Shostakovich: Festive Overture, Op. 96

Following three highly praised recordings of Russian orchestral music (V5068, V5073, and V5256), this is the latest recording made for Naïve from the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse and its exciting young conductor Tugan Sokhiev. It pairs two more great Russian masterpieces, Shostakovich’s effervescent Festive Overture, and one of Tchaikovsky’s best-loved symphonies, No. 5 in E minor.

After spending three years as its principal guest conductor and artistic adviser, Tugan Sokhiev became music director of the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse in 2008. Since then their first three discs for Naïve have received exceptional reviews, and they have performed many critically acclaimed concerts across Europe and Asia. Tugan Sokhiev has just been named music director designate of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and will take up his new role at the start of the 2012-13 season.

Produced by Steve Epstein / Engineered by Richard King

José Serebrier (b. December 1938) is a Uruguayan-born conductor and composer of European ancestry with an international reputation based in New York. He conducts orchestras all over the world in all continents, including South America, USA, Spain and Turkey and in the 2010-2011 season he will conduct no less than 3 series of concerts in mainland China. For Warner Classics José Serebrier has recorded all the Glazunov Symphonies with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra to great critical acclaim, of which the most recent release is: Symphonies 1, 2, 3, 9 - 2564689042 (2CD)

In Moscow in April 2010, a live recording was made of maestro Serebrier conducting the closing concert of the 1st Rostropovich International Festival in the Tchaikovsky Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire of Music, featuring Rachmaninov’s great choral work ‘The Bells’.

The orchestra for this recording was the Russian National Orchestra (http://www.russianarts.org/rno/index.cfm), much recorded by Deutsche Grammophon, and regarded in a recent Gramophone poll (December 2008 : http://www.russianarts.org/rno/pressrelease.cfm?prid=081201.cfm) as one of the top symphony orchestras in the world alongside the Berlin Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony and London Symphony Orchestras.

Comprising professors and band directors, the Taiwan Wind Ensemble is a leading international exponent of the wind repertory, not least in its exciting series of commissions. On this disc it presents a selection of music of orchestrations and originals from around the world. There are a variety of overtures and evocative dances from Bach to Bernstein, as well as Alfred Reed’s richly colorful Armenian Dances. They are complemented by Taiwanese composer Chia-Ying Chiang’s mysterious and beautiful recent composition A Chasing After The Wind, which takes its title from Ecclesiastes.

Two of Shostakovich’s most famous and most contrasting works are included here: Symphony No.5 is dark, and full of the drama of the Soviet age, whereas the Festive Overture is an irrepressibly breezy contrast.

The wonderful Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is conducted here by their Principal Associate Conductor Grzegorz Nowak.

Recorded in the RPO’s London home, Cadogan Hall.

This year, we celebrate the thirty-year conducting career of Neeme Järvi with Chandos Records, as well as the conductor’s own seventy-fifth birthday.

We mark the occasion with this two-disc set of highlights, featuring a varied selection of concert hall rarities and core classics, along with some popular showpieces and examples of Järvi’s championing of Estonian and American music.

In the course of his conducting career, Järvi has amassed a distinguished discography of more than 440 recordings, well over 150 of them for Chandos.

Järvi has a rare ability to galvanise an orchestra into giving an interpretation of exceptional vigour and drive. Gramophone said of his recently concluded Halvorsen series (from which La Mélancolie and Bojarernes Indtogsmarsch are taken): ‘Järvi finds in the music a drama and pathos that might come as a revelation even to the composer.’

Also on this disc is the ‘Jester’s Dance’ from Tchaikovsky’s The Snow Maiden, a personal favourite of the conductor’s, and one that Järvi often performs as an encore at his many concerts around the world.

A stunning 2CD of Russian music from Mikhail Pletnev and the Russian National Orchestra that includes a mix of the familiar and the not so familiar. Liadov’s exquisite miniature tone poems and Glinka’s effervescent overture to Ruslan and Ludmila rub shoulders with a rare Tchaikovsky overture and two preludes by Tcherepnin. All the composers here had a deep knowledge and respect for the traditional music of Mother Russia, and every work on these discs has the unmistakable sound of Russia irrespective of whether it was composed under the Tsarist or Soviet regime.

Recordings made in 1993/94