Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony was recorded at the Tanglewood Festival in 1974 in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Serge Koussevitzky. Leonard Bernstein conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Tchaikovsky’s Fifth was one of Koussevitzky’s warhorses during the many years in which he led the Boston Symphony. “It was like Koussevitzky’s signature, his theme song, one of his national hymns, and I felt his presence on stage very strongly.” (Leonard Bernstein)
Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F major, BWV 1047
For Johann Sebastian Bach, February 15, 1981 was no doubt one of the darkest days of his afterlife: on this day he lost one of his greatest champions in the 20th century, Karl Richter. Over the course of his long career as conductor, organist and harpsichordist, Richter had become synonymous with Bach. He founded the Munich Bach Choir and the Munich Bach Orchestra. He helped trigger the Bach revival in the 1950s. He was the spirit behind the Ansbach Bach Festival. He turned his adopted city of Munich into a Bach center. And he recorded all the major choral and orchestral works of Bach, including more than 100 cantatas.
Der Rosenkavalier
Though the librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal originally described the project as “a comedy for music”, there is also great emotional depth in this stirring portrayal of the delights and torments of love. Enhancing Strauss’s lush, late-romantic music are Otto Schenk’s rich and witty staging and, above all, Carlos Kleiber’s sensitive conducting. Internationally acclaimed singers Felicity Lott, Kurt Moll, Anne Sofie von Otter and Barbara Bonney bring their superb vocal artistry into play to ensure an unforgettable musical experience.
Mozart, Symphony No.40 in G minor, K. 550
The G minor Symphony is undoubtedly Mozart’s most popular work in this genre. What makes it so exciting to us – and what endeared this work to 19th-century audiences – ar its relentless passion and Romantic tension. The very first bars set the scene: above a nervous, pulsating viola accompaniment enters an equally agitated principal theme. There is nothing spectacular here, and yet the “piano” beginning – unusual for an 18th-century symphony – and the insistent rhythm are nothing less than gripping. The mastery with which Mozart then contrapuntally exploits the opening theme is simply bgreathtaking – particularly in the development section, which darts out into the most distant keys. After the profoundly touching Andante and uncompromising Minuet, the fiery Allegro assai, with its extravagant modulations in the development section, provides a worthy counterpart to the first movement. Nikolaus Harnoncourt (born in 1929) is one of the most profound and intriguing conductors of our time. Considered one of the world’s leading specialists of Baroque music, he has long since turned his attention to Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and even to Jacques Offenbach and Johann Strauss. He spent many years as a cellist with the Wiener Symphoniker before founding the “Concentus Musicus Wien” with his wife Alice in 1953. It soon became one of the world’s most respected ensembles specializing in the performance of early music on original instruments. In the 1970s, Harnoncourt joined forces with Jean-Pierre Ponnelle to stage a series of Monteverdi operas at the Zurich Opera House. This universally acclaimed cycle contributed to a renaissance of Monteverdi’s music and set standards for early Baroque performance practice. Harnoncourt later began to turn his attention more and more to the music of Mozart, whom he considers “the most romantic of all composers”. His concept of Mozart’s music ran counter to the prevailing 20th-century views, however. He sees Mozart’s music as “dramatic, dynamic, often directly and highly emotional.” The Vienna Philharmonic, known for its suave and gracious Mozartian interpretations, initially rebelled against Harnoncourt’s unconventional approach. Yet the compellingness of his vision soon came to be accepted and shared by all members of the orchestra. In this recording, Harnoncourt conducts the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
Die Csárdásfürstin
Emmerich Kálman (1882-1953) ranks next to Franz Lehár as one of the leading representatives of the “Silver Era” of the operetta, which was stamped above all by the works of the Austro-Hungarian cultural sphere, and which followed the classical period of the Viennese operetta. Kálmán’s “Herbstmanöver”, premiered at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna in 1908, immediately confirmed the young composer’s talent for this genre. The roots of the phenomenal originality of his melodies lie in his love of Hungarian gypsy music and his natural affinity for the Viennese waltz tradition, which characterize such musically original, international successes as the operettas “The Czardas Princess” (1915) and “Countess Maritza” (1924). Kálmán emigrated to America in 1939 but returned to Europe after the War and died in Paris on 30 October 1953. Beginning in the 1920s, he increasingly incorporated elements of modern dance music into his stage works. Particularly worthy of mention among his other successful works are “Die Bajadere” (1921), “The Circus Princess” (1926) and “Das Veilchen vom Montmartre” (1930).
Madama Butterfly
Director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle (1932-1988) has been called “a weaver of magic, a curator of the sublime, a master choreographer, a footlose farceur” (The Wall Street Journal). One of the most imaginative director- designers of our times, Ponnelle was also the first significant opera director to have a large portion of his work preserved on film. In his chilling and poignant account of “Madama Butterfly”, he tried to use all the typical resources of film such as flashbacks, slow motion and “inner monologues”, where the singers do not move their lips to sing. Under the direction of Herbert von Karajan, the stellar cast includes Mirella Freni, Placido Domingo and Christa Ludwig.
Siegfried
It began with a scandal, became the object of heated discussions, turned into a sensational success and finally blossomed into a legendary, standard setting production: Pierre Boulez’ and Patrice Chéreau’s epoch-making “Ring” cycle in Bayreuth, the “Centennial Ring”. When the production was premiered in 1976, there were brawls in the venerable Festspielhaus, with the audience divided into one mob roaring in favor and one screaming against. The main reason for the protests was Chéreau, who set the work in the time in which it was written and focused on the all-too-human passions that motivate gods and men alike. The grimy industrial era with its robber barons and suffering masses supplied the ideological underpinnings of Chéreau’s concept. Musical conservatives felt betrayed and cheapened by this association. The tide began to turn in 1977. Certain features were altered and the production began to have a more homogeneous feel. Finally, in 1980, its last year, the Ring concluded with a 90-minute ovation and 110 curtain calls. By the time Philips released the complete recording of this production in 1992, its legendary status had already begun to take shape: “Patrice Chéreau and Pierre Boulez not only wrote a major new chapter in Wagner interpretation with their Ring, but also carried out a revolution that affected all of musical theater. Since then, no production of the Ring has been able to come near to the concept put forward by Chéreau and Boulez.” (FonoForum) Unitel’s production, the first complete recording on film of Wagner’s Ring, marked the beginning of Unitel’s exclusive association with the Bayreuth Festival.
Mozart, Requiem K. 626
The Requiem is not only Mozart’s last composition, but also the one most shrouded in mystery. The purportedly enigmatic patron who ordered the work and the fatal illness that befell Mozart while he was working on it long nurtured the macabre legend of Mozart composing his own Requiem mass commissioned by Death himself. The Requiem was completed by Mozart’s friend and pupil Franz Saver Süssmayr on the basis of Mozart’s sketches and instructions. The somber woodwinds and brass, the artless melodies and the stirring shifts from intricate contrapuntal writing to mighty homophonic blocks convey an otherworldly, apocalyptic feeling seldom encountered in Mozart’s works. Despite its almost operatic solo passages and large orchestra, the Requiem was intended for the church, and is indeed an ideal work for the theatrically sumptuous and brilliant Baroque churches of Austria and southern Germany. The abbey church in Diessen (Bavaria) is a splendid example: completely rebuilt in the early 18th century by one of the leading South-German Baroque architects, it provides an admirable setting for Leonard Bernstein’s sensitive conducting of the Requiem. This production, which the Maestro dedicated to his wife Felicia Montealegre on the tenth anniversary of her death, is a moving and memorable tribute to commemorate Mozart’s and others’ deaths.
Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman)
Schumann, Cello Concerto in A minor, op.129
Recorded at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris in November 1976, Schumann’s Cello Concerto marked the high point of a concert given by the Orchestre National de France under Leonard Bernstein. The soloist was Mstislav Rostropovich, the leading cellist of our time and a talented conductor as well.