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Presto News - 16th August 2010Rued Langgaard - Music of the Spheres |
 Last Wednesday’s BBC Prom saw the UK premiere of Danish composer Rued Langgaard’s Music of the Spheres. It is a work I only heard for the first time a few weeks before, when Thomas Dausgaard and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra released a CD of it as part of their ongoing Langgaard cycle on Dacapo. It is a tremendous and fascinating work - probably his most important and certainly his most original, and is scored for huge forces - requiring soprano soloist, a big orchestra (including eight horns), organ and piano, four sets of timpani, a choir and another 15-strong 'orchestra in the distance'.  Rued Langgaard Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) was for a long time a lonely and almost forgotten figure in Danish music as, after a promising start (his First Symphony was premiered by the Berlin Philharmonic when he was just 19 and he was hailed as the natural successor to the great Danish symphonist Carl Nielsen), the experimental and non-conventional nature of his compositions meant that he soon fell out of favour. He struggled for recognition throughout his lifetime and died in 1952 virtually unknown. There he remained until 1968 when György Ligeti (who was adjudicating new scores by Scandinavian composers) began reading Music of the Spheres, which had been secretly included by composer Per Nørgård in amongst scores of contemporary Danish works. Ligeti was astonished that many of the techniques he had been employing in his own music had in fact been foreshadowed by Langgaard a half century earlier and quipped that he had merely been a “Langgaard imitator” all along. Since then Langgaard's reputation has been gradually building and most of his more important works have now been recorded, including all 16 symphonies and his opera Antikrist. This new disc from Dacapo serves as an excellent introduction to Langgaard as, in addition to the groundbreaking Music of the Spheres (written during World War I when the composer was just 26), it also includes two much later works so you get a good overview of his style. Together these three works are among his most effective and visionary orchestral works. They are apocalyptic works with a religious message, each depicting contrasts between a chaotic doomed world and a celestial and beautiful one. The Music of the Spheres is evocative yet often startling music, with clusters of notes and striking timbres. As mentioned earlier it is definitely Langgaard’s most original and forward-pointing work, and despite the long delay before the UK premiere is undoubtedly a major work in Scandinavian music. I’ve put a short video on the website which includes interviews with conductor Thomas Dausgaard and also gives you a little bit more of an introduction to Langgaard’s music.
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 Langgaard: Music of the SpheresInger Dam-Jensen (soprano), Hetna Regitze Bruun (mezzo-soprano), Johan Reuter (baritone) & Lars Cleveman (tenor) |
Chris O'Reilly - chris@prestoclassical.co.uk |
Watch a short video trailerNew Releases16th August 2010 |
This is just the pick of the recent releases. The New Releases and Future Releases pages are always available for browsing all the new and forthcoming releases. |
 Berlioz: Symphonie FantastiquePittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Marek JanowskiThe 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. |
 Shchedrin: The Seagull – Die MöweBolshoi Theatre Orchestra, Alexander LazarevThis two act ballet based on Chekhov’s play was composed in 1980 and was premiered in the Bolshoi Theatre. The libretto is by R Shchedrin and V Levental. The score includes 24 Preludes (the main contents of the ballet), three interludes and the postlude. This is an exciting work full of belief in life and in the power of art, high romanticism and tragic pathos. |
 Marc Albrecht conducts Dukas, Ravel & KoechlinOrchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, Marc AlbrechtAll the French works on this disc are based on Fairy Tales and the accompanying booklet contains notes which are perfectly suited to be read to children. Works included are Dukas: The Sorcerer's Apprentice; Koechlin: Les Bandar-log, Op. 176 (Symphonic poem after Kipling’s “The Jungle Book”); and Ravel: Ma Mère l'Oye. |
Ludwig Thuille: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2Signum QuartetThuille worked as a composer and teacher of the Münchner Schule, one of the leading musical centres of Europe at the turn of the 20th century. He was a friend of Richard Strauss and their friendship is well documented in Strauss’s letters. These two string quartets were written when Thuille was a student. This CD casts a new light on a forgotten composer. |
 Mozart: Violin Sonatas (complete)Dmitry Sitkovetsky (violin) & Antonio Pappano & Konstantin Lifschitz (piano)The Russian violinist Dmitry Sitkovetsky is an exceptional soloist and has also recently become an exciting conductor. This budget priced CD set brings together all of his previous recordings of Mozart’s Sonatas as well as the missing ones form the cycle. Interestingly, we encounter Antonio Pappano as accompanist, rather than in his role as Music Director of the Royal Opera House. |
 Barbirolli in New York: The 1959 ConcertsNew York Philharmonic, Sir John BarbirolliBarbirolli conducted the New York Philharmonic from 1936 to 1943 and returned to New York in 1959 to conduct the orchestra in a series of concerts featuring English repertoire rarely heard by Americans. Here are the best performances of Sir John’s visit, previously unissued, in state-of-the-art digital restorations. Includes “Dream of Gerontius” with Richard Lewis, a very fine Gerontius. |
 Byron Janis: The Legendary Concerto RecordingsByron Janis (piano), Antal Dorati, Kirill Kondrashin, Herbert Menges, Gennady Rozhdestvensky & Stanislaw SkrowaczewskiByron Janis (b1928) was born in Pennsylvania to Polish-Russian Jewish parents, and is one of a remarkable group of American virtuoso pianist that include Leon Fleischer, Gary Graffman, Julius Katchen and Raymond Lewenthal. Janis’s playing was high voltage, platinum plated, and the recordings on this 4CD set illustrate clearly why he was and still is held in such high regard. He was Horowitz’s first student, and he rocketed to fame by being the first American pianist to go to Moscow and Leningrad in 1960 at a time of high tension in the Cold War. |
 Klaus Tennstedt5 new important Tennstedt releasesTestament celebrates Klaus Tennstedt this month with five new releases of recordings with the Berlin Philharmonic during the early 1980s. |
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