New York Philharmonic & Jaap van Zweden – Julia Wolfe: Fire in my mouth (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

New York Philharmonic & Jaap van Zweden – Julia Wolfe: Fire in my mouth (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 48:18 minutes | 1004 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © UMC – Decca Gold

The New York Philharmonic and Music Director Jaap van Zweden’s World Premiere performances of Julia Wolfe’s, Fire in my mouth will be released on Universal Music Group’s newly established US classical music label.

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New York Philharmonic & Jaap van Zweden – David Lang: prisoner of the state (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

New York Philharmonic & Jaap van Zweden – David Lang: prisoner of the state (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:31 minutes | 1,29 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © UMC – Decca Gold

The New York Philharmonic and Music Director Jaap van Zweden’s World Premiere performances of David Lang’s prisoner of the state will be released on June 26, 2020.

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New York Philharmonic, Jaap van Zweden – Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 5 & 7 (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

New York Philharmonic, Jaap van Zweden – Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 5 & 7 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:18 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Decca

The New York Philharmonic and Decca Gold launch new partnership with release of Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 5 & 7 conducted by Jaap van Zweden.

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Jaap van Zweden, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra – Wagner: Götterdämmerung, WWV 86D (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Jaap van Zweden, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra - Wagner: Götterdämmerung, WWV 86D (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Jaap van Zweden, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra – Wagner: Götterdämmerung, WWV 86D (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 04:23:28 minutes | 4,53 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Naxos

The Tetralogy in China: even Wagner himself would never have dreamt it, even in his wildest dreams of world conquest armed with his “Gesamtkunstwerk”. But Hong Kong Philharmonic finished recording the Götterdämmerung in January 2018, led by their musical director Jaap van Zweden. It is the product of four years of public performances and live recordings, a fine recipe for preserving the vivaciousness and continuity of the work. And if Wagner had had such a high-quality orchestra at his disposal, maybe he would have had the Bayreuth festival set up on the bank of the Pearl River in order to see real justice done for his masterpiece… The record itself brings in some of the most experienced voices of the time. The “touchstone versions” have some stiff competition in the form of this new complete edition. The Hong Kong Philharmonic may lack some of the sometimes-weighty “traditions” of some other outfits, but they play this music as if it had just been written…
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Jaap van Zweden, New York Philharmonic – Stravinsky Le Sacre du printemps; Debussy La Mer (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Jaap van Zweden, New York Philharmonic - Stravinsky Le Sacre du printemps; Debussy La Mer (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Jaap van Zweden, New York Philharmonic – Stravinsky Le Sacre du printemps; Debussy La Mer (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:50 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © UMC – Decca Gold

The New York Philharmonic and its conductor, Jaap van Zweden, continue the revered institution’s partnership with Decca Gold with the release of their latest recording, featuring Debussy’s orchestral masterpiece La Mer and Stravinsky s groundbreaking Le Sacre du printemps. Both pieces were performed and recorded live in 2018 in the opening weeks of van Zweden’s tenure as the New York Philharmonic s Music Director.
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Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Jaap van Zweden – Bruckner: Symphony No. 6 (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Jaap van Zweden - Bruckner: Symphony No. 6 (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Jaap van Zweden – Bruckner: Symphony No. 6 (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 57:16 minutes | 1,25 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Classics

One of today’s most sought-after conductors, Jaap van Zweden was named recipient of Musical America’s Conductor of the Year Award in 2012. He has been Music Director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra since 2008, and is also Honorary Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Radio Chamber Philharmonic (having been Chief Conductor from 2005 2011). In September 2012 he took up the post of Music Director for the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, with an initial contract of four years. This new disc from Challenge Classics showcases Bruckner’s impetuous Symphony No. 6, which the composer himself considered his ‘keckste,’ or ‘boldest.’
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Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Jaap van Zweden – Bruckner: Symphony no. 3 (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Jaap van Zweden - Bruckner: Symphony no. 3 (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Jaap van Zweden – Bruckner: Symphony no. 3 (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:33 minutes | 1,30 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Classics

Amongst the many recordings made by the internationally renowned conductor Jaap van Zweden have been highly successful cycles of the complete symphonies of Beethoven and Brahms. He is currently working on a series of Hybrid SACDs with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic for Octavia and Challenge Classics featuring the symphonies of Anton Bruckner, and recordings of Nos. 2, 4, 5, 7 8 and 9 have already been released to great critical acclaim.

This disc features the Third Symphony in D minor, which was dedicated to Richard Wagner. Amsterdam-born Jaap van Zweden has risen rapidly in little more than a decade to become one of today’s most sought-after conductors. He has been Music Director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra since 2008, and is also Honorary Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Radio Chamber Philharmonic (having been Chief Conductor from 2005-2011). Appointed at 19 as the youngest concertmaster ever of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, he began his conducting career in 1995 and held the positions of Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra between 1996 and 2000, Chief Conductor of The Hague Philharmonic from 2000 to 2005, and Chief Conductor of the Royal Flemish Philharmonic Orchestra (2008-2011). His recent releases for Challenge Classics have included a live recording with the Netherlands RPO of Britten’s War Requiem (CC72388), and a concert performance of Wagner’s Parsifal (CC72519) which has just won the Edison Award.

Anton Bruckner wrote his Symphony No. 3 in D minor in 1873 but revised it twice, first in 1877 and again in 1891. In fact there exist no less than six different versions, with three of them (1873, 1880 and 1889) widely performed today. The version used in this performance is the Novak edition from 1891.
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Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Jaap van Zweden – Bruckner: Symphony No. 1 (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Jaap van Zweden - Bruckner: Symphony No. 1 (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Jaap van Zweden – Bruckner: Symphony No. 1 (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 51:21 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Classics

Listening to the First Symphony is a trip of discovery through Bruckner’s countryside, within the triangle formed by Ansfelden (birthplace), St. Florian (with its famous Stift, where Bruckner, first as a choirboy and later as a mature musician, found the much-needed distance from the workaday world to play the extremely beautiful organ) and lastly Linz.

In this First Symphony we already find the characteristics at the heart of Bruckner’s symphonic work: the outer movements exhibit three strongly profiled, truly symphonic themes that cry out for further development, while the polyphony – sometimes quite tightly woven – is an unmistakable part of the structure. No less convincing are the sometimes almost stormy Steigerungen (intensification passages), the elementary rhythmic energy and the extremely rapid modulations. What is still absent are the major chorales and the General-Pausen, the breaks that we already encounter in the Second Symphony (1872), the chief purpose of which was to separate the various thematic constructs. In the Adagio too, Bruckner goes all out in a lengthy quest for the gripping sound of A flat major, which does not let itself be found until the twentieth measure. The brilliant Scherzo is characterised by a highly contagious rhythmic energy that manifests itself in all layers of the orchestra, and only submits to being tamed in the rustic Trio. In the finale, drama and improvisation compete for the main role, but it is so soundly constructed that the entire piece remains in balance. There can be no doubt that Bruckner’s First Symphony is a masterpiece, one that portends the symphonic work yet to come in all its various manifestations.

Bruckner started the first notations for his First Symphony in January 1865 and completed the work on 14 April 1866. He himself conducted the first performance on 9 May 1868 in the Redoutensaal in Linz. In 1877 and again in 1884, the composer gave the score a thorough going-over and made a few modest alterations. But this was not the end of it: between 12 March 1890 and 18 April 1891 he created the Wiener Fassung for Hans Richter, who wanted to conduct the first performance of the First Symphony in Vienna. On this CD you can hear the Linz version. Both on the performance side and in the recording studio, over the years a strong preference has arisen for the Linz version. And the preference is not entirely without reason: the Linz version generally sounds more adventuresome or, if you prefer, somewhat less polished than the Vienna version.
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Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Jaap van Zweden – War Requiem (2012) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Jaap van Zweden - War Requiem (2012) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Jaap van Zweden – War Requiem (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:22:38 minutes | 1,79 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Classics

This live performance of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem was recorded at a memorable concert in Utrecht in May last year. The Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Choir, and Netherlands Children’s Choir are directed by the highly-rated Dutch conductor Jaap van Zweden. The soloists are soprano Evelina Dobracheva, tenor Anthony Dean Griffey, and baritone Mark Stone.

Born in Amsterdam in 1960, Jaap Van Zweden began his musical career as a violinist, becoming at 19 the youngest ever concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

In 1997, van Zweden made the decision to conduct full time, and was named the chief conductor of the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra where he remained until 2003. In 2000, he added the music directorship of the Residentie Orchestra of The Hague to his credits, a post he held until 2005. Jaap van Zweden began his third season as music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in September 2010. His commitment to the orchestra was recently extended through the 2015-2016 season.

Coventry Cathedral was almost entirely destroyed during a German air raid in 1940, with only the outer walls, bell tower and tomb of the first bishop remaining intact. The new building was completed in 1962 and musically inaugurated with Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem in a performance broadcast live by the BBC. The release of this new recording by Dutch forces coincides with the 50th anniversary of the opening of the new Coventry Cathedral on 30 May.
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Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Jaap van Zweden – Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 1 (2015) DSF DSD128

Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Jaap van Zweden – Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 1 (2015)
DSF Stereo DSD128/5.64 MHz | Time – 51:20 minutes | 4,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover |  © Challenge Records

Anton Bruckner, born in the Austrian village of Ansfelden on 4 September 1824, first worked as assistant schoolmaster at an unsightly school in an equally unsightly hamlet not far away called Windhaag, near Linz. When he took his last breath on 11 October 1896 as one of the greatest composers Austria ever produced, in a tiny chamber (Kustodenstckl) of the Viennese palace of Belvedere that had kindly been placed at his disposal by the imperial court, the finale of his Ninth Symphony was well under way but still unfinished. Although the rapid advance of industrialisation has made great incursions here and there on the Upper Austrian landscape, and although the ravages of time have eaten away at the integrity of Bruckner’s Lebensraum, there are still more than enough sites to be found which could certainly have formed a backdrop to his early symphonies. In that sense, listening to the First Symphony is a trip of discovery through Bruckner’s countryside, within the triangle formed by Ansfelden (birthplace), St. Florian (with its famous Stift, where Bruckner, first as a choirboy and later as a mature musician, found the much-needed distance from the workaday world to play the extremely beautiful organ) and lastly Linz, with its majestic Cathedral, where Bruckner held the not inconsiderable post of organist until 1868. The powerful organ tones, with their unsuspected force, would be heard like glorious sound pillars in his symphonic epos.

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Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Jaap van Zweden – Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 6 (2013) DSF DSD128

Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Jaap van Zweden – Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 6 (2013)
DSF Stereo DSD128/5.64 MHz | Time – 57:14 minutes | 4,51 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover |  © Challenge Records

In the early days of the symphonies history, there was nothing like the meticulousness of our approach to Bruckner’s work. On February 26, 1899, Gustav Mahler gave in Vienna the first performance of the Sixth, in his own version, in which he substantially reworked both the instrumentation and notes and showed no aversion to sweeping cuts. The first printed score of Bruckner’s Sixth appeared in the summer of 1899, however it deviated greatly from the original work. Largely responsible for this was Josef Schalk (1857-1900), a highly respected conductor in Vienna and an early Bruckner admirer (Bruckner often referred to him as “Herr Generalissimus”). Did Bruckner ever hear his “keckste” composition performed? That cannot be answered with any certainty.
We know that during a concert in Vienna on February 11, 1883, the Vienna Philharmonic performed only the Adagio and Scherzo, conducted by Wilhelm Jahn, but the composer possibly heard the complete symphony during the rehearsals — or perhaps in or around October 1882 during the orchestra’s

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Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Jaap van Zweden – Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 3 (2013) DSF DSD128

Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Jaap van Zweden – Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 3 (2013)
DSF Stereo DSD128/5.64 MHz | Time – 59:33 minutes | 4,69 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover |  © Challenge Records

Bruckner – Symphony no. 3 Anton Bruckner meticulously noted it in his calendar: autumn 1872, first rejection of the performance of the Third Symphony in Vienna; autumn 1875, second rejection; September 27, 1877, third rejection. Thanks to the efforts of his good friend Johann (von Ritter) Herbeck (who had conducted the premiere of Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony), Vienna’s Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde decided to programme the work on December 16, 1877, the second concert in the Gesellschaft series. Herbeck was to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic for the occasion in the “Golden Hall” of Vienna’s Musikverein. On October 28, however, Herbeck unexpectedly died, putting the premiere in doubt. That same evening, Bruckner sought the support of the influential Reichstag delegate and later Bruckner biographer August Gllerich, a close friend of Nikolaus Dumba, the Gesellschaft’s president. His efforts paid off, and the performance of the Third Symphony was saved. Alas, no conductor could be found who wanted to perform the work, so Bruckner, who was not used to leading an orchestra, took on the — to his mind, thankless — task. The results were predictable. Already in the rehearsals, things started going wrong. The orchestra’s musicians showed scant respect for the poor composer. They sabotaged the proceedings by intentionally playing out of tune and weaving odd notes and ornaments into the music. They stubbornly refused to repeat certain phrases and repeatedly laughed at Bruckner to his face. The great composer was the helpless conductor who baptized one of the most impressive compositions in music history in an exceedingly unpleasant atmosphere created largely by notorious troublemakers. Aside from the unfortunate rehearsals, other aspects of the concert were unfavourable for Bruckner: before the intermission, Joseph Hellmesberger conducted a programme that, to put it mildly, was excessively long: Beethoven’s Egmont Overture and the Violin Concerto in D minor by Louis Spohr followed multiple arias from Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro and Peter von Winter’s Das unterbrochene Opernfest (already largely forgotten). Were that not enough, there was Beethoven’s Meeresstille und glu?ckliche Fahrt before Bruckner could present the Third Symphony.

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Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra,Jaap van Zweden – Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 (2012) DSF DSD128

Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra,Jaap van Zweden – Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 (2012)
DSF Stereo DSD128/5.64 MHz | Time – 01:19:24 minutes | 6,26 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover |  © Challenge Records

Despite the big differences between them, there is a certain kinship between Bruckner’s ‘official’ nine symphonies (the ones he decided to call ‘valid’): the broadly expansive themes with their lengthy build-up of tension and the expectant tremolo of the strings (first introduced by Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony) at the beginning, from which the main theme wells up. Bruckner often gives the singsong, sometimes distinctly lyrical second theme a contrapuntal second voice. The third theme, on the other hand, is often monolithic, full of clenched energy, that bursts out in unison and goes on to develop a huge rhythmic force. Then there are the long drawn-out Adagios with their heavenly cantilenas and the starkly contrasting, waggish Scherzos, almost smelling of earth. They are all just as characteristic of Bruckner’s compositions as the broadness of the codas in the outer movements, introduced by a soft roll of the timpanis. But despite the similarities, all his symphonies are fundamentally and completely different and are certainly not interchangeable. This can be said of each of the movements separately and of the entire work.

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Jaap van Zweden, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Choir & State Male Choir Latvija – Wagner: Parsifal (2011) DSF DSD64

Jaap van Zweden, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Choir & State Male Choir Latvija – Wagner: Parsifal (2011)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82 MHz | Time – 1:46:07+1:05:51+1:13:39 minutes | 9,71 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover |  © Challenge Records

This live recording of Wagner’s opera Parsifal comes from a memorable concert that took place in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam in December 2010. It is performed by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Choir and conductor Jaap van Zweden. The cast includes tenor Klaus Florian Vogt in the title role, celebrated bass Robert Holl as Gurnemanz, bassbaritone Falk Struckmann as Amfortas, and soprano Katarina Dalayman as Kundry. The set also includes a bonus DVD featuring video footage of highlights from the performance.

Although first conceived in 1857, Parsifal ended up being Wagner’s last opera production at Bayreuth in 1882. The story is loosely based on the legend of the Arthurian knight Sir Percival and his quest for the Holy Grail.

Born in Amsterdam in 1960, Jaap Van Zweden began his musical career as a violinist, becoming at 19 the youngest ever concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

In 1997, van Zweden made the decision to conduct full time, and was named the chief conductor of the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra where he remained until 2003. In 2000, he added the music directorship of the Residentie Orchestra of The Hague to his credits, a post he held until 2005. Jaap van Zweden began his third season as music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra last year. His commitment to the orchestra was recently extended through the 2015-16 season.

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