A desolate landscape, a grieving mother and a ferryman who has seen the truth. When Benjamin Britten transported an ancient Japanese Noh play to the reedbeds and rivers of his native East Anglia, the local became universal. Part opera, part ritual, part haunting meditation on love and loss, Curlew River is a music drama like no other and in 1998, artist from both Japanese and western traditions came together at Aix-en-Provence to create it anew. Directed by Yoshi Oïda with a superb international cast, the result was simultaneously timeless and urgent. This live recording captures the moment with unforgettable immediacy and power.
Solti conducts Bruckner & Stravinsky
Few of Bruckner’s symphonies cost Bruckner more dearly than his Third – and after his hero Richard Wagner praised its inspiration, few brought him more pride. In the last decade of his long and remarkable career Sir Georg Solti was conducting with more insight than ever, bringing an energy and an imaginative fire that was the envy of maestros half his age. This live recording from the Philharmonie am Gasteig in Munich finds him paired with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra – an ensemble perfectly in tune with Bruckner’s sound world, but every bit as brilliant (and as communicative) in Stravinsky’s dazzling, American-inspired Symphony in Three Movements.
Oramo conducts Rautavaara, Prokofiev & Sibelius – with Olli Mustonen
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.
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.
Herbert von Karajan: Portrait of the Conductor Legend
Herbert von Karajan was one of the 20th century’s most fascinating and complex musical personalities, a conductor who dominated the post-war classical music world like a colossus. This film reveals the phenomenon of the man and his music while touching on inspiring – but also controversial – aspects of his career. There are insights from musicians who worked with him, but also from Karajan himself, who, in archive interviews, discusses events in his life and relates them to his work as a conductor. The result is a fascinating portrait of an incomporable musician, whose work continues to resonate powerfully even decades after his death.
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.
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.
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”.
Vaclav Neumann conducts Mahler & Dvorak
There’s always something inspiring about a veteran conductor working with young musicians – a special energy that flows between youth and experience, to the enrichment of all. In 1990, as tyrannies crumbled across Central Europe the great Czech maestro Vacláv Neumann joined forces with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester and the distinguished British baritone Thomas Allen for a programme of Mahler (his Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen) and Dvorák (his final symphony). The result – captured live at the Alte Oper Frankfurt – has a quite extraordinary sense of occasion, as Neumann imparts a lifetime’s emotion and experience to his audibly inspired young players.