Swedish Chamber Orchestra - Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2 - SUPER-AUDIO CD [Super Audio CD (SACD)]

Having begun their collaboration in 1997, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and it's conductor laureate Thomas Dausgaard have developed an unusually tight partnership. Nowhere is this demonstrated more clearly than in their cycles of the symphonies of Schumann, Schubert and, most recently, Brahms - performances which have been characterized by reviewers as variously 'fresh', 'vivid', 'transparent' and 'invigorating'. Of Mendelssohn the team has previously recorded the incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream, a described as 'capturing Mendelssohn's inimitable spirit' on the website Crescendo. The same disc included The Hebrides, and now the SCO and Dausgaard return to Scotland, with Mendelssohn's 'Scottish' Symphony. This was begun in 1829, after a stay in London during which the composer conducted his Symphony No. 1, also included on this disc. Mendelssohn's imagination was often fired by impressions from nature, and Scotland was the Romantic landscape par excellence, celebrated for it's rugged Highland scenery and melancholy tunes. 'I think that today I found the beginning of my 'Scottish' Symphony', he wrote to his parents after a visit to the ruined chapel at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh. It took more than a decade for him to complete the symphony - but ever since it's first performance, in 1842, it has been a staple of the symphonic repertoire.

Following his critically acclaimed recording of Galina Ustvolskaya's five symphonies (BIS-2304), conductor Christian Karlsen, together with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, now takes on the orchestral and concertante works of Anders Hillborg, Sweden's most performed living composer. This recording opens with the Piano Concerto No. 1, a hyperactive and virtuoso work filled with filigree detail, performed here by one of the leading interpreters of contemporary piano repertoire, Tamara Stefanovich. Also included is the Cello Concerto, characterised by the intimacy of it's scoring, and a direct and paired-back simplicity of expression, performed by Nicolas Altstaedt-the dedicatee of the work and one of today's most sought-after and versatile artists. Also on the programme the Kongsgaard Variations, a meditative composition based on the arietta from Beethoven's Piano Sonata Op. 111, and Vaporised Tivoli, a frenzied and hallucinatory invocation of funfairs. Hillborg's music appeals to musicians and music lovers around the world thanks to it's deep expressiveness, it's irrepressible energy, and it's love of the absurd and unexpected. This recording constitutes an excellent introduction to the fascinating world of this unique composer.

Schubert / Swedish Chamber Orch / Dausgaard - Syms 1 & 2 [SUPER-AUDIO CD] Hybrid SACD date 10/14/2014