Stefan Sanderling - Suites for Orchestra 1 & 2 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

This product is an authorized manufactured on demand CD-R

Appalachia (a native American work for North America) is a set of variations based on a slave song about the tragedy of the cotton planters 'being sold down the river'. Delius heard the song when teaching the violin in Virginia, but the primary inspiration was his formative experience of the semi-tropical beauty of Florida's Solano Grove where he has managed an orange plantation. In Sea Drift Delius absorbed a further American influence in the nature musticism of Walt Whitman. The symphonic poem, one of his greatest works, is a song of love and death in which the baritone soloist is both a participant in the drama and offers a commentary upon it. Since his North American debut at the 1989 Tanglewood Summer Music Festival, conductor Stefan Sanderling has forged a successful career for himself in the United States, serving as Music Director of the Florida Orchestra for 2002-2012, and now holds the positions of Conductor Emeritus and artistic advisor of the Florida Orchestra and principal conductor and artistic advisor of the Toledo Symphony Orchestra.

Karlsson Barock is possibly the most prominent string ensemble for Baroque music in Northern Europe. On this album, Two Orchestral Suites & Three Arias, the orchestra is expanded with three woodwind play-ers from another important Swedish ensemble The Drottningholm Baroque Ensemble. The first piece on this album is the orchestral suite by Georg Philipp Telemann, Ouverture-Suite in C Major, TWV 55 C6. Telemann's Orchestral Suites - also known as 'Ouvertures' like Bach's - were viewed as the pinnacle of the composer's synthesis of Italian and French styles into something quintessentially German. As an interlude before Bach's orchestral suite, we hear three arias from two tremendously popular operas at the time Alcina by Georg Friedrich Händel and Farnaceby Antonio Vivaldi. To our great joy, the soprano part is performed by Helena Ek, a much-appreciated soloist for early music in Europe. Ms. Ek has an impressively extensive repertoire that spans from early music to con-temporary and she has teamed up with Göran Karlssonin several early music productions. Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 1 in C Major, BWV 1066, concludes this wonderful album. Bach's Four Orchestral Suites have helped challenge, alter and reshape what we understand about the composer. Mostly because we don't often associate Bach, the sober Lutheran organist, with exuberant and joyful dance music. But these are works of considerable maturity and sophistication that deserve their place alongside the great scores of Bach's last decades. From Footprint Records, we wish you an enjoyable listening.