Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich

Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich & Paavo Järvi – Mendelssohn: Symphonies (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:50:46 minutes | 4,08 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

“I don’t think Mendelssohn gets the attention he deserves,” said Paavo Järvi at the start of the 2020-2021 season. Faced with this observation, he undertook to record a complete cycle of Mendelssohn’s orchestral works with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra for his second season as Music Director. On the programme are the composer’s five symphonies, including the second, known as ‘Lobgesang’, half-symphony, half-cantata, with the participation of the Zürcher Sing-Akademie, tenor Patrick Grahl and sopranos Chen Reiss and Marie Henriette Reinhold. Finally, A Midsummer Night’s Dream , based on Shakespeare’s play, the overture to which Mendelssohn composed when he was just 17, concludes this very fine cycle.

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Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich & Paavo Järvi – Tchaikovsky: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 4 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:16:08 minutes | 1,30 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

Principal Conductor and Music Director of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich since October 2019, Paavo Järvi continues his complete cycle of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, following a first volume devoted to Symphony no.5 and the symphonic poem Francesca da Rimini. This second volume features Symphonies nos. 2 and 4. The Fourth, composed in 1878 and nicknamed the ‘Fate’ Symphony because of its sombre colouring, which may recall the neuroses attributed to Tchaikovsky, is one of his most frequently performed. The Second Symphony, composed in 1872 and much less frequently performed in concert, is known as the ‘Little Russian’ because Tchaikovsky drew on Ukrainian folk tunes. The very first movement begins with a solo horn version of the folksong ‘Down by Mother Volga’…

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Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich & Paavo Järvi – Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:21:34 minutes | 1,42 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

Anton Bruckner called his Symphony no.8 in C minor a ‘mystery’; others have seen it as an ‘apocalyptic’ work. For Paavo Järvi, it is the composer’s ‘most unusual symphony’ and the ‘pinnacle’ of his symphonic output. In the history of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, the Eighth Symphony occupies a special place, since it was the first Bruckner the orchestra performed – in 1905, twelve years after the premiere in Vienna of what was then the longest symphony in the history of music, and Bruckner’s only work to call for harps: ‘A harp has no place in a symphony, but I couldn’t do otherwise!’, the composer reportedly said.

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Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich & Paavo Järvi – Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:52 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

The first performance of Anton Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony at the Zurich Tonhalle took place on 14 January 1924, to mark the centenary of the composer’s birth. Under the direction of Walter, Furtwängler, Klemperer, Böhm and Karajan (to name but a few!), the orchestra has since given many performances of this monumental work which was its composer’s first great success and which the conductor Hermann Levi considered ‘the most significant composition since the death of Beethoven’. The orchestra’s Brucknerian tradition is perpetuated with this cycle conducted by its music director Paavo Järvi, which will continue with the Eighth and Ninth Symphonies until 2024, the year of Bruckner’s bicentenary.

Since January 2022, Paavo Järvi has been realising a Bruckner cycle with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich that will run over several seasons. A look at the history by our dramaturge Ulrike Thiele shows how well this composer suits us.

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Paavo Järvi & Tonhalle Orchester Zürich – Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 & Francesca da Rimini (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:58 minutes | 1,30 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

Paavo Järvi, Principal Conductor and Music Director of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich since October 2019, here launches a complete recording of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, the first in both his rich discography and that of the Swiss orchestra: ‘When I think of the Fifth Symphony, I think of vulnerability and hope. It looks directly into our soul. It is perhaps the finest of his symphonies. The famous horn solo moves me and enriches me every time I hear it… Unlike the Sixth, the Fifth still holds out hope for life.’ The symphonic poem Francesca da Rimini op.32 completes this programme. This dark and violent ‘symphonic fantasy after Dante’, a drama of jealousy, was premiered in 1877, at the same time as Swan Lake.

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Paavo Järvi and Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich – Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 ‘Pathétique’ & Romeo and Juliet (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:23 minutes | 1,08 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

After two volumes praised by the international press (Diapason d’Or, Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik etc.) the Tonhalle-Orchester Z”urich presents the third release in its Tchaikovsky cycle, featuring the Sixth Symphony and Romeo and Juliet. Tchaikovsky said he “put his entire soul” into the Sixth Symphony. He admitted that his programme was “more subjective than ever” and that he “often […] wept copiously” while working on it. The overall atmosphere is created by the sombre key of B minor and an obsessive sighing motif that recurs throughout the symphony.

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