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Tomasz Konieczny (Wotan), Christian Elsner (Loge), Iris Vermillion (Fricka), Günther Groissböck (Fasolt), Timo Riihonen (Fafner), Jochen Schmeckenbecher (Alberich), Ricarda Merberth (Freia), Andreas Conrad (Mime), Maria Radner (Erda), Julia Borchert (Woglinde), Katharina Kammerloher (Wellgunde), Kismara Pessatti (Flosshilde) Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester & Rundfunkchor Berlin, Marek Janowski Following on from their recent success at this year’s 2013 BBC Music Magazine Awards where they won the Award for Technical Excellence for their recording of Parsifal, PentaTone is delighted to bring you the next installment, Das Rheingold. This is the 7th release in PentaTone’s successful Wagner Edition and the 1st one in the Wagner Year. Das Rheingold is the first release of the cycle: Der Ring des Nibelungen. The other 3 “Ring recordings” will follow in the course of 2013. Continuing with their critically acclaimed Wagner series, the attached images show previous releases which have received unprecedented critical acclaim. The recordings have various been awarded The Sunday Times CD of the Week, The Opera Choice of the month in BBC Music Magazine, the Recording of the month also in BBC Music Magazine and several Gramophone Editor’s Choices. PentaTone’s Wagner Edition is an unprecedented project and we aim at supporting it with a lot of attention in the media throughout the year. In the Wagner year there will be a lot of attention for Wagner through articles in the media and performances of his opera’s. We expect therefore the interest for the PentaTone Edition (especially as a collector’s item) to increase substantially. This next release will be supported by advertising in various magazines. | 
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| |  | Janacek: Glagolitic Mass & Taras Bulba
This album offers two of the best known and most loved works by Leoš Janáček. The Glagolitic Mass was thus described by a musicologist: "It has absolutely everything, it’s engrossing and enthralling and captivating and startling and soothing and primitive and pristine and incredibly spiritual". Taras Bulba is a Rhapsody for Orchestra. The work combines diffuse, almost easy-listening romanticism with enough mystery and tangy dissonance to tell you immediately who the composer is. The orchestra, choir and conductor on this album are familiar from many other PentaTone Recordings such as the Wagner Edition and the Brahms Requiem (PTC5186361). “A lean, cleanly contoured Glagolitic, lacking the elemental charge and raw abandon of some versions. Taras Bulba is generally well played, if again short on real cutting edge and excitement.” BBC Music Magazine, April 2013 *** |
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| |  | 1889 version, ed. L. Nowak
Marek Janowski is well known for bringing fresh interpretations to familiar works and his partnership with this orchestra has worked well for Bruckner’s compositions “His way with Bruckner is brisk, energetic and lithe……” International Record Review “Janowski’s consistency is ample reason to recommend his version.” Gramophone ”Janowski conducts...with terrific drive, intensity and tonal richness.” Daily Telegraph “Bruckner could be impulsive and excitable, and Janowski certainly knows how to generate heat and excitement at the great releases. What a terrific surge he achieves into the coda of the first movement...Those special moments of communion that Bruckner achieves with his audience are beautifully identified by Janowski in the slow movement” Gramophone Magazine, December 2012 “For anyone wanting the 1889 version of Bruckner’s Third Symphony in
very fine modern sound, this is a serious contender.” International Record Review | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Linz Version 1866
This is the latest release in the very successful Janowski Bruckner cycle. The previous releases have received rave reviews. Rob Cowan wrote in the Gramophone (Symphony No.7); “This is yet another significant step towards what I am convinced will eventually turn out to be one of the finest recorded Bruckner cycles of the 21st century.” “Janowski's Scherzo is very high-energy, his finale, Beethovenian in its urgency, a fraught but ultimately victorious journey with excellent trumpets and timpani at the end...I like Janowski's Bruckner, its basic honesty and refusal to superimpose 'personality' over the composer's own...Janowski's consistency is ample reason to recommend his version.” Gramophone Magazine, July 2012 | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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Launching a new complete Wagner cycle comprising all Wagner’s 10 major operas, these were all recorded over a period of 4 years in the Philharmonie in Berlin and all use the same forces of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester and Chor. Conducted by Marek Janowski and performed by a top line up of soloists, this is unique recording feat in a complete Wagner series. “Recorded live in Berlin, the orchestra and the splendid Radio Chorus are the most impressive elements...The veteran Matti Salminen is still a formidable Daland, but Albert Dohmen’s intelligent Dutchman and Ricarda Merbeth’s committed Senta sound vocally worn and stretched.” Sunday Times, 11th September 2011 “Here is charm, wit and even kitsch alongside the spooky but never overdone drama. The recording is also first-rate in warmth, immediacy and clarity...the best all-round modern performance of the opera and a good nod towards the original-instrument version of this edition of the score we still need.” Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2011 “Janowski's conducting is crisp and fleet-footed, shaping the music naturally and fluently...[Dohmen] is a warm anti-hero, but too soft-grained to sound demonically desperate. Matti Salminen's Daland is vocally worn but still amazing for his age. Vocal honours, though, go to Ricarda Merbeth's keen, nervy Senta, and the two tenors...also the clean-cut chorus, which is reasonably dramatically involved.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2011 **** “It is astonishing that veteran Matti Salminen...can still shine as Daland...but his is the star voice here. Robert Dean Smith gives good value, too, in the tricky role of Erik...Steve Davislim is something of a catch as a lyrically sung Steersman...Janowksi's conducting has a momentum and a sense of abstract theatre which can take the breath away. I won't be jettisoning my allegiances, however, to the older conductors' singers.” International Record Review, November 2011 | | | (also available to download from $21.00) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Nowak Edition
Continuing their Bruckner cycle with Janowski and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, here is Symphony No.7. With Symphony No.8 PTC5196371 as the ‘benchmark recording’ on Radio 3’s Building a Library, this volume will be eagerly awaited. “every orchestral department here delivers superbly, with gorgeously rich strings, mellow woodwind, and powerful brass. Janowski's conducting, too, combines a true sense of Brucknerian space with impressive purpose and drive...While there's formidable competition among recordings of this much-played symphony, this version holds its own superbly.” Classic FM Magazine, September 2011 **** “Janowski has forged an instrument that projects Bruckner's richly textured canvases with a combination of warmth, transparency and tonal weight, the brass sounding particularly impressive...Pentatone has provided Janowski and his Geneva forces with excellent sound. This is yet another significant step towards what I am convinced will eventually turn out to be one of the finest recorded Bruckner cycles of the 21st century.” Gramophone Magazine, September 2011 “Attention must be paid: one of the most formidable veteran musicians of the modern age is being allowed to set down on disc performances of great authority...as with this imposing Bruckner 7 (in the Nowak edition), arrayed in dramatic Pentatone sound.” london24.com, 17th June 2011 | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Conductor and Teacher: Marek Janowskia film by Michel Follin
Experience is all, but, Janowski advises Olivier Dejours, firstly be a good musician, be an excellent player, good coach and reach out to others. “Janowski works thoughtfully with Dejours on translating musical ideas into sound through unselfconscious gestures.” BBC Music Magazine, August 2011 **** “Follin's documentary...neither fuels nor fells the famous "maestro mystique" of the conductor's podium. Although much time is devoted to interpretative matters...much of their discussion turns to nuts-and-bolts matter like technique and personnel management” Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2011 | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | 1890 version
This is the second version of this symphony. Bruckner took just over three years to complete this work and had never spent so long on a single work. His seventh symphony had been a huge success and he set to work with great intensity. The orchestra’s previous release of Bruckner Symphony No.5 was well received “This Orchestra has seldom sounded as good since its glory days…” Phil Muse “Janowski's conducting of the opening movement is impressive...steering a flexible course commandingly to a thrilling climax that finds the Suisse Romande Orchestra powerful but not coarse...At the close Janowski is rare among conductors in allowing the ticking clock to 'stop dead' (in other words there isn't even a hint of a ritardando) and this is exactly as it should be.” International Record Review, March 2011 “As an interpreter of Bruckner, Marek Janowski steers a straight centre course...and this Eighth is a good example of how well that approach can work...I don't think I've ever heard the finale bound in a more perfectly judged tempo, accelerating almost imperceptibly for the opening bars, then steadying so that brass make their full effect...I can't imagine anyone who isn't especially concerned with strongly personalised interpretation being disappointed.” Gramophone Magazine, June 2011 | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Bartók: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2
Steinbacher’s previous release on PentaTone (Dvorak and Szymanowski Concertos PTC5186350) was very well received “Rarely has the composer’s magical ear for instrumental sonorities sounded so beguiling on disc….Steinbacher responds with playing that is both sensually alluring and headily impassioned.” The Strad. Here she brings her expertise in interpretation to the Bartók Violin Concertos. “From her Stradivarius violin, Arabella Steinbacher conjures tones so subtly beautiful and multicoloured that your jaw almost drops. Yet her passionate artistry is only the cake’s icing. The real delight lies in the bond between soloist and orchestra...the second concerto is the peach: each sonic facet glitters, each heartbeat throbs, lifting us to the stars.” The Times, 20th November 2010 ***** “She brings great warmth to the lyrical First Concerto...then in the more ambitious and challenging Second Concerto she introduces a thrilling touch of steel into her playing. The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande is on fine form, with outstanding contributions from the brass section.” The Telegraph, 3rd February 2011 **** | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique
The Pittsburgh Symphony is an ideal ensemble for Symphonie Fantastique with its huge scoring. This orchestra has previously recorded a Brahms symphony cycle and Strauss’ Alpine Symphony on PentaTone, all of which have been reviewed extremely well. | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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Gramophone Magazine
Building a Library