Bamberger Symphoniker & Jakub Hrůša – Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 9 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:00:06 minutes | 1017 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Accentus Music
The sincerity and at the same time emotionality of Anton Bruckner’s musical thoughts create an inimitable magnetism that makes one “forget” time in the very best sense of the word. Anyone who wants to approach Bruckner only analytically will find their mind boggled, especially at the first encounter. His great power is a certain “transcendental charm” that is common to all his symphonies. In 2024, the music world celebrates the 200th anniversary of Anton Bruckner’s birth on September 4, 1824. On this occasion, the Bamberg Symphony – an orchestra well-versed in the interpretation of Bruckner’s symphonic cosmos – and their music director Jakub Hrůša present a new recording of the composer’s last and unfinished symphony, his Ninth. On 30 November 1894, Bruckner completed the third movement of his Ninth symphony, which, like all of its predecessors, was laid out in four movements. Work on the finale began on 24 May 1895, around 16 months before his death. He composed the first 172 bars of the movement in full, after which the score is at least partially orchestrated for a further 200 bars. Although a playable version of the finale of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 is now available, in practical life the three-movement torso has become the norm. It seems as if the non-completion paradoxically claims its place. The Austrian critic and musicologist Walter Weidringer wrote that the Ninth “may be taken as one of those examples from music history that prove that even fragments can display a degree of completion which no longer seems capable of improvement.”
Read more
Isabelle Faust, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks & Jakub Hruša – Britten: Violin Concerto, Chamber Works (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:55 minutes | 1,22 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
After Berg, Schoenberg, Bartók and Stravinsky, Isabelle Faust now tackles Britten with Jakub Hrůša and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, revealing a little-known facet of the British composer. This concerto, highly personal in its language, combines drama with humour, seriousness with satire, in music of overwhelming emotional depth. The programme is completed by early chamber works.
Read more
Frank Peter Zimmermann, Bamberger Symphoniker & Jakub Hrůša – Stravinsky, Bartók & Martinů: Works for violin and orchestra (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:56 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Stravinsky, Bartók and Martinů were established international figures when they wrote these works for violin, travelling across Europe as well as the United States. With the onset of World War Two, all three composers would ultimately emigrate because of their rejection of fascism. In an age of political upheaval and cultural displacement, each of them found an individual approach to reinventing the language of tonal music, laying down roots in the west without abandoning their Eastern European identities. While the Russian-born Stravinsky was experimenting with possibilities of modern violin technique in his concerto, Martinů took these efforts a step further in his Suite concertante by blending the sounds of his native Bohemia with the colours of French neo-classicism. In the Rhapsodies, Bartók turned to the folk music of Hungary and Romania. Frank Peter Zimmermann, joined here by the Bamberger Symphoniker and its conductor Jakub Hrůša, continues his exploration of the great violin works of the 20th century after his acclaimed recordings of works by Hindemith (BIS-2024), Shostakovich (BIS-2247) as well as Martinů and Bartók (BIS-2457), a recording unanimously acclaimed by the critics, gaining a Diapason d’or and named ‘Concerto Choice’ by BBC Music Magazine, ‘Editor’s Choice’ by Gramophone and one of Classica’s ‘Chocs de l’année’.
Read more
Ulrich Witteler, Bamberger Symphoniker & Jakub Hrůša – Schelomo – Rhapsodie hébraique (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 22:39 minutes | 386 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Genuin
A tremendous song without words: Ernest Bloch’s Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra Shelomo is one of the most important solo works of the 20th century, in which the quality of the cello, its likeness to the human voice, is condensed with overwhelming artistic expression. Ulrich Witteler, the principal cellist of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, recorded Shelomo for GENUIN with “his” orchestra under the direction of Jakub Hrůša. The outstanding cellist and the world-class orchestra under its principal conductor play this impressive testimony to Jewish intellectual life, cast in a musical language from around 1915 that, with moving intensity, combined elements of Jewish sacred music with the latest stylistic elements!
Read more
Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin & Jakub Hrůša – Bartók & Kodály: Concertos for Orchestra (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:30 minutes | 926 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone
Exuberant, colourful and edgy concertos for orchestra by Bartók and Kodály are brought together in spirited and vivid performances from the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by the podium sensation Jakub Hrůša on this PENTATONE release.
Bartók’s landmark Concerto for Orchestra is not only a thrilling orchestral tour de force; it’s also a striking and deeply expressive work which effortlessly assimilates Hungarian folk melodies and rhythms in its compelling and polished score. At times brooding and mysterious, it’s Bartók’s most popular and uplifting work, and it ends in a flurry of high spirits.
With its lush and vivid orchestration and a healthy rhythmic swagger, Kodály’s lesser-known Concerto for Orchestra is a captivating and buoyant work. Inspired by the Baroque concerto grosso but updated with a romantic sensibility, the result is a sure-footed, rousing and energetic showpiece for orchestra.
Read more![Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Anna Lucia Richter, Jakub Hrůša - Symphony No. 4 in G Major (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://imghd.xyz/images/2023/04/07/blmprfka7d2bb_600.jpg)
Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Anna Lucia Richter, Jakub Hrůša – Symphony No. 4 in G Major (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:27 minutes | 947 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Accentus Music
Some orchestras more than others reveal with natural acuity the sonic and poetic imagination of a composer. For Mahler, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra seems the ideal instrument. Something very deep in the textures of this orchestra invariably sets it apart: the acoustic space always seems wider than the senses might suggest; the sound takes the time to live, in the moment and in its extension. The orchestra immediately moves Mahler’s world away from a post-romanticism that diminishes him, and likewise it declines to plunge him into excessive modernity. This is not Klemperer, Bernstein or Boulez. This is a very singular world, whose rhetoric is really nourished by the freedom granted to each timbre, and by the combination of what makes them unique. In concert, the experience remains as memorable as it is breathtaking. Parisians for example had the chance, in February 2019, to hear the Third Symphony at the Philharmonie by the same artists, then on tour, at an evening performance recorded by France Musique.
(more…)
Frank Peter Zimmermann, Bamberg Symphony Orchestra & Jakub Hrůša – Martinů: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 – Bartók: Sonata for Solo Violin (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:22 minutes | 1,23 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Frank Peter Zimmermann, one of today’s most highly regarded violinists, takes our breath away with this recording together with the Bamberger Symphoniker and their chief conductor Jakub Hruša – one of the leading Martinu conductors of today. They start off by exploring the lyrical side of Bohuslav Martinu, offered in the Second Violin Concerto (1943), to dive into the neo-classical idiom championed by Stravinsky that informs the composer’s Violin Concerto No. 1. Béla Bartók’s Sonata for Solo Violin closes the album. Composed in 1944, only a year before Bartók’s death, it is a deeply personal statement which fuses the overall layout of Bach’s solo violin sonatas with Hungarian folk tradition with results that are as fascinating to the listener as they are challenging to the performer.
Read more
PKF – Prague Philharmonia, Jakub Hrůša – Dvořák: Symphonic Variations & Slavonic Rhapsodies (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:00:34 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone
For the third of his three-album series for PENTATONE, the young rising star Jakub Hrůša conducts the PKF-Prague Philharmonia in an all Dvořák programme of appealing orchestral works comprising the evergreen favourite Symphonic Variations op. 78 coupled with the lesser known Slavonic Rhapsodies op. 45.
Already established as a tireless promoter of Czech music, Jakub Hrůša was the inaugural winner in 2015 of the Sir Charles Mackerras Prize for his advocacy of Janáček’s works, going on to receive ecstatic reviews in 2016 for Glyndebourne Opera’s production of The Cunning Little Vixen. One reviewer enthused that Hrůša “clearly has this music in his bones and blood … he asks for (and gets) an urgent, raw and abrasive quality, expressive of nothing less than the life force itself.” (The Telegraph, 13 June 2016).
Read more
PKF – Prague Philharmonia, Jakub Hrůša – Dvořák: Overtures (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:20 minutes | 1,10 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone
For a large part, thanks to the effort of Johannes Brahms, who introduced him to his publisher Simrock, Czech composer Antonín Dvořák developed into a composer with an international reputation. Don’t we all know his Slavonic Dances, his Symphonies or his chamber music, such as the Dumky Trio or the American string quartet? This album reveals some of the more hidden treasures of Dvořák’s repertoire, namely his overtures, of which he wrote no less than thirteen. In the booklet to the album they are described as follows:
All five overtures on this recording are richly and vividly scored, employing palettes of instruments broader on average than those found in Dvořák’s mature symphonies and sometimes calling for special effects. For their orchestral colour but also their rich expression of poetic content, as well as their purely musical invention and structural mastery, these overtures constitute gems of special brilliance in the treasury of Dvořák’s compositional bequest.
The PKF – Prague Philharmonia recorded this album in January 2015 at the Forum Karlin in Prague under the baton of their 2009-2015 Music Director and Chief Conductor Jakub Hrůša.
Read more
Johannes Moser, PKF-Prague Philharmonia, Jakub Hrusa – Dvorak & Lalo – Cello Concertos (2015)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 01:05:34 minutes | 2,58 GB | Genre: Classical
Source: ISO SACD | © Pentatone Music B.V. | Booklet, Front Cover
German-Canadian international soloist Johannes Moser recently signed an exclusive recording contract with PENTATONE. He regularly performs with the world’s leading orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, London Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw, NHK Symphony, Philadelphia and Cleveland Orchestras as well as the leading conductors of our time including Mariss Jansons, Valery Gergiev, Zubin Mehta and Gustavo Dudamel. He has received many accolades for his recordings including two ECHO Klassik awards as well as the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik.
For his debut album with PENTATONE Johannes chose to record the pinnacle of the repertoire for cello and orchestra, the concerto by Antonín Dvořák. In this monumental work Dvořák explores the entire spectrum of human emotion, very much inspired by his own experiences, ranging from exhilarating bursts of life in New York City to the devastating tragedy of his unfulfilled love.
In preparation for the recording, made with the PKF – Prague Philharmonia, Johannes Moser and conductor Jakub Hrůša had Dvořák’s own manuscript at hand in order to come closer to the composer’s intention rather than relying on unquestioned traditions and acquired habits, while paying tribute to the concerto’s nickname, “Dvořák’s 10th Symphony”.
Moser completes his debut album with the Cello Concerto by Édouard Lalo. It is a work of great verve which fully embodies Spanish flair combined with romantic spirit.
Besides being staples of the Romantic cello repertoire the two works have a lot in common. Johannes Moser says about the two concerti: “The unifying motif between these two Cello Concertos is a sense of yearning: From America, Dvořák yearned for his homeland and an unfulfilled love, whereas Lalo yearned for the typically Spanish flair and the Mediterranean temperament”.
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Jakub Hrusa, Jiri Belohlavek – Dvořák: Requiem, Biblical Songs, Te Deum (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:22:06 minutes | 2,43 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Decca Music Group Ltd.
This release concludes the series of Jiří Bělohlávek’s last recordings of Czech masterworks for Decca Classics before he sadly passed away in 2017
“The Czech Philharmonic give their collective all; with the best sound Decca has yet achieved at the Rudolfinum, this can be placed next to Charles Mackerras as the finest modern Asrael.” BBC Music Magazine, Orchestral Choice ★★★★★
Read more![Bamberger Symphoniker, Jakub Hrůša - Hans Rott: Symphony No. 1 / Mahler: Blumine / Bruckner: Symphonisches Präludium (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://imghd.xyz/images/2022/11/15/w6ir9n9z4kzbc_600.jpg)
Bamberger Symphoniker, Jakub Hrůša – Hans Rott: Symphony No. 1 / Mahler: Blumine / Bruckner: Symphonisches Präludium (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:14 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
“Who is Hans Rott?” Gustav Mahler gives the meaningful answer: the “founder of the new symphony as I understand it.” Deutsche Grammophon now presents a new recording of Hans Rott’s Symphony No. 1. Full of energy and depth and with a breathtakingly velvety sound, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra plays under its chief conductor Jakub Hrůša. This is an impressive recording of a composer whose rediscovery in recent years has continued to thrill audiences and enrich our knowledge of late Romantic music.
Hans Rott wrote his first symphony, his most important work – full of groundbreaking musical ideas and a unique vision of how the symphony might develop – from 1878-1880, at a time when his younger classmate Mahler was just getting started and his mentor Bruckner was struggling through his middle period. Jakub Hrůša places this masterpiece alongside works by Mahler and Bruckner, shedding new light on a work that deserves to be at the center of the symphonic repertoire.
(more…)