Brahms: Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90

Jukka-Pekka Saraste and the WDR Symphony Orchestra of Köln here perform Johannes Brahms’s Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3. Brahms started composing the First in 1854 and continued to make additions and radical changes to the work before its première in 1876, some 22 years later. The Third is Brahms’s shortest symphony and was composed some six years after his Second.

Conductor Klaus Tennstedt enjoyed a close and enduring relationship with the London Philharmonic Orchestra that resulted in his appointment as the Orchestra’s Principal Conductor and Music Director in 1983, later becoming its Conductor Laureate. Renowned for his interpretations of the German Romantic repertoire, Tennstedt once said he loved the LPO so much because ‘it is a romantic orchestra’.

Here he conducts the Orchestra in live concert performances of Brahms’s Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3. This Symphony No. 1 performance in 1992 was one of the conductor’s last concerts with the LPO. As the conductor struggled with illness, every one of his late concerts in London became an event, as if any could be his last, and the acute atmosphere of his last London appearances shines through in this performance.

Yuri Bashmet is one of the greatest viola players of our time, was born on 24 January 1953. He has appeared all over the world with the leading conductors and orchestras in this capacity and has a large discography. He is an ICA artist and is here featured as one of ICA's Live series as a conductor.

Bashmet began his conducting activity in 1985. In 1992, he re-organised The State Symphony Orchestra Novaya Rossiya (founded in 1990) featuring some of the most talented young musicians of Russia who are graduates and postgraduate students of the Moscow Conservatoire.

Bashmet became Chief Conductor in 2002. The orchestra performs in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire and has toured extensively abroad, also recording for EMI Classics and Sony Classics. The orchestra has been conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy and Valeri Gergiev amongst others.

David Nice in his booklet notes commented, ‘So it was with some amazement that I heard these performances by an orchestra many of us will not have heard of outside Russia’ ……‘A certain lean and hungry approach that’s never for a moment ascetic, inform much of what we hear in these razor-sharp performances of core symphonic repertoire’. Of the Brahms interpretation, Nice noted,’Mravinsky- like are the implicit force of the opening and the absolute fidelity to dynamics and controlled power’. Of the Tchaikovsky, he went on to say, ‘Mravinsky’s interpretation never lost its freshmness and this one runs it close in in that respect’.

During the 1950s, Karl Böhm made a handful of orchestral recordings for Decca with the Wiener Philharmoniker of, music by, among others, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms Schubert and Weber. The Brahms Symphony is performed with sweep and with classical poise and the music is clearly in the Viennese players’ blood (after all, they premiered the symphony in the Grosser Saal of the Musikverein, the very location where this recording was made). It receives its first international release on Decca CD. Weber’s star has, today, rather receded from our view, his name kept alive by but a handful of pieces. Yet he was, in some ways, a heralder of the dawn of the Romantic tradition and Böhm’s affectionate readings of these Overtures now reappear in the catalogue.

Recording producer: Victor Olof

Recording engineer: Cyril Windebank

Recording location: Grosser Saal, Musikverein, Vienna, Austria, May 1951 (Weber), June 1953 (Brahms)

The two middle symphonies by Johannes Brahms form a highly contrasting pair of works, which define the radius of Brahms’s musical language, equally marked by both poesy and the highest level of constructive stringency. The beauty of Brahmsian symphonic creativity comes to full fruition in these live recordings from the Musikverein in Vienna and the Herkulessaal in Munich under the direction of Mariss Jansons. The qualities of one of the world’s best orchestras are captured in the highest fidelity by the audiophile SACD process.

The first Brahms releases with Mariss Jansons and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks.

Audiophile live recordings on SACD from the Vienna Konzertverein and the Munich Herkulessaal.

Recording locations: Recorded live at the Salle Pleyel, Paris and Royal Festival Hall, London.

Soli Deo Gloria is proud to release the third instalment in the successful Brahms Symphony series which sees John Eliot Gardiner and his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique explore the music of Johannes Brahms.

The choral pieces on this release demonstrate beautifully the extent to which choral thinking permeates Brahms’ orchestral writing. Gardiner states that ‘just as there is choral thinking evident in his symphonies, surely there are also signs of orchestral thinking embedded within his choral writing.’ Both Nänie and Gesang der Parzen show fascinating links with Brahms’ last two symphonies Parzen sharing with the Third not just an adjacent opus number but an immensely powerful orchestral opening, with passing references to ‘early music’ styles next to passages of the most advanced harmony.

Einförmig ist der Liebe Gram, an irresistible little piece written for women’s voices, sees Brahms take the final song from Schubert’s Winterreise and turn it into a haunting six-part canon. Another example of Brahms forging links with a revered predecessor.

Written nearly six years after Brahms completed his Second Symphony, his third symphony was described by Hans Richter on its premiere as Brahms’ ‘Erioica’. A friend of Brahms and music critic at the time, Eduard Hanslick, wrote: “Many music lovers will prefer the titanic force of the First Symphony; others, the untroubled charm of the Second, but the Third strikes me as being artistically the most nearly perfect”

The concert of 26 September 1971 was never intended to be Klemperer’s farewell to ‘live’ musicmaking. In his 87th year this conductor was keen to remain an active music maker. He had just overridden EMI’s choice of Fiordiligi in his new Così fan tutte recording (he wanted, and got, Margaret Price), approved Lorin Maazel as guest conductor of the New Philharmonia, and was keen to be present at player auditions. For 1971/72 he planned his first-ever performances of Mahler’s Eighth and Mendelssohn’s Die erste Walpurgisnacht and told EMI that he wished to record the Verdi Requiem, Weber’s Euryanthe, Sibelius’s Fourth and Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld. After a deal of negotiation (and some intrigue with Deutsche Grammophon) sessions for Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge, Mozart’s Serenata Notturna, Brahms’s St Antony Variations and a complete Mozart Entführung aus dem Serail were agreed. And yet, according to Otto Freudenthal, the Swedish-born pianist and composer who assisted closely in (and played for some of) Klemperer’s musical activities, “he was not interested in recordings; he had no feeling for that at all. Recording sessions were just rehearsals for concerts”. 1971 proved a busy year. Così was recorded and performed. Klemperer began learning Hebrew, advised Rafael Kubelík not to become music director of the Metropolitan Opera (he did, but only for 6 months), conducted Mahler in London (the Resurrection Symphony for the 60th anniversary of the composer’s death) and Bach and Mozart in Jerusalem, and (according to Freudenthal) was “always working on the score of his opera Das Ziel”. (Plans to record it were eventually shelved at Klemperer’s own request). In September he came to London and recorded Haydn’s Oxford Symphony – he had never performed the work ‘live’ and was nervous, but sessions went smoothly – and Mozart’s K.375 Serenade. An ensemble of young players from the New Philharmonia performed his String Quartet No.7.

From the booklet Mike Ashman, 2008