With its opening sunrise and vaulting “Swan Hymn”, Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony is one of the defining masterpieces of Finnish music, and it’s been at the centre of Sakari Oramo’s repertoire since the start of his conducting career. This concert finds him on tour in 2000 as music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra – an ensemble with a long Sibelius tradition of its own – and striking sparks off his young compatriot Olli Mustonen in Prokofiev’s dazzling Piano Concerto No. 3. Oramo opens with the haunting Lintukoto by the late Einojuhani Rautavaara: one of the undisputed masters of Finnish music in the generation since Sibelius.
Peter Waters & Barbara Hendricks: Fauré
Australian pianist Peter Waters and his jazz ensemble, the Treya Quartet, garnered widespread praise for their sensitive jazz arrangements of songs by the French composer Gabriel Fauré. This beautifully-shot music film compares these arrangements with the original versions, as sung by the internationally-acclaimed American soprano Barbara Hendricks. She is accompanied by Waters, who also plays in the Quartet with Paolo Fresu (trumpet), Tony Overwater (double bass) and Gilbert Paeffgen (drums/percussion). The performances are interspersed with answers to the question: “Why the songs of Fauré in a jazz setting?” Hendricks, meanwhile, contributes her thoughts on the power of song as a form of expression and means of communication.
Boulez conducts Schoenberg, Stravinsky & De Falla – Triple Bill
In the second half of his long and extraordinary career Pierre Boulez emerged as one of the most compelling exponents of 20th-century music – never more penetrating than when directing the virtuoso players of his own Ensemble Intercontemporain. In this inspired triple-bill from the Theater an der Wien, recorded shortly before the master’s 80th birthday, soprano Anja Silja performs a fully-staged version of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire – paired by Boulez with near-contemporary masterworks by Stravinsky and De Falla. Viennese modernism meets the world of the Ballets Russes, in the hands of a conductor who approached all music through the lens of his own dazzling creativity.
Helene Grimaud in Berlin
“She doesn’t only play the piano,” wrote a critic who was present at this December 2000 recital by the French pianist Hélène Grimaud. “She feels it and she lives it. Every single note proves her devotion to perfection”. Grimaud was still a rising star when she gave this performance at the Kammermusiksaal of the Berlin Philharmonie, but her very personal brand of artistry – her spontaneity, her sense of colour, her technical perfection – was already fully formed. Bach and Rachmaninoff frame sonatas by Brahms and Beethoven: a typically wide-ranging programme from a pianist whose technique is matched only by her imagination.
The Lindsay String Quartet plays Haydn, Tippett & Elgar
For four decades until 2005, the Lindsay String Quartet (affectionately known as “The Lindsays”) was at the heart of chamber music life in Great Britain, touring globally and building a unique relationship with Sir Michael Tippett – who coached the ensemble in his music. Tippett’s powerful postwar Third Quartet is the centrepiece of this live recording from London’s flagship chamber music venue, the Wigmore Hall. In classic Lindsays style, it’s framed with a late Haydn quartet – “The Rider” – and another British classic: the troubled, poetic Quartet in E Minor by Sir Edward Elgar. At the time of this recording, the Lindsay String Quartet was probably its pre-eminent interpreter.
Marta and Gyorgy Kurtag in Concert
When Márta and György Kurtág visited the Jerusalem Music Centre in 1996, it was to pass on their wisdom in multiple ways. On the first day, György worked with young musicians in masterclasses on his works. On the second, he and Márta offered a masterclass of their own in a very special concert featuring excerpts from the composer’s Játékok and a selection of his hauntingly beautiful Bach arrangements for four hands.
Argerich plays Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G
Right from her first acclaimed Deutsche Grammophon recording of the work with Claudio Abbado and the Berliner Philharmoniker, Ravel’s brilliant jazz-inspired Piano Concerto in G has been a staple of Martha Argerich’s repertoire: a work whose scintillating rhythms, sparkling passage-work and melodic inspiration seem tailor made to the legendary Argentinian pianist’s remarkable gifts. And that fact is clear to see and hear in this thrilling performance filmed in the Alte Oper in Frankfurt in September 1990, in which Argerich is joined by the Orchestre National de France and conductor Charles Dutoit.
Harnoncourt conducts Bach: Advent Concert from Melk Abbey
From the magnificent surroundings of Melk Abbey in Austria, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and his Concentus Musicus Wien present a glorious programme of favourite choral works by Johann Sebastian Bach: two of his best loved cantatas alongside the celebratory Magnificat in D Major, BWV 243. Filmed in December 2000, the concert features a superb quartet of some of the finest singers of the time, including soprano Christine Schäfer and tenor Ian Bostridge. The Arnold Schoenberg Chor completes the line-up for this inspiring concert for Advent.
Segerstam conducts Rautavaara: On the Last Frontier
“Music needs personality” said the conductor Leif Segerstam, speaking of Einojuhani Rautavaara’s choral “fantasy” On the Last Frontier. “It needs something between the lines”. And the imitable, irrepressible personalities of both of these much-missed artists are plain to see and hear in this 1998 concert from Helsinki’s Finlandia Hall. Rautavaara took his inspiration from a novel by Edgar Allan Poe, but Poe’s narrative of Antarctic exploration soon takes on a spiritual, almost other-worldly quality, in music of rapturous beauty and visionary power. Segerstam’s personal empathy with the composer gives this world premiere performance an unforgettable sense of occasion.
Norrington conducts Haydn: “Paris” Symphonies Nos. 82 & 86
Joseph Haydn never visited Paris, but when he received a commission from an influential concert society in the French capital, his imagination caught fire. The result – his six “Paris” symphonies – might be the first masterpieces of the symphonic repertoire to achieve global popularity, and even today, their mixture of novelty, inspiration and sheer creative verve is little short of irresistible. In this performance from the Mozarteum, Salzburg, period-performance pioneer Sir Roger Norrington is in his element – bringing his characteristic blend of scholarly expertise and irrepressible exuberance to the magnificent Symphony No. 86 and the brilliant No. 82 – nicknamed “The Bear”.