Tag: Wiener Philharmoniker

SACD

Herbert von Karajan, Wiener Philharmoniker – Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier (1984) [Japan 2019] [SACD / Esoteric Company – ESSG-90215/7]

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Herbert von Karajan, Wiener Philharmoniker - Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier (1984) [Japan 2019]

Title: Herbert von Karajan, Wiener Philharmoniker – Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier (1984) [Japan 2019]
Genre: Classical
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

This three SACD set contains Richard Strauss’ opera “Der Rosenkavalier” performed by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, and the Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor, led by Helmut Froschauer. Sung in German. This reissue series of classical music masterpieces by Esoteric has attracted a lot of attention, both for its uncompromising commitment to recreating the original master sound. This series marks the first hybrid SACD release of historical recording selections that have been mainstays of the catalog since their initial release.

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SACD

Herbert von Karajan, Wiener Philharmoniker – Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 (1988/2018) [SACD / Esoteric Company – ESSG-90181]

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Herbert von Karajan, Wiener Philharmoniker - Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 (1988/2018)

Title: Herbert von Karajan, Wiener Philharmoniker – Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 (1988/2018)
Genre: Classical
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

A wonderful reading it is, as authoritative as its predecessors and every bit as well played but somehow more profound, more humane, more lovable if that is a permissible attribute of an interpretation of this Everest among symphonies. […] It is the sense of the music being in the hearts and minds and collective unconscious of Karajan and every one of the hundred and more players that gives this performance its particular charisma and appeal. Richard Osborne, Gramophone, October 1989

Recorded the year before he died, this might stand as a spiritual testament to Karajan’s relationship with this work. ~ Record Review / James Jolly, Gramophone (London) / 01. December 2005 Herbert von Karajan identified with the 8th perhaps more intensely than with any other score in the repertory; it is significant that in February 1989, in what proved to be his last performances outside of Austria, he brought it to New York with the VPO & made it the centrepiece of a 3-concert engagement. The air of finality was heavy at those concerts, & Karajan, determined to go out as a conqueror, did just that. This 1988 recording comes very close to recapturing the experience of that live performance. Karajan’s careful pacing gives the 8th time to unfurl, allowing the mystery & tenderness of Bruckner’s vision to radiate from some place deep within the paroxysmal intensity of the symphony’s argument. The cumulative effect is shattering. Throughout, the Viennese play beyond their limits, as if their lives depended on it. The recorded sound is vivid & of very wide dynamic range. . . . a wonderful reading it is, as authoritative as its predecessors & every bit as well played but somehow more profound, more humane, more lovable . . . at its best, the recording surges with an almost animal impulse that recreates the pull of a live performance & puts most recordings – by anyone, including Karajan himself in the shade. ~ Richard Osborne, Peter Quantrill, Christian Hoskins, Gramophone, March 2016 . . . this 1988 Karajan account holds a special place . . . it was in the 8th Symphony that, for me, Karajan achieved the greatest recording of his last decade . . . Whether one comes to this performance as a doubter or believer, an impalpable ‘something’ runs through it that no other modern recording has. ~ Huntley Dent, Fanfare, August 2016

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SACD

Herbert von Karajan, Wiener Philharmoniker – Brahms: Symphonies 1 & 3; Tragic Overture (1960 & 1962) [Japan 2019] [SACD / Universal (Japan) – UCGD-9071]

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Herbert von Karajan, Wiener Philharmoniker - Brahms: Symphonies 1 & 3; Tragic Overture (1960 & 1962) [Japan 2019]

Title: Herbert von Karajan, Wiener Philharmoniker – Brahms: Symphonies 1 & 3; Tragic Overture (1960 & 1962) [Japan 2019]
Genre: Classical
Format: SACD ISO + DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

By 90th anniversary of Decca’s founding and 30 years after Herbert von Karajan’s death, following three orchestral recordings by Karajan & Vienna Philharmonic have been converted from the original master to DSD by British Classic Sound. The Symphony No. 1 have been recorded by Karajan for Decca in 1959; Symphony No. 3 and Tragic Overture in 1961.

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SACD

Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker, Wilhelm Furtwangler – Bruckner: Symphony No.4; Wagner: Parsifal (2016) [SACD / Praga Digitals – PRD/DSD 350 130]

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Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker, Wilhelm Furtwangler - Bruckner: Symphony No.4; Wagner: Parsifal (2016)

Title: Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker, Wilhelm Furtwangler – Bruckner: Symphony No.4; Wagner: Parsifal (2016)
Genre: Classical
Format: SACD ISO

Recorded in 1951, this recording features Wilhelm Furtwängler leading the Wiener Philharmoniker in one of the most infamous readings of Bruckner’s Symphony No.4. The legendary maestro is also joined by the Berlin Philharmonic for the Good Friday Music from Wagner’s Parsifal.

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SACD

Claudio Abbado, Wiener Philharmoniker – Brahms: 21 Ungarische Tänze – Hungarian Dances (1983) [Japan 2019] [SACD / Esoteric Company – ESSG-90200]

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Claudio Abbado, Wiener Philharmoniker - Brahms: 21 Ungarische Tänze - Hungarian Dances (1983) [Japan 2019]

Title: Claudio Abbado, Wiener Philharmoniker – Brahms: 21 Ungarische Tänze – Hungarian Dances (1983) [Japan 2019]
Genre: Classical
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

At their best, and especially on home ground in central European repertory, Abbado and the Vienna Philharmonic could produce electrifying music-making, as on the present recording of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances made in Vienna’s Sofiensaal in 1982. The recording was commissioned as part of Deutsche Grammophon’s superb 8-volume, 62-LP “Brahms Edition”, a survey of the composer’s complete musical output which was released in 1983 to mark the 150th anniversary of Brahms’s birth. Gramophone magazine’s Robert Layton commended the warmth, eloquence and virtuosity of the Vienna Philharmonic’s playing, adding that, though Abbado was scrupulous in his observation of the letter of the score, “the spirit of what Brahms liked to refer to as his ‘genuine gypsy children’ is always in evidence”.

Johannes Brahms was 17 when he encountered the brilliant young Hungarian violinist Ede Reményi in Hamburg in 1850. Reményi was passing through the city to the United States after being deported from Hungary for his involvement in the 1848 uprising against the Austrians. Brahms was intoxicated by Reményi’s transcriptions of gypsy and Magyar folk songs and dan¬ces, a fascination that deepened in 1852 when the two men toured together. The two sets of Hungarian Dances which Brahms later published were not the only fruits of the experience. Throughout a composing career that spanned more then 40 years, Hungarian influences were never far from his music. Brahms wrote his Hungarian Dances for piano duet. Books 1 and 2 (nos. 1-10) were pub-lished in 1869, Books 3 and 4 in 1880. The 1880 set offers what might best be called original compositions in the Hungarian style rather than free arrangements of the kind of Reményi-derived material which Brahms had once taken to be authentic. The 1880 set was never quite as popular as the 1869, perhaps because Brahms was no longer interested in the previously all-pervasive csárdás. Yet such is the craftsmanship of the later dances, it is they, paradoxically, which have the stronger “gypsy” feel. The later set did have one admirer: Antonín Dvořák, who provided orchestrations of the last four dances, nos. 17-21.

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SACD

Carlo Maria Giulini, Wiener Philharmoniker – Bruckner: Symphonie No.9 (1989) [Japan 2019] [SACD / Esoteric Company – ESSG-90195]

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Carlo Maria Giulini, Wiener Philharmoniker - Bruckner: Symphonie No.9 (1989) [Japan 2019]

Title: Carlo Maria Giulini, Wiener Philharmoniker – Bruckner: Symphonie No.9 (1989) [Japan 2019]
Genre: Classical
Format: SACD ISO + DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

The Viena Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini performing Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor. The reissue of classical music masterpieces by Esoteric has attracted a lot of attention, both for its uncompromising commitment to recreating the original master sound. This series marks the first hybrid SACD release of historical recording selections. These new audio versions feature Esoteric’s proprietary re-mastering process to achieve the highest level of sound quality.

Carlo Maria Giulini recorded Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Angel in 1976, and that album has long been considered a superb achievement and difficult to surpass. Yet Giulini’s 1988 performance with the Vienna Philharmonic matches the older recording in every important detail and exceeds expectations by sounding richer in the digital format. As wonderful as Chicago’s sound was, the Vienna Philharmonic offers more varied and subtle timbres, a result of its long history of Bruckner performances. Using the Nowak edition, Giulini takes this unfinished symphony into dark places, making it the full realization of the Romantic idea of Sturm und Drang. The opening movement is one of Bruckner’s most commanding essays in sonata form. Through its explicit parallels with Beethoven’s Ninth, Bruckner clearly points to his source of inspiration. The terrifying Scherzo, with its stacked dissonances and pounding rhythms, creates a mood of violence and instability that the nervous Trio does little to alleviate. Resolution – indeed, an apotheosis – comes in the glorious Adagio. Giulini elicits the most sumptuous sounds from the orchestra, particularly in the ecstatic opening measures. After hearing this movement, any thought of adding a finale must seem pointless, for this is a sublime valedictory and nothing more is needed.

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