Various Artists - Melodramen III - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

In the 19th and 20th centuries, French music achieved a unique profile and was widely acknowledged on the international scene. This success was due, last not least, to symbolic figures such as Camille Saint-Saëns, Claude Debussy, and the Groupe des Six,Inch in spite of their divergent aesthetic tendencies... After the French defeat against Germany in 1871, Saint-Saëns became one of the founders of the InchSociété Nationale de MusiqueInch, with the goal of promoting the French music of his time. Forty years later, the InchGroupe des SixInch would pursue similar objectives, but with different aesthetic ideals; Saint-Saëns would vehemently reject them... The work's predominantly Romantic style hardly betrays the fact that Claude Debussy had passed away three years earlier, and that the young composers who made up the InchGroupe des SixInch were already embarking on completely new musical paths. Still, Saint-Saëns agreed with his younger colleagues about the need of foregoing the monumental bombast and Wagnerian pathos of Late Romantic music. Debussy and the InchGroupe des SixInch were more decisive and resolute in venturing a step further back in time, past Romanticism, and orienting themselves toward Baroque and Classical models, which led to a flowering of Neo-Classical musical tendencies. With his individual aesthetics, Claude Debussy occupies a special position he can not be reckoned among any school or group, and he certainly did not like to be called an InchImpressionist.Inch In a certain sense, he is like a monolith... Inch (Pedro Obiera)

•Bruckner's last mass is a masterpiece. Rooted in the traditional Austrian mass, it also contains symphonic elements found only in Beethoven's Missa solemnis, although Mahler can be seen on the horizon. Premiered in Vienna in 1872 to immense acclaim, the work is now performed both in the liturgy and in concert, a permanent part of the repertoire. In contrast to the monumental symphonies, here we encounter a very special soundscape, reaching from soft ethereal sounds to jubilant surges

From the outset, Sir Simon Rattle's conducting career has been marked by a spirit of innovation and renewal - and contemporary music in all it's facets continues to play a significant role in his work. So it was only natural that, upon taking up his post as chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra, he should dedicate a concert to musica viva. The programme featured the world premiere of Vito Žuraj's InchAutomatonesInch as well as Luciano Berio's InchCoroInch. Sir Simon Rattle has conducted the latter piece several times before, but this performance marks the first recording under his baton. This is due to the unique demands that the composition places on recording technology choir singers and orchestra musicians are positioned in pairs on the podium to overcome the visual and acoustic separation of choir and orchestra voices. This presented a particular challenge to the Bavarian Radio recording team, but they rose to it successfully, as can be heard on the new CD from BR-KLASSIK. Composed between 1975 and 1976, Luciano Berio's InchCoroInch, for forty voices and orchestra, takes anonymous folk poems by the Sioux, the Navajo and the Zuni, as well as song texts from Polynesia, Peru, Croatia, Venice, Piedmont, Chile, and the Song of Solomon - all of them reflecting the deeply human urge for freedom - and combines them with the moving poetry of Pablo Neruda, whose death coincided with the bloody suppression of the Allende democracy in Chile by Augusto Pinochet in September 1973.