Swedish Chamber Orchestra & Thomas Dausgaard – Schubert: The Symphonies (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 04:59:42 minutes | 2,61 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
It was only after his death that Franz Schubert’s symphonic works made an impact in music history. In fact, the first public performance of any of Schubert’s symphonies took place at a memorial concert held a few weeks after the composer had passed away, on 19th November 1828. The work that was heard at that occasion was Symphony No.6, D589, the ‘Little C major’, while the two undisputed master works of the series – the ‘Great C major’ and the ‘Unfinished’ – had to wait until 1838 and 1865, respectively, before being performed.
Read moreSwedish Chamber Orchestra & Thomas Dausgaard, Michael Collins – Synergy (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:40 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
On Synergy, flautist Sharon Bezaly and her musician friends demonstrate that one plus one can be much greater than two. Featuring works that celebrate the coming together of like-minded musicians, this project is a reminder, after more than two years of a pandemic that has affected all of us, that true musical synergy can only be achieved ‘face-to-face’, rather than ‘remotely’.
Read moreSwedish Chamber Orchestra, Örebro, Thomas Dausgaard – Bruckner: Symphony No. 2 (2010)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:01:38 minutes | 502 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS
On disc as well as in concert, Thomas Dausgaard and his Swedish Chamber Orchestra have attracted a growing international interest. The team regularly visits some of the world’s leading concert venues, and just recently their performance of Schumann’s Second Symphony at the BBC Proms made a great impact on audience and critics alike. Precisely Schumann’s symphonies have featured in Dausgaard’s and the SCO’s series ‘Opening Doors’ on BIS, in which Romantic symphonies are performed with smaller than usual numbers – to great critical acclaim: ‘The most perceptive Schumann cycle in over three decades’ was the verdict in International Record Review. The sequel to the Schumann recordings was a disc combining Schubert’s Unfinished and Great C major Symphonies, described in BBC Radio 3’s CD Review as ‘a crisp, clean account that somehow seems to strip away layers of silt to get a clear view of the colours underneath.’ Dausgaard and the forty-odd members of the SCO now take on a composer whose symphonies often are regarded as the epitome of Romantic grandeur, not to say bulkiness – Anton Bruckner, and his Second Symphony. The recording thus becomes a sort of test of how the ‘Opening Doors’ concept can be applied to music from the High Romantic period. Thomas Dausgaard himself finds in this work ‘a feeling of a very personal prayer – as if Bruckner was meditating and improvising at the organ’ and goes on to describe the experience of performing it with the SCO as ‘a kind of collective chamber-musical improvisation with a strong symphonic undercurrent. I hope Bruckner would have liked it…’
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Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Thomas Dausgaard – Bruckner: Symphony No. 6 in A Major, WAB 106 (1881 Version) (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:21 minutes | 843 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS
Anton Bruckner wrote his Symphony No. 6 over a period of two years, completing it in September 1881. And for once with this composer, the word ‘completing’ can be used without qualification: known for his habit of reworking and revising his works, Bruckner for once seems to have been satisfied with the result of his efforts. That doesn’t mean that the Sixth has enjoyed a smoother passage to the concert stage than other Bruckner symphonies, however. The only performance in Bruckner’s lifetime was a partial one, of the two middle movements, and when Gustav Mahler conducted the first ‘full’ performance in 1899, he made a number of substantial cuts and other amendments. In fact, the true premiere of the Sixth as Bruckner wrote it had to wait until 1935, almost 40 years after the composer’s death. And the work is still something of a Cinderella in the Bruckner catalogue, with far fewer outings in concert halls or on disc than for instance the Fourth or the Seventh. Bruckner called the Sixth his ‘boldest’ symphony – with a duration of ‘only’ some 55 minutes it is at any rate one of the shorter, but possibly the composer was thinking of the remarkably expansive Adagio or the ambiguous Scherzo, or of the way the so-called ‘Bruckner rhythm’ (different combinations of a duplet and a triplet) pervades the work. The present release is the first in a Bruckner ‘mini-series’ from Thomas Dausgaard and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, appearing together on disc for the first time.
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BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Thomas Dausgaard – Bartók: The Miraculous Mandarin, Suite No. 2 & Hungarian Peasant Songs (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:47 minutes | 1,28 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © PM Classics Ltd.
The violence and horror depicted in Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin channel the events of the collapse of the first Hungarian Soviet Republic and the Red and White Terrors of 1919-1921 that followed. The inscrutable Mandarin falls into a trap set up by a gang of bloodthirsty thugs with tragic results and an ultimately touching conclusion.
The Second Suite of 1909, conceived as a Serenade for small orchestra, is on a smaller scale than the First Suite. The Hungarian Peasant Songs date from the period of the Great War. Originally a set of short piano pieces, Bartók orchestrated nine of the movements in 1933, eight of which are recorded here.
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Anna Larsson, Johan Reuter, Svenska Kammarorkestern & Thomas Dausgaard – Brahms: Symphony No. 3, Alto Rhapsody & 6 Schubert Songs (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:26 minutes | 1,30 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Thomas Dausgaard, the enormously talented conductor, continues here with his quest for recording the mainstream symphonic repertoire with an orchestra, smaller than the usual today. His journey has become a considerable success. What one possibly misses in string sound “thickness” is more than well compensated for by the added transparency, and the almost chamber-music-type listening by the orchestral members. As a matter of fact, Dausgaard’s and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra’s togetherness, ensemble playing is totally amazing and gives this listener a completely different view of these Brahmsian masterpieces. Add Anna Larsson – Abbado’s favourite alto – Johan Reuter, and the Swedish Radio Choir, and what you get is a very, very strong team indeed. Renowned for his creativity and innovation in programming, the excitement of his live performances and an extensive catalogue of critically-acclaimed recordings, Thomas Dausgaard has been the chief conductor of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra since 1997, and in 2016 took up the same position with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He is also set to become the music director of the Seattle Symphony in 2019.
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