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See Terms & Conditions for p&p rates. | |  | Mahler: Symphony No. 6 in A minor 'Tragic'
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| |  | Mahler: Symphony No. 6 in A minor 'Tragic'Recorded at the Mann Auditorium, Tel Aviv: 27.10.1963
Antal Doráti rose from being the youngest ever conductor of the Royal Opera House in Budapest to being appointed Conductor Laureate for Life of three orchestras. His influence on the world of music stemmed not only from his proficiency as a conductor but also from his contribution as a composer. Recorded in Mono. Digitally remastered. | | | Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days. |
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| |  | Mahler: Symphony No. 6 in A minor 'Tragic'
This release of a concert performance of Mahler’s Sixth is the third in a very successful series of recordings on Simax by the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra of the composer’s symphonies, and the first to feature its current chief conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste. This recording of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony was made during concerts in March 2010. Previous releases by the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra of the First and Ninth (PSC1270), and the Seventh (PSC1271) have been conducted by Mariss Jansons, but the this new CD features renowned Finnish conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste. The Oslo Philharmonic are playing concerts of Mahler in Europe this season with Saraste, and will perform Symphonies 9, 4 and 8 during this and the coming season. Gustav Mahler made many comments to the effect that his Sixth Symphony should be understood as a highly personal, even autobiographical work. Although It was composed in the summers of 1903 and 1904, one of the happiest times of his life he considered the Sixth his 'Tragic Symphony'. When Mahler composed the symphony he originally placed the scherzo second and the Andante moderato third, but remained unsure if this was the most effective order of movements. After trying both possible orders in early performances however he decided the Andante should come second and the scherzo third. However in 1910 he decided to return to the original order of the movements, as reflected in this recording. “The team's foothold on the first three movement is sure and unexaggerated...But it's the finale, to which all roads must seem to lead, where Saraste pulls all the stops out - utterly compelling...String welters in the wake of the first two hammer blows...have never sounded clearer...Perhaps the sound is a shade reverberant...but it allows all the details in Saraste's magnificently thorough interpretation to shine through.” BBC Music Magazine, June 2011 ***** “You can certainly hear right into the tumult, so clear and open is Saraste's layering of the texture” Gramophone Magazine, July 2011 “He inherited a band that, under Jansons, had become one of the finest in Europe. Standards have slipped not one iota. He negotiates the forbidding psychological and musical terrain of this symphony with the same mix of passion, flair and intelligence Jansons showed, the impact of the work magnified by a sure grasp of its sprawling forms, clarity of inner detail and well-judged tempi.” Sunday Times, 15th May 2011 **** | | | Usually despatched in 4 - 5 working days. |
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| |  | Mahler: Symphony No. 6 in A minor 'Tragic'
Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Jonathan Darlington | | | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. |
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| |  | Mahler: Symphony No. 6 in A minor 'Tragic'Recorded live at the Concert Hall of the Culture and Convention Centre Lucerne, 10 August 2006
The imposing experience of Mahler’s No. 6 is captured live in a performance of awesome silences and towering climaxes with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Claudio Abbado. Claudio Abbado has realised a dream with his new Lucerne Festival Orchestra. The orchestra, an exclusive ensemble of handpicked orchestral musicians, opens up new dimensions in the interpretation of symphonic music with exceptional soloists such as violinist Kolja Blacher, cellist Natalia Gutman and clarinettist Sabine Meyer filling the first desks. Claudio Abbado is undeniably a supreme Mahler conductor and his best selling recordings with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra – symphonies No. 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 9 have already been released on EuroArts – they have set new standards in interpretation of works by Gustav Mahler. “It’s different having best friends together. Everyone is there to enjoy making music, to take pleasure, to play with enthusiasm, with passion. They are Aprepared to do any crazy thing I ask them for the sake of the music. To fly, to walk through fire.” Claudio Abbado “Has there ever been a suaver, more transparent Mahler performance or one in which everything stays so beautifully in tune? ... Abbado’s music-making is a celebration of the purest joy.” The Gramophone Magazine Picture format BD: 1080i Full HD - 16:9 Sounds formats BD: PCM 2.0, DTS HD Master Audio Region code: All Booklet notes: English, German, French Running time: 89 mins FSK: 0 “It would be easy to make a journalistic meal out of the way a drained Abbado holds his hand on his heart in the everlasting-seeming half minute's silence at the end of this Mahler Six. But there's not a hint of emotional excess about this awe-inspiring performance, draining only by virtue of its total concentration and bewildering armoury of tonal beauties. ...the range of shots is unerring and keeps the cowbells out of sight as something other-worldly in an already supernatural performance.” BBC Music Magazine, August 2007 ***** “Has there ever been a suaver, more transparent Mahler performance or one in which everything stays so beautifully in tune? ... Abbado’s music-making is a celebration of the purest joy.” Gramophone Magazine | | | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. |
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| |  | Mahler: Symphony No. 6 in A minor 'Tragic'Recorded live at the Royal Albert Hall, London, 22 August 1983.
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) “…Tennstedt goes for the jugular, accentuating the theatricality of Mahler's musical language.” BBC Music Magazine, July 2009 *** “Tennstedt exposes every nerve-ending of the piece from start to finish. Trenchancy is there with a vengeance from the word go – bigboned and punchy with snappy trombone accents. Alma's theme burgeons, the Albert Hall acoustic accentuating the bigness with strident clarinets and the ripest horns. Big sounds, big rubatos, big everything. In the rapt cow-bell-festooned middle section Tennstedt feels personal, 'connected', to the ache in the recollection of Alma's theme and as the movement propels to its major-key (and short-lived) resolution.
But it is the parodistic grotesqueries of the offkilter Scherzo that really show up the real Mahlerian.
Here's why Mahler's first (and one believes last) instinct was to place the Scherzo second.
With Tennstedt the shock of that hellish descent back into A minor – with the march rhythm now dislocated to suggest an army of undead amputees – is seriously unsettling. And lest anyone suggest (as they so often do in criticism of Bernstein) that Tennstedt is guilty of over-egging the trios of this movement, let them consider the objective: the very essence of caricature (be it a Viennese ländler or some other awkward country dance) is exaggeration.
So it's a corker, this performance. It sounds pretty good for 1983, though the BBC fashion then for a more 'open' sound slightly compromises the unflinching immediacy of the reading.
And what a shame, after all the fantastical trials and tribulations of the finale, writ so thrillingly large here, that some idiot cannot resist yelling 'Bravo' to effectively destroy the fade to black at the close.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 “Tennstedt exposes every nerve-ending of the piece from start to finish. Big sounds, big rubatos, big everything. …it's a corker, this performance.” Gramophone Magazine, August 2009 | | | (also available to download from $20.75) | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. (Available now to download.) |
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| |  | Mahler: Symphony No. 6 in A minor 'Tragic'
Recorded live in Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center in Chicago on October 18,
19, 20, and 23, 2007 “This is a very beautiful Mahler Sixth - with all the strengths and weaknesses that implies. Rarely have the refinement and richness of Mahler's orchestral palette been so lovingly demonstrated.” BBC Music Magazine, June 2008 *** “Mahler's massive Symphony No. 6 is played by Haitink and the CSO with a transparency, even a delicacy, that seems to stop time.” Chicago Sun-Times Concert Review “After Gergiev, this might seem staid - but is builds into a remarkable reading… Haitink's finale belies the slowness of its pacing, its accumulation of inner tensions the fruit of a lifetime's experience with this score. There are more splenetic, precise accounts available, few which convey its burden of care in quite such magisterial fashion.” Gramophone Magazine, August 2008 “If the performance didn't quite move me in the way that Gergiev did, or before him Jansons (LSO Live), Abbado (DG) and Tilson Thomas (San Francisco Symphony), it may be the fault of the recording, which is perhaps better at capturing detail (the harps and celesta sound particularly well focused) than impressing with its sonic impact.” The Telegraph, 31st May 2008 “A powerful sense of drama pervades Haitink's draining account of Mahler's Tragic Symphony, the Sixth, a stunning testament to the Dutchman's reign as principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
His Chicago musicians take on new character with each increasingly vivid episode, from the hungry chomp-chomp of the opening to the golden serenity of the Andante. The Scherzo grunts, cackles and laughs through the blasé horn, although the cod-baroque strings could have more comic lightness. The massive finale is dominated by the mental image of the solemn, executioner-like percussionist with his huge mallet moving slowly towards the wooden box of fate.” The Times, 10th May 2008 **** | | | (also available to download from $20.75) | Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days. (Available now to download.) |
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| |  | Mahler: Symphony No. 6 in A minor 'Tragic'
Every new Claudio Abbado recording is a special event, and this recording is no exception to the rule. The imposing experience of Mahler’s No. 6 is captured live in a performance of tremendous power and towering climaxes with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. The Lucerne Festival Orchestra has set new standards in the field of classical music. The core of the orchestra is provided by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, itself an élite body of players. Soloists like violinist Kolja Blacher (concertmaster of the LFO), clarinettist Sabine Meyer, violist Wolfram Christ, cellist Natalia Gutman, the trumpeter Reinhold Friedrich and members of the Alban Berg Quartet to name just a few, make the Lucerne Festival Orchestra a star-studded ensemble. | | | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. |
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"I hope that fresh programming concepts, realistic multichannel engineering, intelligent musicianship and world-class execution continue to define the formidable Ondine/Eschenbach /Philadelphia partnership." Gramophone “The Philadelphia Orchestra's first recording of Mahler's Sixth Symphony may well be the Sixth of first choice, sonically and interpretatively. In the first movement and Scherzo, Eschenbach favours clear lines and chamber-like orchestral balances from his responsive musicians... Normally I'd prefer a fast Andante moderato with more characterfully contrasted themes. Yet the beautifully modulated string section plus a steadily flowing basic tempo helps Eschenbach justify his 17'23" timing (in the Karajan and Tennstedt ballpark). Inspiration climbs several notches for Eschenbach's assiduously integrated yet flexible Finale, and just about matches Bernstein's terrifying dynamism measure for measure.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2006 | | | (also available to download from $20.75) | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. (Available now to download.) |
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| |  | Jascha Horenstein
“The reputation of Jascha Horenstein has never been higher…The generous coupling in this set is Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony, a work Horenstein had the highest regard for…a life-affirming lyrical middle section…the end brings real release and optimism and a shout of joy..it has as much tingle as you would wish to have in this modern masterpiece… This is a major release from BBC Legends…You will be involved, you will be moved, you will be unnerved, you will not be disappointed” MusicWeb International | |
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