Sir Colin Davis, London Symphony Orchestra – Dvorak: Symphony No 6 (2005) MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC
Sir Colin Davis, London Symphony Orchestra – Dvorak: Symphony No 6 (2005)
SACD Rip | SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 & 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 46:05 minutes | Scans NOT included | 1,96 GB
or FLAC 2.0 Stereo(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/96 kHz | Front, Scans NOT included | 930 MB
Features Stereo and Multichannel Surround Sound | LSO Live # LSO0526
Dvořák’s Sixth Symphony secured him international fame following its premiere 1881. The influence of his native Bohemia, its sounds and its culture are abundant and give the work a refreshing flavour reminiscent of his Slavonic Dances. Sir Colin Davis’s recordings of Dvořák’s Symphonies Nos 8 and 9 were the first titles released on LSO Live, immediately establishing the label’s international reputation. Since then the Symphony No 7 has also been released to great acclaim.
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Sir Colin Davis, London Symphony Orchestra & Chorus – James MacMillan: St John Passion (2008)
PS3 Rip | 2x SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 & 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 90:07 minutes | Scans included | 5,24 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Scans included | 1,48 GB
Features 2.0 Stereo & 5.1 multichannel Surround sound
James MacMillan’s St. John Passion, completed and premiered in 2008, was commissioned by a consortium that included the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the Berlin Radio Choir. Scored for large orchestra, chorus, chamber choir, and baritone, it’s one of MacMillan’s biggest works and the weight of its significance must have felt like a burden on the composer, a devout Roman Catholic, a constraint on the characteristic freedom of his imagination in the expectation of creating an appropriately magisterial work. The melodic contour of much of the choral writing, particularly for the small Narrator Chorus, is derived from plainchant and has the character of a meandering choral recitative. Jesus’ vocal lines are so floridly melismatic that they come across as precious and mannered rather than plainly communicative. The work has moments of effectiveness, though; by the end of the third movement, MacMillan generates real excitement in the choral writing, and the fourth movement ends in a stunning chorale. He’s at his strongest in the expansively lyrical and powerful final movement, which is for orchestra alone. Overall, though, the Passion falls short of conveying the depth and eloquence for which the composer was clearly aiming. It receives an intense and dedicated performance by the London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, led with conviction by Colin Davis, to whom it is dedicated. Christopher Maltman has a secure and resonant baritone and makes the most of the thankless solo role. The SACD recording is taken from a live performance and is clean and well balanced, although stray vocal sounds, perhaps coming from Davis, are occasionally distracting.
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Sir Colin Davis, London Symphony Orchestra – Carl Nielsen: Symphonies Nos. 1-6 (2014)
DSD64 (.dsf) 1 bit/2,8 MHz | Time – 201:22 minutes | 7,94 GB
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 201:22 minutes | 4,03 GB
Source: Pure Audio Blu-Ray (Stereo Track) | Artwork: Digital Booklet
These recordings, made during Sir Colin Davis’ “Indian summer” with the orchestra, are acknowledged to be amongst the finest recordings ever made of this repertoire, receiving numerous awards. The symphonies were originally released between 2011 & 2013 & will now be made available together for the 1st time as a beautifully packaged box set, including 1 Pure Audio Blu-ray disc. Despite giving titles to the majority of his symphonies, Danish composer Carl Nielsen was often vague about what influenced each work. Nevertheless he was a master symphonist & his music is mesmerising, combining propulsive energy with lyrical invention.
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Sir Colin Davis, London Symphony Orchestra – Haydn: Symphonies 92 & 93, 97-99 (2014)
PS3 Rip | 2x SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 & 5.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 132:55 minutes | Scans included | 7,38 GB
Features 2.0 Stereo & 5.0 multichannel Surround sound | FLAC available from another post
Sir Colin Davis was long recognized as a pre-eminent Haydn interpreter. During his Indian summer with the orchestra he recorded both Die Schöpfung (The Creation) and Die Jahreszeiten (The Seasons) for LSO Live. These symphonies presented here were recorded in 2011 during this same period, and make for revelatory listening.
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Sir Colin Davis, London Symphony Orchestra – Beethoven: Mass in C (2008)
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 & 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 53:57 minutes | Scans included | 3,6 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Scans included | 967 MB
Features 2.0 Stereo & 5.1 multichannel Surround sound
It’s not clear exactly what the “live” component is in this disc from the London Symphony Orchestra’s LSO Live series. The Beethoven Mass in C major, Op. 86, & the “Prisoners’ Chorus” from Fidelio are specified as having been recorded live on 2 different occasions at London’s Barbican concert hall, but if there was an audience any traces of its existence have been very carefully edited out. The performance, however, has the positive tension associated with a successful live performance, as well as the occasional flaws. Colin Davis, nearly 80 when the recording was made, turns in a fine interpretation of the work that was called “unbearably ridiculous & detestable” by Prince Nikolaus Esterhбzy II, patron of the aged Haydn & the commissioner, as well as of his 6 late masses. A good performance of the mass will get at why the prince didn’t like it: it fits the model of the late Haydn masses, but, at every point where Haydn went for confident, crowd-pleasing moves, it takes on an interior quality. The music has to have both a festive tone & the personal feel that distinguishes almost all of Beethoven’s music. Davis delivers the right kind of contrast, a bit splashy, yet with conviction in the big fugues & the rather unorthodox layout of the Credo. He is helped by a stellar quartet of soloists, most notably the fabulous Italian alto Sara Mingardo. The pairing with the “Prisoners’ Chorus,” although it wasn’t part of the original concert, is an intelligent stroke: Davis shows the connections between the Mass in C major & Fidelio, both of which kept Beethoven away from his customary sonata forms but which contained deep personal statements nevertheless. A very strong candidate for any buyer wanting a 1st copy of Beethoven’s 1st mass setting.
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London Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Sir Simon Rattle – Beethoven: Christ on the Mount of Olives (Christus Am Ölberge) (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 45:21 minutes | 802 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © LSO Live
Composed in 1803, while Beethoven was also writing the “Eroica” Symphony, Christ on the Mount of Olives (Christus am Ölberge) is the composer’s only oratorio, and combines the emotive force of his later Missa Solemnis with the theater of a Bach Passion. With orchestra, chorus and soloists, it tells the story of Jesus’ prayer and arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane and also reflects the emotional pressure Beethoven was under at the time. This recording by Sir Simon Rattle, with acclaimed singers Elsa Dreisig, Pavol Breslik and David Soar, was made during the London Symphony Orchestra’s celebration of Beethoven’s 250th anniversary.
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Sir Colin Davis, London Symphony Orchestra – Sibelius: Complete Symphonies / Kullervo / Pohjola’s Daughter / The Oceanides (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 05:31:22 minutes | 6,44 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © LSO Live
Sir Colin Davis was instrumental in the development and success of LSO Live, including the label’s first Grammy award. He also played a huge part in the pre-eminence of the LSO across the globe for more than 50 years. A ‘master Sibelian’ his landmark cycle of the complete symphonies on LSO Live has been described as possibly “the finest Sibelius cycle on disc” by The Observer.
The original SACD Hybrid albums and accompanying CD boxed set are among the most successful and popular recordings on the label and they’re now presented as one complete SACD Hybrid and Pure Audio Blu-ray collection, bringing together ‘Kullervo’ with ‘Pohjola’s Daughter’, not available onthe original CD boxed set, and ‘The Oceanides’, previously only available as part of the limited edition ‘Sir Colin Davis Anthology’.
Sibelius was one of the 20th century’s greatest and most innovative symphonists, reworking the traditional symphonic structure as radically as Beethoven did in his day. His music is characterised by beauty, mystery, colour and light, together with his strong love for his native Finnish homeland. Praised for their sound quality as well as the music-making, this digibox set of classic LSO Live recordings also features a Pure Audio Blu-ray, containing HD master audio, allowing listeners to experience this award-winning cycle in a whole new way.
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London Symphony Orchestra & Sir John Barbirolli – Vaughan Williams: Oboe Concerto & Tuba Concerto (Remastered) (1956/2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 33:02 minutes | 618 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Born in London of Italian-French parents, Sir John Barbirolli (1899–1970) trained as a cellist and played in theatre and café orchestras before joining the Queen’s Hall Orchestra under Sir Henry Wood in 1916. His conducting career began with the formation of his own orchestra in 1924, and between 1926 and 1933 he was active as an opera conductor at Covent Garden and elsewhere. Orchestral appointments followed: the Scottish Orchestra (1933–36), the New York Philharmonic (1936–42), the Hallé Orchestra (1943–70) and the Houston Symphony (1961–67). Barbirolli guest conducted many of the world’s leading orchestras and was especially admired as an interpreter of the music of Mahler, Sibelius, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Delius, Puccini and Verdi. He made many outstanding recordings, including the complete Brahms and Sibelius symphonies, as well as operas by Verdi and Puccini and much English repertoire.
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Sir Simon Rattle, London Symphony Orchestra – The Cunning Little Vixen, Sinfonietta (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:59:37 minutes | 2,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © LSO Live
Melodious and charming, The Cunning Little Vixen is a work rooted in Czech history and folk music; a sentimental journey through the cycles of life. For Sir Simon Rattle, it’s a deeply personal and emotional work. “It’s the piece that made me want to become an opera conductor… and still one of the pieces that reduces me to tears more easily than any other,” says the LSO’s Music Director. Recorded with an outstanding cast during semi-staged performances, this recording is the second in an LSO Live series showcasing acclaimed collaborations between Rattle and the celebrated stage director Peter Sellars. Towering fanfares open Janácek’s Sinfonietta, an ode to the composer’s hometown of Brno in the now Czech Republic. It’s a portrait composed for a national celebration of Slavic culture, with Janácek’s love of musical tradition evident in dancing strings and celebratory brass.
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London Symphony Orchestra, Mstislav Rostropovich – Shostakovich: Symphony No.5 in D minor, Op.47 (2005)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 46:55 minutes | 449 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © LSO Live
Few works stir up as much debate over their ‘meaning’ as Shostakovich’s Symphony No 5. And equally few works can boast an interpreter with such insight as Mstislav Rostropovich. His friendship with the composer gave him an almost unique understanding of Shostakovich’s inner traumas, and as with the 2002’s outstandingly successful LSO Live recording of the Symphony No 11, he inspired the LSO’s players to the heights of virtuosity.
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London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis – Sibelius: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 4 (2008)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:20 minutes | 1,51 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © LSO Live
For his First Symphony (1899), Sibelius scaled back on Kullervo to concentrate on a more tightly structured proposition. If ‘symphony’ implies a blue print, Sibelius adheres to it through the conventional four-movement form consisting of an Andante-Allegro opening, followed by a slow movement, a scherzo, and a fast finale. The work begins with an extraordinary solo for clarinet (played peerlessly here by Andrew Marriner). The score is scintillating, full of shifts of mood and evocative woodwind motifs. The music is not overtly programmatic and yet has a programmatic feel. Finland’s brilliant landscape seems palpable – in this at least, the world of Kullervo is very much present.
By the time he got to his Fourth Symphony in 1911, Sibelius had done a bit more living. The premiere was in Helsinki, with the composer conducting. A much more introverted work than the First Symphony, it was waggishly nicknamed ‘Barkbrōd’ (bark bread), a reference to the famines of the nineteenth century when Finns were forced to eat the bark from trees to survive. It is full of dark beauty, and much is made of the context in which it was written, i.e. that Sibelius had paid for earlier excesses by developing a life-threatening illness. Fortunately, an operation saved him, but the symphony is often seen as a reflection on the composer’s own dark times (as well as presaging the collective ones to come in 1914).
Like the First Symphony, the Fourth opens with a significant instrumental solo, this time for cello. Thereafter, it is a wholly different, more reflective, experience than that of the First. Sir Colin Davis and the LSO capture brilliantly the light and bombast of one, and the sombre qualities of the other.
Seong-Jin Cho, London Symphony Orchestra, Gianandrea Noseda – Chopin – Piano Concerto No. 1; Ballades (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:59 minutes | 1,41 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
Winner of the 17th International Chopin Piano Competition 2015, one of the most prestigious titles in all of classical music, Seong-Jin Cho presents his first ever studio recording on DG.
Combining Chopin’s immensely popular 1st Piano Concerto with the almost equally popular 4 Ballades, this coupling displays his brilliant fingerwork and mastery of characterization.
Cho recorded the work at London’s famous Abbey Road Studios with the London Symphony Orchestra and its new Principal Guest Conductor, Gianandrea Noseda. His interpretations of the composer’s Ballades were set down at the Friedrich-Ebert-Halle in Harburg, Germany.
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London Symphony Orchestra, Valery Gergiev – Scriabin: Symphony No. 1 (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 50:08 minutes | 951 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © London Symphony Orchestra
Scriabin’s Symphony No 1 first saw the light of day in a two piano version, which was used to premiere the piece to various important musical figures of the day. These included the composer Lyadov, a member of the Russian committee that decided which music might or might not be published. Unfortunately for Scriabin, the choral finale of his symphony did not find favour, and though Lyadov conducted the symphonic premiere soon after, the finale was omitted from the first performance in 1900. It would be five months before the work was performed complete.
The symphony is in six movements and runs for almost fifty minutes. It owes something to Mahler and Wagner with its languid Largo opening, slow moving harmonies and lush orchestration. There is, however, something unusually dramatic about the concentrated solo violin at the start, and the primacy of the melodic line which threads its way through is oddly modern. The second movement marked Allegro drammatico enters more complex territory. There is greater interplay between instrumental parts, with the mobility of the bass line evoking other late romantic music of the period.
The music oscillates between slow and fast movements and culminates in the choral finale Lyadov didn’t care for. Here Ekaterina Sergeeva and Alexander Timchenko are the vocal soloists, Scriabin combining mezzo-soprano and tenor to interesting effect (anticipating Mahler’s combination of singers in Das Lied von der Erde). It would have taken quite an imagination to detect a work this colourful in the original piano score Lyadov heard.
This recording was made from performances given in the spring of 2014 in London. As with all the LSO’s recent Scriabin releases, the work is played with the kind of intensity and assurance one would expect from a world-class orchestra under the authoritative direction of Valery Gergiev.
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Sir Simon Rattle, London Symphony Orchestra – Stravinsky Ballets (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:56:37 minutes | 2,02 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © LSO Live
Stravinsky sent shockwaves through classical music in the 20th century. His first three ballets -The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring, all composed between 1909 and 1913 – brought a new and frenzied sense of rhythm, so distressing to audiences that it caused uproar; The Rite of Spring even caused a riot. And it’s not hard to see why. Is there any moment in music more demonic than the opening to The Firebird, a terrifying rumble of strings that would make Jaws tremble? There are few pieces more unsettling than The Rite of Spring with it’s carnal, tribal rhythms; or Petrushka with it’s impish Punch and Judy puppets. A notable voice of authority on the works of Stravinsky, Sir Simon Rattle masterfully brings these three creations to life in this dramatic performance, recorded live in the Barbican Hall as part of his inaugural season as LSO’s Music Director.
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London Symphony Orchestra, Valery Gergiev – Rachmaninov: Symphony No. 3; Balakirev: Russia (2015)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 56:28 minutes | 2,23 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Digital Booklet | © LSO
Sergei Rachmaninov Symphony No 3 in A minor Op 44 (1935–36) :: Each of Rachmaninov’s three symphonies sums up one of the three main periods of his life. The First (1897) is the outpouring of a passionate and adventurous young man steeped in the climate of late 19th-century Russian music and literature. The Second (1907) is an expansive, opulent work composed when Rachmaninov was at the peak of his triple career as composer, pianist and conductor. The Third, written three decades later, comes from the years of exile when Rachmaninov was cut off from his native culture and traditions. He had become a world-famous piano virtuoso, but outside Russia was generally less highly regarded as a composer.
Rachmaninov began the Third Symphony in the summer of 1935 in his villa on the shores of Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. The first two movements were written relatively quickly, but he had to interrupt work for a major concert tour in the United States that autumn and winter. It was only in June 1936 that he was able to return to Switzerland to compose the finale. The premiere took place in America that November: ‘I was present at the first two performances’, wrote Rachmaninov, ‘it was played wonderfully (The Philadelphia Orchestra—Stokowski conducting). Both audience and critics responded sourly. Personally, I’m firmly convinced that this is a good work. But … sometimes the author is wrong, too! However, I maintain my opinion’.
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