Mozarteumorchester Salzburg - Serenades - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Rachminov's Symphonic Dances was one of the first four releases on the LPO tag. As a celebration of the LPO 20 Anniversariy, they are releasing a new recording of the Symphonic Dances, recorded in March of 2023, paired with Rachmaninov's The Bells. Both recordings are performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of our prinicpal conductor, Edward Gardner. The Bells, a choral symphony incorporates Edgar Allan Poe's namesake poem, with a traditional Georgian melody Dies Irae. Motifs of Dies Irae can also be heard in the final movement of the Symphonic Dance; where the Dies Irae theme represents Death.

A special, connecting and autobiographical element for this recording is the beautiful city of Salzburg, a place steeped in legend and music history, which became the hometown of all those involved in the production - from the composer to the conductor, the soloist to the orchestra musicians and the orchestra director - at least for an important period of their lives; in the actual as well as in the artistic sense. In addition to well-known repertoire, Rafael Fingerlos' recording also offers delightful trouvailles such as the rarely performed aria of Allazim from Zaide InchNur mutig mein Herze! Inch, the little concert aria Un bacio di mano and even a veritable world premiere recording the so rarely performed and extremely Mozartian-daredevil cabaletta of the Conte Aria, comprising fourteen (!) high Gs, which Mozart composed especially for the Conte singer in the Viennese Figaro premiere. Beautiful, virtuosic, wild and spectacular. The following applies to this recording less is more. Less editing, always opting for natural and musical phrasing. And the aim is always to achieve a sound that is as close as possible to the live experience and that can also be reproduced in concert at any time. As authentic and above all as natural as possible.

I see the future of Baroque orchestral music in the hands of modern ensembles - the fetish of the 'original instrument' has had it's day, but not the profoundly trained professional who guides an orchestra into the deeper dimensions of the composition. For it isn't the instrument that makes the music, but the head! (Reinhard Goebel) The Süddeutsche Zeitung reveres him as an 'icon of early music', and the New York Times applauds him as a 'light in a sea of mediocrity'. Reinhard Goebel specializes in the repertoire of the 17th and 18th centuries; As an expounder of period performance practice for both early music ensembles and modern orchestras, and as an endless fount of knowledge about gems of the repertoire, he is a world-renowned specialist. In May 2018 he was named artistic director of the Berliner Barock Solisten with whom he pursued an intensive artistic collaboration for years.