Mariss Jansons

Mariss Jansons, Symphonieorchester Des Bayerischen Rundfunks – R. Strauss: Eine Alpensinfonie, Op. 64, TrV 233 (Live) (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 51:08 minutes | 524 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BR-Klassik

Superlatives should be used sparingly. Nevertheless, there is probably no work in the centuries-old genre of programme music that is easier for listeners to understand than An Alpine Symphony by Richard Strauss. Moreover, no composition in the long series of sonorous descriptions of nature, including bird calls, pastoral sounds and storm effects was probably ever scored for as many instruments as this highly eventful hike through the Werdenfelser Land in Bavaria. No orchestra in the world can, with its salaried musicians alone, present this piece the way Strauss ideally envisioned it and as he proposes in the score: the composer calls for some 130 instrumentalists, including at least 12 horn players and, ideally, even more. And no work that reproduces the realities and phenomena of nature – civilized nature, atmosphere, sunrise and sunset – in music has ever been treated with so much reserve with regard to its actual artistic content as this Alpine Symphony, a latecomer in Strauss’ symphonic work. This over-sensational depiction of what is, ultimately, a mere hike through the mountains sparked several arguments about whether the returns had justified the investment.

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Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Mariss Jansons – Strauss: Eine Alpensinfonie; Tod und Verklärung (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:14:47 minutes | 766 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BR-Klassik

“An Alpine Symphony” is probably Strauss’ most famous symphonic poem. Its content is easily understandable, and the work became especially well-known for its gigantic orchestra. The music is far from heavy-handed, however, with many of the passages orchestrated like chamber music. Like a kind of greeting from the Bavarian Alps, as it were, the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and its chief conductor Mariss Jansons have placed this masterpiece, and the music of Richard Strauss in general, on the programme of their forthcoming tour of Asia in late 2016.

At the age of just fifteen, the budding composer Richard Strauss (1864-1949) lost his way during a summer hike on the Heimgarten in the Bavarian Alps, and ended up in a thunderstorm. The next day, he fantasized about the experience on the piano. – Twenty years later, that memory had matured into a concept describing a one-day hike in the form of a symphonic poem, and in 1915 – a further fifteen years later – Strauss finally completed his masterpiece. The hike begins in the darkness before dawn, and after sunrise the ascent goes through a forest, past a stream and a waterfall, through meadows and pastures, and up to a glacier. The hiker then loses his way, and after several risky moments arrives at the summit, where he also experiences a vision. The weather then suddenly worsens, and the descent is accompanied by heavy rain and fierce thunderstorms. The eventful day – summarized in just sixty minutes of music – ends with a sunset, and darkness returns.

The live recording of “Alpine Symphony” concerts planned for October 2016 in Munich’s Philharmonie im Gasteig is enhanced on this latest CD from BR-KLASSIK by the addition of Strauss’ symphonic poem “Death and Transfiguration”, first performed in 1890; the recording here is of concerts performed in Munich in February 2014. – We thus have two very recent interpretations of two of this great German composer’s most important tone poems on one CD.

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Symphonieorchester Des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Mariss Jansons – Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 in E Minor, Op. 64, TH 29 (Rehearsal Excerpts) (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 53:48 minutes | 533 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BR-Klassik

His Fifth Symphony is one of Tchaikovsky’s most popular works today. A live recording of the rehearsals for this work with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and Mariss Jansons from 2009 is now published in a special edition!

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Symphonieorchester Des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Mariss Jansons – Mahler: Symphony No. 3 in D Minor (Live) (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:37:27 minutes | 940 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BR-Klassik

Gustav Mahler’s Third Symphony still ranks today as one of the greatest and most powerful creations of the Late Romantic period. The huge symphony, longer and more monumental than the others and containing texts from the collection of poems by Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim entitled “Des Knaben Wunderhorn”, was composed over a period of four years from 1892 to 1896, and especially during the summers of 1895 and 1896, which Mahler spent at the Attersee in Austria. Following performances of several individual movements of the symphony, the complete work was premiered on June 9, 1902, at the 38th “Tonkunstler Festival” in Krefeld. Mahler conducted the Stadtische Kapelle Krefeld and Cologne’s Gurzenich Orchestra at this exciting event. It was one of his greatest successes, and his contemporaries were deeply impressed. Between 1902 and 1907, the composer conducted his Third Symphony a further 15 times.

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Symphonieorchester Des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Mariss Jansons – Stravinsky: Petrushka / Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:09:53 minutes | 677 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BR-Klassik

Two well-known masterpieces of Russian music complement each other perfectly on the latest CD of Mariss Jansons and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. Firstly, Stravinsky’s ballet music “Petrushka” in its 1947 version which, with its smaller orchestra and more prominent piano part (played by Lukas Maria Kuen), is more of an instrumental work, or “a kind of concert piece”; and secondly, Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.” Originally written in 1874 as a piano cycle, it can be heard here in the colourful, universal and engaging orchestral version of 1922 by Maurice Ravel, which made it world-famous.

The recordings were made in November 2014 (Mussorgsky) and April 2015 (Stravinsky) at concerts in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz and in the Philharmonie im Gasteig.

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Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Mariss Jansons – Sibelius: Symphony No. 2, Finlandia, Karelia Suite (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:10:16 minutes | 702 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BR-Klassik

The latest new release from BR KLASSIK gathers together on one CD the most famous and popular musical works of the great Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. The music of the symphonic poem “Finlandia”, op 26, which premiered in Helsinki in 1899 as a “historical tableau” from Finnish history, inspired Sibelius’s compatriots immediately. The work – as it were the unofficial national anthem of Finland – became internationally known in 1900, and continues to be world-famous today, not only because of the hymn-like chorale that concludes it. Sibelius’s “Karelia” Suite op. 11, composed some years earlier, which refers to the Finnish landscape of Karelia and the legends of the “Kalevala” epic, was also received very enthusiastically by the national Finnish movement at that time and soon became internationally famous as well. The Symphony No. 2, op 43, the best-known and most popular of the composer’s seven completed symphonies, premiered in 1902. With this work Sibelius managed to emancipate himself, moving from being a merely national Finnish composer to an international one. The clear, confident character of the work goes far beyond the purely “exotic” national style, and its “absolute” music remains unaffected by any extra-musical programme. Whether we appreciate Sibelius as an absolute musician or as Finland’s national composer, and whether we regard his music as international or as an expression of Finland’s struggle for independence – as his compatriots have done to this day – the music remains highly individual and unique, and has successfully established itself in the international concert repertoire. The exemplary interpretations on this CD by the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under its chief conductor Mariss Jansons were recorded at several Munich concerts during the autumn of 2015. Sensitively conducted and full of gripping majesty, the performances show clearly why Sibelius’s symphonies have retained their importance to the present day.

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Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks & Mariss Jansons – Schubert: Symphony No. 9 in C Major, D. 944 “Great” (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:00:20 minutes | 565 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BR-Klassik

The “Great” C major Symphony was the last symphony that Schubert composed – a “Finished” to follow his “Unfinished”, the first two movements of which he had just completed before discontinuing work on it (for reasons unknown). Schubert began this composition in August 1824, or possibly even as late as March 1825. Most of the work on it took place in the summer of 1825, during the longest journey of his life. It took him from Vienna via Linz, Steyr, Gmunden (where he found the scenery “truly heavenly”), Salzburg and then up to Bad Gastein, where he saw some magnificent alpine peaks. The first page of the score manuscript is dated “March 1828” – possibly the month in which he finally completed the work. On November 19 of that same year, Schubert died at the age of only thirty-one. The symphony was premiered posthumously on March 21, 1839 in the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and conducted by the Gewandhaus Kapellmeister at that time – the 30-year-old Felix Mendelssohn. This is a star-studded and outstanding interpretation of one of the most important compositions of the Romantic symphonic repertoire.

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