JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2

BBC Music Magazine disc of the month - June 2010 "genuinely vibrant Brahms"


‘You don’t know what it’s like always to hear that giant marching along behind me’, Brahms once wrote about Beethoven. Brahms took twenty-one years to complete his First Symphony, struggling under the weight of expectation as the worthy successor to Beethoven, renowned for his mastery of the symphony. Though this may have hindered Brahms’s speed, the result was worth waiting for – and the influence of Beethoven within this heroic work is undeniable. His Second Symphony was completed in just a few months and the overall mood is one of pastoral lyricism. This CD captures the impassioned live performances of both symphonies conducted by the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Principal Conductor Vladimir Jurowski.

ANTONIN DVORÁK (1841-1904)
Requiem

GRAMOPHONE MAGAZINE EDITOR'S CHOICE (January 2010)

Never performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra before, and rarely heard in concert at all, the Requiem by Antonín Dvořák captured on this CD
from a live concert seems a near-forgotten masterpiece. Dvořák scholar Gervase Hughes cites this work for four soloists, chorus and orchestra as one of the composer’s finest sacred creations, ‘a deeply moving expression of faith on the part of a composer whose religious conviction never wavered’.
It’s a conviction stamped through the composer’s illuminating, fervent score.

PYOTR ILYCH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)
Symphony No. 1 "Winter Daydreams"
Symphony No. 6 "Pathétique"

The London Philharmonic Orchestra’s celebrated Principal Conductor Vladimir Jurowski conducts live recordings of Tchaikovsky’s first and last symphonies. The first, entitled ‘Winter Daydreams’, is seductively atmospheric with crisp orchestrations giving the impression of a winter landscape. The Sixth Symphony, ‘Pathétique’, is a passionate work whose tragic finale gained significance with Tchaikovsky’s sudden death just days after he conducted its first performance in St Petersburg.

GUSTAV MAHLER (1860-1911)
Symphony No. 6

Mahler once remarked to Sibelius “a symphony must be like the world, it must embrace everything.” His Sixth Symphony is a salient and personal statement, containing musical depictions of his wife and children. It reaches a tragic conclusion in the Finale representing “the hero, on whom fall three blows of fate, the last of which fells him as a tree is felled.” Klaus Tennstedt’s interpretations of Mahler during his celebrated partnership with the London Philharmonic Orchestra bear testimony to the way Mahler composed his life.