Mendelssohn, Symphony No.3 in A minor, Op.56 “Scottish”
“The last of the great international orchestral and operatic maestri” (The Times), Sir Georg Solti is a living testament to the elegance and impeccable tastefulness of Central European music-making. Solti’s remarkable partnership with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra began in 1954, when he first led the orchestra at the Ravinia Festival. After returning to conduct the ensemble several times during the following years, he was named Music Director in 1969 and held this post for a phenomenal 22 years. He is credited with greatly extending and enhancing the orchestra’s worldwide reputation. His recordings of Mendelssohn’s works with the Chicago Symphony date from the late 1970s and represent a mellower, more lyrically accented phase in the partnership between Solti and his orchestra.
Falstaff
After an unparalleled succession of tragic operas, Verdi finished his operatic career with a comedy. It has a thread of intriguing musical cross- references and a great richness of musical resource, as well as subtle delineation of character. It has enchanting love-music, too; but it is the depiction of Falstaff himself and the web of conspiracy round him that gives the opera its chief celebrity. Verdi’s congenial librettist Arrigo Boito created a sparkling adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor” and “Henry IV”. “Falstaff” was premiered in Milan in 1893.
Beethoven, Symphony No.9 in D minor, op.125 “Choral”
Completed in 1824, after six years of work, the Ninth is the most awesome and inspiring of Beethoven’s symphonies, employing a large orchestra, four vocal soloists and chorus. The final movement is considered by many to be the composer’s crowning glory. It had been Beethoven’s lifelong dream to set Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” to music, for the poem put into words Beethoven’s most impassioned desire: peace and brotherhood in the world. The Ninth is an affirmation of optimism and beauty, written when Beethoven was almost completely deaf. This work is part of Leonard Bernstein’s complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies recorded with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra live in Vienna. The series won the Ace Award, the National (U.S.) Cable TV Association’s top award for outstanding quality and entertainment value. Bernstein’s impassioned renderings of Beethoven – so transparent and contemporary in their message – move audiences in a unique way. “Beethoven has always meant universality to me, ever since my early adolescence, when I first heard that unforgettable cry of ‘Brüder!’. From that moment on, every… symphony came to mean heart-to-heart communication, travelling satellite-fashion via the cosmos itself. I offer [this cycle] to all music-loving ears as a testament of faith and of my most profound reactions to this greatest of all composers.” (Leonard Bernstein, 1980)
Beethoven, Missa Solemnis in D major, op.123
Recorded live in Salzburg in 1979, the performance of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis was one of the highlights of Herbert von Karajan’s Easter Festival that year. Amassing the forces of the Berlin Philharmonic and the chorus of the Wiener Singverein, Karajan provided an unforgettable experience enhanced by the artistry of renowned soloists Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Ruza Baldani, Eric Tappy and José van Dam. The Missa solemnis blends an age-old religious service with a musical outpouring of human emotions in an intensely personal manner. Beethoven conceived the mass for a religious occasion, the installation of Archduke Rudolf as Archbishop of Olmütz in 1820. However, he did not complete it in time and the work was given its premiere in St. Petersburg on 7 April 1824. In his score, Beethoven wrote the words “From the heart… may it find its way to the heart.” Indeed, the work’s dramatic, almost volcanic fervor never fails to go to the heart of all listeners.
Götterdämmerung
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.
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 Gwyneth Jones, Manfred Jungwirth, Brigitte Fassbaender, Benno Kusche, Lucia Popp and Francisco Araiza bring their superb vocal artistry into play to ensure an unforgettable musical experience.
Symphonie Fantastique
In this live recording from the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Haitink conducts the Concertgebouw Orchestra in a performance of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique Op. 14. Sub-titled Episodes in the Life of an Artist by the composer, this brilliant psychological fantasy in music is thought to have been inspired by his passion for the famous Irish actress Harriet Smithson.
New Year’s Eve Concert 1979
Gaiety and temperament are the keynotes of this New Year’s Eve program with the London Philharmonic Orchestra recorded live in Munich’s Herkulessaal on New Year’s Eve 1979. It begins with “Gaieté Parisienne,” an arrangement of Jacques Offenbach’s most popular operetta melodies. This is followed by a generous helping of central European esprit in the Slavonically inspired dances of Léo Delibes’ “Coppélia” ballet, and in the Viennese lightness of Franz von Suppé’s “Pique Dame” Overture, a delicious little work by the founding father of the Viennese operetta. Amilcare Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours” has delighted “promenade” concertgoers for years now – perhaps because it reminds us of his two great pupils Puccini and Mascagni? The luscious lyricism of the waltzes from Richard Strauss’s “Rosenkavalier” is dispelled by the solemn majesty of Sir Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance March No. 4.” From Victorian England we travel to Czarist St. Petersburg, to the magical world of Peter I. Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite.” And since all good things must come to an end, the Land of Sweets disappears under a vigorous sprinkling of fiery paprika in Johannes Brahms’s “Hungarian Dance No. 5,” which closes the program on a spicy note.
Tchaikovsky, Violin Concerto in D major, op.35
This recording of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto Op. 35 documents the fruitful, long-standing relationship between conductor Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. From 1936 to 1980, Ormandy shaped this orchestra into a fine instrument which set standards particularly in its performances of late-Romantic and early 20th-century music. Israeli-born violinist Itzhak Perlman began his career in the United States and is widely acclaimed both as a chamber musician (with Barenboim and others) and as a soloist with the world’s leading orchestras.