Berlin State Opera Orchestra - Preussens Hofmusik - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Pentatone presents a new album full of world-premiere recordings of orchestral songs by Hans Sommer, sung by an excellent quartet of soloists - Mojca Erdmann, Anke Vondung, Mauro Peter and Benjamin Appl - together with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin under the baton of Guillermo García Calvo. Sommer was a Liszt student whose operas were performed and praised by Richard Strauss, but sunk into relative oblivion due to his unusual career path and independence from major publishers. The songs were discovered recently and can finally be presented to the world. Focusing mostly on Goethe poetry, combining high Romanticism with folk styles, Sommer's songs are colorfully orchestrated, harmonically audacious, and often highly dramatic and evocative. This album , commemorating Sommer's 100-year death anniversary, sheds light on a fascinating chapter in music history, and will hopefully contribute to a renaissance of this unsung hero. The Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin has a vast Pentatone discography, including Wagner's complete operas, symphonic works by Mahler and Strauss, as well as multiple concerto recordings with renowned soloists. Mojca Erdmann, Anke Vondung, Mauro Peter, Benjamin Appl and Guillermo García Calvo all make their Pentatone debut.

Here loving service is done to a composer who is perhaps Sweden's most important symphonist and certainly it's most popular one. This is what FonoForum wrote of Vol. 2 of our edition of symphonic works by Hugo Alfvén, who numbers among the most productive and most versatile Swedish cultural personalities. Alfvén's Symphony No. 2 brought him a success that he termed his definitive artistic breakthrough. A second performance was held during the same year, and it was not long before it was also being presented in foreign countries. This work became his most popular symphony and the first of his compositions to appear in print (1900). At the time national Romantic tones had long dominated music by Swedish composers, while Alfvén adopted a taste that was more Continental - a fact that reviewers registered with astonishment. His Swedish Rhapsody No. 3, a composition featuring impressive work with motifs from Swedish folk music, rounds off this album.

Busoni's opera Die Brautwahl is a rarely performed gem of the genre - in fact it was a gruesome failure with audiences of it's day. Here Maesto Daniel Barenboim gives it new life, leading the Staatskappelle Berlin, Chor der Deutschen Staatsoper Berlin, and premiere soloists like Roman Trekel, Vinson Cole, and Graham Clark in a brilliant romp through the comic-fantastic work.