Miah Persson, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Mahler: Symphony No. 5 (2013)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 01:14:12 minutes | 2,93 GB | Genre: Classical
Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Digital Booklet | © Channel Classics Records B.V.
The Fifth is the most Jewish of all Mahler’s symphonies. The first movement takes usto the unmistakable mood of Jewish lamentation, the finale to the childlike visionof messianic joy.As we know, Mahler converted to Catholicism. Views may differ as to whether hisdecision was opportunistic or a question of religious conviction. Christianity plays animportant part in much of Mahler’s music, though not in this particular work.Perhaps I may take the liberty of referring briefly to my own family. My ancestors(like Mahler’s) were merchants in a small shtetl in the Habsburg Empire. They wereobservant Jews. My grandfather, three years older than Gustav Mahler, decided toleave this religious lifestyle behind him when he went to study in Vienna. My fatherand his brothers were brought up without any religious education. They adoredGoethe, Mozart, Beethoven and Richard Wagner. One of the four brothers convertedto Catholicism when he married a daughter of a converted family. Later, underNazi occupation, when it seemed for a while that converting might help them avoiddeportation, two of my uncles and an aunt became Catholics; the other members of thefamily did not.Whether or not these decisions were opportunistic was never discussed in myfamily. Nobody cared – these were considered unimportant, personal decisions, partlydictated by circumstances. Converts or no converts, nobody practised any religion andeverybody adored culture. And they all hummed tunes like those in Mahler’s FifthSymphony. –Iván Fischer
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Miah Persson, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Mahler: Symphony No. 4 (2009)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 56:40 minutes | 1,03 GB | Genre: Classical
Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Digital Booklet | © Channel Classics Records B.V.
There is a unique purity and transparency in Mahler’s 4th Symphony. The enchanting slay bells take us to his inner child, to his dreams of angels, fairy tales, angst and pure, divine love. This child-like symphony needed a different orchestra: no dark tuba, no heavy trombones, no large arsenal of massive brass. A chamber orchestra in fact, where the clarinets act as mock trumpets, the solo violin tunes his strings sharper in order to scare us and the lightness of the whole orchestra lifts us up to his lovely, childish vision of paradise. –Iván Fischer
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Miah Persson, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg & Gustavo Gimeno – Mahler: Symphony No. 4 in G Major & Piano Quartet in A Minor (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:09 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone
Gustavo Gimeno has been musical director of the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra since 2015. It was around Autumn 2016 that Pentatone announced a series of recordings – technically magnificent, as is par for the course with the Polyhymnia International engineers, who are tending the flame of the old Philips label – for which the Luxembourgeois phalanx was conducted at the Concertgebouw by Mariss Jansons’s former assistant. In recent months, the graphically-sparse series has already kicked off its releases with an album from Bruckner (with some very rare pieces); Shostakovich (with the First) and Ravel (Daphnis et Chloé). Today, Pentatone has published Mahler’s Fourth, teeming with details, broadly coloured with bucolic lyricism.
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Miah Persson, Joseph Breinl – Portraits: songs by Clara and Robert Schumann (2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:01:26 minutes | 925 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Clara and Robert. These two began their relationship as young lovers facing parental disapproval, marrying just before Clara’s 21st birthday in 1840. During their years together they both pursued careers in music as well as raising seven children, all of this ending in 1854 when Robert entered an asylum for the insane, dying there two years later. The year of their wedding is often called Schumann’s Liederjahr; during this ‘year of song’ he composed more than 150 songs, and his wedding gift to Clara was in fact a song cycle, Myrthen, Op. 25. Sixteen songs dated 1840 can be found here, including the Frauenliebe und Leben cycle, the crowning achievement of the year. But Robert also encouraged Clara to write songs and in 1841 they jointly published a collection entitled The Spring of Love. Clara had composed three of the songs (the 3 Lieder, Op. 3) and Robert the remaining nine, including Der Himmel hat eine Träne geweint, but at the first publication the authorship of the individual songs was left unspecified. As Clara would become aware, however, it was far more acceptable for a woman to perform music than to write it. At the age of 34 she stopped composing, but not before she had written further songs. Four of these can be found here, as can Robert’s final song cycle, composed in 1852 and focussing on the life and tragic end of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots.
Animating these varied and various portraits, Miah Persson is increasingly in demand as a recitalist, parallel to her highly successful career in opera. Performing regularly with Joseph Breinl, she gives recitals in venues such as Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall and the Concertgebouw. For BIS she has previously recorded a collection of Mozart arias which caused reviewers to praise her voice (‘has a silvery purity that does not preclude sensuality and warmth’, Sunday Times) as well as her approach (‘Here nothing is contrived; it is sung with one ear listening to the heart…’ Diapason).
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Yannick Nezet-Seguin, Miah Persson, Chamber Orchestra of Europe – Mozart: Cosi fan tutte, K588 (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:03:18 minutes | 3,42 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
The second of DG’s series of seven Mozart operas conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and initiated by Rolando Villazón. This Così fan tutte enchanted the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus audience when recorded in concert in 2012, with Nézet-Séguin inspiring his stellar cast to feats of vocal derring-do.
Starring a thrilling cast of both young and experienced Mozart opera stars including accomplished soprano Mojca Erdmann as Despina, acclaimed Mozartian soprano Miah Persson and prize-winning young American mezzo Angela Brower as the emotionally manipulated sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella. Also joining this crème-de-la-crème cast are distinguished Mozart bass-baritone Adam Plachetka as Guglielmo and Italian buffo baritone Alessandro Corbelli as Alfonso.
Youthful exuberance tempered by depth of insight make this a rare Così, a must for even the most seasoned opera lover.
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