Lahav Shani & Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra – Symphony No. 5 in B-Flat Major, WAB 105 (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:11:31 minutes | 2,50 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Lahav Shani and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra bring a superb recording of Bruckner’s 5th Symphony.
Shani as a conductor has been devoted to Bruckner’s music as he stated in an interview with Gramophone; “His music has a sense not only of looking back and encompassing the history of music, but also very much looking forward and seeing the future…There is no sentimentality in this music. It has passion, but this is not the main quality. One can talk about Bruckner’s relationship with religion, with God, and with spirituality – and perhaps this has the most influence on the atmosphere of the music – but there are also beautiful melodic lines and a sense of cantabile and continuation.”
After a wonderfully recieved recording of Bruckner’s 7th Symphony in 2023, Shani the Dutch orchestra have returned with their recording of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 5, offering listeners a further opportunity to savour “the superb Bruckner ensemble Shani has fashioned”, and the rich, “Rembrandt-like” sound palette it brings to the works of the Austrian composer.
Read more![Lahav Shani, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra - Weill: Symphony No. 2 - Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://imghd.xyz/images/2022/07/04/rbrnrj5tmc69b_600.jpg)
Lahav Shani, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra – Weill: Symphony No. 2 – Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:17:02 minutes | 1,32 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Shani has described Kurt Weill’s Symphony No. 2, premiered by Bruno Walter in Amsterdam in 1933, as “one of my favourite pieces to conduct. It is tonal music, very melodic, very theatrical, and really not comparable to anything else”. Shostakovich’s powerful Symphony No. 5, with its enigmatic interplay of sincerity and irony, was chosen by Shani to conclude his inaugural concert as Music Director in Rotterdam.
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LRotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin – Tchaikovsky: Pathétique (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:32 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
Yannick Nézet-Séguin first heard Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique symphony live in Montreal at the age of eight. It was the work he chose for his debut with both the Orchestre Me´tropolitain du Grand Montre´al and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Conducting this quintessentially Russian music with the Rotterdam Philharmonic acknowledges his predecessor on the podium, Valery Gergiev, as well as showcasing the depth and refinement of the Dutch orchestra’s rich textures. Yannick Nézet-Séguin admires Tchaikovsky not just as a composer of heart-breaking melodies but also as a master symphonist. “The point for me is this work’s pervasive lust for life, and the lack of faith in humanity which is the implicit message of the end.”
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Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin – Strauss: Ein Heldenleben (2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:09:13 minutes | 571 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
The first recording by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra for BIS centred on Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique, a work which stands squarely on the threshold between Classicism and Romanticism. Nézet-Séguin’s interpretation brilliantly demonstrated this ambivalence, as the reviewer in CD Review on BBC Radio 3 remarked: ‘A Fantastic Symphony that relishes in the transparency and the delicacy of Berlioz’s scoring while remaining true to its vivid imagination and dramatic punch’. On the follow-up to that exciting release is another work that straddles a musical divide, namely Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs. Composed in 1948, these late blooms of an unabashed Romanticism stood in the midst of a musical landscape which featured the twelve-tone serialism of the Darmstadt School, John Cage’s prepared piano and the first examples of musique concrète. In accordance with Strauss’s wish, it was the dramatic soprano Kirsten Flagstad who first performed the songs, but they also became closely associated with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. On the present recording, it is Dorothea Röschmann, one of today’s foremost Mozart sopranos who lends her voice to what is often regarded as an expression of the composer’s acceptance of death’s inevitability, at the age of eighty-four. We meet Strauss in a completely different mood in the disc’s opening work – the large-scale symphonic poem Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life) composed fifty years before the songs. By casting himself in the role of the Hero, Strauss managed to provoke generations of music-lovers for years to come. A study of aggressive egotism, the work has been called, as well as the most conceited piece of music ever written. But it is also widely regarded as one of the most brilliant, and virtuosic, orchestral scores in the history of music, displaying the possibilities of a large symphony orchestra to the fullest.
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Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin – Strauss: Ein Heldenleben (2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:09:13 minutes | 571 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Approximately 50 years separated the composition of Richard Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben and the Vier Letzte Lieder, a period in which world events dramatically changed his career and his perception of himself. The hero of the semi-autobiographical tone poem is in part a reflection of the optimism and boldness of late 19th century Europe, an age of expanding empire and Nietzschean egotism, when the youthful Strauss was at the peak of his powers; whereas the introspection and resignation of the four songs show the composer in the aftermath of World War II, subdued, nostalgic, and approaching the end of his life. The pairing of these works reveals some thoughtfulness in the programming, and the performances by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra are fully attuned to the different sides of Strauss. The reading of Ein Heldenleben is lush, expansive, and full of the passion and assurance that make the work believable, while soprano Dorothea Röschmann delivers the lieder with sympathy and serenity and projects beautifully over the orchestra’s radiant accompaniment. This SACD captures the music’s richness and warmth in spacious multichannel sound and a wide dynamic range, and the clarity of the parts is superb in the DSD recording. Highly recommended for Strauss fans and as an introduction to his larger-than-life, late-Romantic style.
Read more![Nicolas Altstaedt, Pekka Kuusisto, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Dima Slobodeniouk - Salonen: Cello Concerto & Ravel: Sonata for Violin and Cello (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://imghd.xyz/images/2022/03/23/p4wckwc1gwvlc_600.jpg)
Nicolas Altstaedt, Pekka Kuusisto, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Dima Slobodeniouk – Salonen: Cello Concerto & Ravel: Sonata for Violin and Cello (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 57:20 minutes | 978 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Nicolas Altstaedt presents here his version of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s monumental Cello Concerto, originally composed for Yo-Yo Ma, and given its Finnish premiere by Altstaedt under the composer’s direction. In partnership with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Dima Slobodeniouk, he reveals its full expressive dimension here: “The first movement opens with what, in my sketchbook, was called “Chaos to line”’, says Esa-Pekka Salonen. Chaos, a metaphorical comet, a rhythmic mantra with congas and bongos, a wild dance… Salonen goes on to say of the third movement: “I imagined the orchestra as some kind of gigantic lung, expanding and contracting first slowly, but accelerating to a point of mild hyperventilation which leads back to the dance-like material”.
The coupling is the famous Ravel’s Duo (to give it the original title used at its premiere), which Nicolas Altstaedt and Pekka Kuusisto have been performing and refining ever since 2010, and which it was high time to record.
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Lahav Shani, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra – Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:03:06 minutes | 2,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Lahav Shani, Chief Conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra for the past five years, conducts the Dutch ensemble in Bruckner’s epic Symphony No 7. He admires the Austrian composer for his proverbially grand musical architecture, but also for his vision and the atmosphere he creates as he builds to mighty climaxes over extended periods “ … from a hint of light to the whole world”. Shani’s sense for symphonic structure and drama, and the Rotterdam Philharmonic’s response to it, was evident in their Warner Classics recording of Shostakovich’s Symphony No 5 (released in 2022). Gramophone magazine’s reviewer praised “… an account where the feeling is refreshingly one of rediscovery …. Shani has a wonderful nose for atmosphere … [He] reminds me just how achingly beautiful the slow movement of this piece is … and I don’t think I have ever heard the transition into the hushed final pages sound quite as breathtaking … A terrific disc.”
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Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra & Yannick Nézet-Séguin – Shostakovich: Symphony No.4 in C Minor, Op.43 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 07:01:48 minutes | 6,59 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon
This collection of previously unreleased live recordings celebrates the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra’s centenary and the ten-year residency, from 2008 to 2018, of its principal conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
The Rotterdam Philharmonic, under its long-term Principal Conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin, is widely recognised as one of Europe’s most distinguished orchestras. Celebrated for its winning combination of passionate commitment, boundless energy and scintillating virtuosity, the orchestra has come a long way since its relatively humble beginnings in 1918 as a private ensemble whose members initially paid for the privilege of joining its ranks.
The arrival of Canadian maestro Yannick Nezet-Seguin in 2008 signalled a new golden era for the Rotterdam Philharmonic, as is evidenced by this outstanding set of recordings, captured live in the Doelen concert hall between 2011 and 2016 and collected together here for the first time by Deutsche Grammophon. At the end of 2017/18 season Nezet-Seguin assumes the role of Honorary Conductor, handing over the post of Principal to 29-year-old Lahav Shani.
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