in 1959, is an early, purely orchestral piece. Paavo Järvi, who is himself originally from Estonia believes that Tormis is one of the more important Estonian composers and that this Overture is something truly unique. He also suggests that between the epic statement of Shostakovich’s tenth symphony and the sheer drama of the Tormis piece, we can hear the response of two different and distinct voices to the Stalinist era. On this disc the two pieces appear together as works emerging from two countries at a common point in their history, both sharing the same conviction, urgency and strength.