The Philadelphia Orchestra / Yannick Nézet-Séguin SERGEI RACHMANINOFF Symphony No. 1 - Symphonic Dances

 

SYMPHONY No. 1 - SYMPHONIC DANCES

 

Philadelphia Orchestra / Yannick Nézet-Séguin GUSTAV MAHLER Symphony No. 8

                                                               SYMPHONY NO. 8

Daniil Trifonov / The Philadelphia Orchestra / Yannick Nézet-Séguin DESTINATION RACHMANINOV - ARRIVAL

After the highly acclaimed album “Destination Rachmaninov: Departure” Daniil Trifonov concludes his Rachmaninov project with a coupling of the composer’s Piano Concertos nos. 1 & 3.

Including Trifonov’s own transcriptions of Rachmaninov’s famous, beloved, heart-rending “Vocalise” and virtuosic “The Silver Sleigh Bells”.

The Grammy and Gramophone winning pianist follows in the composer’s footsteps to record with the Philadelphia Orchestra, again conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
booklet 

Nicola Benedetti / The Philadelphia Orchestra / Cristian Măcelaru WYNTON MARSALIS Violin Concerto - Fiddle Dance Suite

Nicola Benedetti’s new album on Decca Classics features premiere recordings of two works written especially for her by jazz musician Wynton Marsalis: Violin Concerto in D and Fiddle Dance Suite for Solo Violin.
Benedetti performs Violin Concerto in D with The Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Cristian Măcelaru who has collaborated with the violinist to perform the work six times. The concerto was co- commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), Ravinia, LA Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra Washington, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and Netherlands Radio Philharmonic. Benedetti performed the world premiere with the LSO under conductor James Gaffigan in London in November 2015.
Marsalis’ Violin Concerto in D is in four movements and draws on the entire sweep of Western violin pieces from the Baroque era to the 21st Century. It explores Benedetti’s and Marsalis’ common musical heritage in Celtic, Anglo and Afro-American folk music and dance. The work revels in the magic of virtuosity and takes inspiration from Nicola’s life as a travelling performer and educator. Each of the four movements reveals a different aspect of Nicola’s dream which becomes a reality through the long-form storytelling of the performance.

Daniil Trifonov, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin DESTINATION RACHMANINOV - DEPARTURE

Amid the excitement over a rediscovered rehearsal tape of the composer playing Symphonic Dances, there arrives a new account of two concertos with Rachmaninov’s favourite orchestra and the living pianist who most resembles him. Deutsche Grammophon has titled the album Destination Rachmaninov. Departure and furnished the cover with a portrait of the soloist, Daniil Trifonov, sitting in the kind of railway compartment that went out with shellac records. Do not be distracted by these marketing tricks.

Trifonov opens with C minor concerto with quiet authority, each chord darker than the one before, Rachmaninov at his most morose. If this concerto had a physical colour it would be brown, streaked with alabaster flashes of erotic fantasy. Trifonov paints brown deeper than any pianist of the present generation, or the last. He inhabits Rachmaninov’s peculiar mindset, rooted in Russia yet drawn to the West, deeply pessimistic yet abnormally energetic, introspective yet showman-like. The finale of the second concerto comes as close to the source as any recording I know.

The fourth concerto, always problematic, is propelled at speed by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and played by the Philadelphia Orchestra with something of the burnish that so captivated the composer. The Three Blind Mice central movement, often made to sound simplistic, acquires an edge of menace. The finale is pure helter-skelter. Between the two concertos, Trifonov plays Bach transcriptions, just as Rachmaninov might have done. This recording stands with the greats. (Norman Lebrecht)

Trifonov RACHMANINOV Variations

“I was homesick,” he confesses. “I had been in the US for two or three months, I was 18 years old, away from my parents for the first time, so far from home.” Many adolescents experience bouts of melancholy, but Daniil Trifonov, born in Nihzny Novgorod in 1991 and recently arrived in Cleveland, was no ordinary teenager. Trifonov transformed his feeling of longing into musical inspiration and, touched by the “musical poetry” of one of the most beloved composers of his homeland – Rachmaninov – began composing.

The result was an original, five-movement work for solo piano, rich in virtuosity and lyricism, expressing Trifonov’s nostalgia for his roots. Trifonov dedicated the piece to his mentor Sergei Babayan. He called the piece Rachmaniana – “a kind of homage to Rachmaninov”, reflecting the “pianism” and “nostalgic yearn- ings” Trifonov shares with his older compatriot, who also had made a home in the New World. “I like to think,” reflects Trifonov, “that I feel a particular cultural identification with Rachmaninov. I relate to his Russian character, as well as his love for the language of musical Romanticism.” 

More than just a 19th-century aesthetic movement, Romanticism reflected an ethos that placed the artist at the very centre of the creative universe. His emotions became the subject of creativity itself – musical expression turned into a portrait of the artist’s soul. The piano was ideally suited to the expression of Romantic sensibilities, with composer-performers from Chopin to Schumann and Liszt to Scriabin pushing the boundaries of technique, colour and harmony while embarking on ever more intricate journeys of spiritual introspection. Trifonov remarks: “Although Rachmaninov was heir to the 19th-century tradition of great pianist-composers, he lived into a different era. He was the last of the Romantics.” Born on an estate near Veliky Novgorod in 1873, Rachmaninov was an old-school gentleman of refined manner and sensitivity who had trouble adapting to the 20th century’s changing, often brutal Zeitgeist. His sense of loss was compounded in 1917, when he was compelled to flee Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, eventually settling in the US. His longing for the apolitical rapture of Romanticism and for his homeland was tinged with what Trifonov calls “a Russian sense of melancholy. His music is tender, yet restless – it’s very Russian, this painful but warm nostalgia mixed with a kind of fatalism.”