Posts tagged as "orchestre-de-paris"

Jacqueline du Pre’s Musical Stories

May 25, 2016

In 1979, the much-loved British cellist Jacqueline du Pre, then beset with multiple sclerosis (she was diagnosed in 1973), stepped into the recording studio to make what was to be her last recording – not as cellist but as an engaging narrator in ‘Peter and the Wolf’. Her husband, Daniel Barenboim, conducted a spacious and […]

Franck: Tone Poems

April 29, 2016

A wonderful collection of Franck tone poems, most of them drawn from Daniel Barenboim’s now deleted recordings for Deutsche Grammophon and adding the wonderfully airborne Ansermet performance of ‘Les Eolides’. Try the sheer orchestral terror of ‘Le Chasseur Maudit’ (‘The Accursed Huntsman’) or the blazing brass of ‘Redemption’ for sonic thrills or revel in the […]

Bartok: Concerto for Orchestra; Viola Concerto

April 22, 2016

One of Bartók’s most popular symphonic works is his Concerto for Orchestra. Rafael Kubelik’s fabulous recording of it has long been out of the catalogue and is now restored to circulation at budget price. What’s more, it’s the first recording of the piece made by the orchestra for which it was written. Koussevitzky and the […]

Hindemith: Symphony ‘Mathis der Maler’; Concert Music; Der Schwanendreher

April 22, 2016

William Steinberg made only three recordings for Deutsche Grammophon and his Hindemith recordings, authoritative, sumptuously recorded and pulsating with energy, are among the most invaluable in the Hindemith discography. Barenboim’s coupling of ‘Der Schwanendreher’ is no less welcome, offering what is substantially an important 20th-century viola concerto and being a viola player himself, Hindemith’s writing […]

Liszt: Tone Poems; Hungarian Rhapsodies

April 19, 2016

Having made revolutionary changes during the 1830s and 40s, in both piano performance and composition, Liszt was hardly less innovative in his relationship with the orchestra. He is generally credited with having created the genre of the symphonic poem, in which a narrative or extra-musical idea is depicted within a structural framework usually associated with […]