Gustav Mahler

Naïve’s astonishing new signing, cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton, releases her debut album on the label featuring a collection of ancient folk melodies played on solo lyrical cello with string orchestra.

New signing Sonia Wieder-Atherton releases her fascinating debut album for Naïve entitled ‘Chants d’est’ – Songs from Slavic Lands’. Cultures born out of the vast, oppressive Austro-Hungarian Empire fought to retain their own language and identity. Music was the voice of resistance. Wieder-Atherton, through the music of composers such as Rachmaninov, Mahler and Prokofiev, goes on a musical journey of discovery into the way music, in this dark period of history, gave a voice to those who did not have the right to speak. The cellist is accompanied by Sinfonia Varsovia under Christophe Mangou.

As an interpreter of a very broad repertoire reflecting her imaginative world, a designer of projects, and a musician sought after by many contemporary composers, Sonia Wieder-Atherton occupies a special place on today’s musical scene. Her statu s as one of today’s most potent musical personalities was acknowledged when she was awarded the Grand Prix Del Duca in 1999 by the French Académie des Beaux-Arts.

Mahler once remarked to Sibelius “a symphony must be like the world, it must embrace everything.” His Sixth Symphony is a salient and personal statement, containing musical depictions of his wife and children. It reaches a tragic conclusion in the Finale representing “the hero, on whom fall three blows of fate, the last of which fells him as a tree is felled.” Klaus Tennstedt’s interpretations of Mahler during his celebrated partnership with the London Philharmonic Orchestra bear testimony to the way Mahler composed his life. This is both an extrovert and expansive reading of Mahler 6, resulting in an engrossing recording. Extrovert from the perspective that it is a performance of extremes. In the first movement the slow tempi are particularly slow, but despite the exaggerated ritardandos the Orchestra sustains Tennstedt's wants beautifully, never allowing the tension to stall.

Press acclaim from Tennstedt conducting Mahler 6:

‘[The] BBC proms audience stood motionless through the ninety minutes of Tennstedt's 6th, petrified by its intensity.’ Norman Lebrecht in Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness on this 1983 performance.

‘The attraction in both cases was Mahler’s 6th Symphony, the most challenging and most problematic of the set, its champions the London Philharmonic Orchestra, its interpreter, Klaus Tennstedt…. Here was a performance to revere and to remember, historic even, and if it has not already been recorded, it ought to be.’ Evening Standard, November 1991 (RFH performance)

Mahler’s masterpiece for tenor, baritone and orchestra, with soloists Klaus Florian Vogt and Christian Gerhaher

Nagano, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and these two soloists have been touring this work internationally to great critical acclaim

Schlusnus (1888 - 1952) was a celebrated German baritone and was considered one of the most important lied performers of his generation. Schey (1895-1981) began his career in Berlin in 1922. Höngen (1906-1997) was known as “the great tragic actress” and chose her programmes with great care.

The New York Philharmonic and Vladimir Horowitz play Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in a performance recorded live at the Carnegie Hall April 1948 – a legendary performance! Also the Romeo and Juliet Overture with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra from June 1942.

Arnold Schoenberg's subscription 'Society for Private Musical Performances', which gave 113 concerts between 1918 to 1921, of chamber music and piano pieces by a host of important avant-garde composers, also encouraged the transcription of modern scores for chamber ensemble.The statutes, drawn up by his friend and pupil Alban Berg, were incredibly strict: even applause was forbidden. "Any form of approval, disapproval or acknowledgement is forbidden.The only thing a composer may receive in these venues is the most important of all: to be played" Lastly the programmes were never communicated in advance, so that the judgement of the association's members should not in any way be formed before they had been able to hear the works.The present recording offers two of these chamber versions which appeared on the Society's programmes on 10th, 20th and 23rd January 1921. Oxalys, founded in 1993 by students of the Brussels Conservatory, revives this key-event in association with Belgian soprano Laure Delcampe, who has studied with Walter Berry, Mitsuko Shiraï and Hartmut Höll.