8.572886

Hector BERLIOZ (1803-69)
Le corsaire – Overture, Op. 21
Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14
(including an alternative version of Un bal with cornet obbligato)
Orchestre National de Lyon
Leonard Slatkin

Immensely influential, the remarkable Symphonie fantastique was composed while Hector Berlioz was suffering an intense and unreciprocated passion for the Irish actress Harriet Smithson. Its autobiographical tale describes a young musician’s opium-poisoned nightmares of jealous despair and fatal justice following the murder of his beloved. Berlioz wrote a second movement cornet solo into a subsequent revision of the score, here included as an optional extra. He wed his sweetheart actress but, recuperating in Nice, wrote Le corsaire after the final breakup of their marriage.

8.572207

Gustav MAHLER (1860-1911)
Symphony No. 1
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra • Marin Alsop

This remarkably original work, with its recurring quotations from the composer’s own songs, notably Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) and Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn), is the perfect expression of one of Mahler’s most quoted sayings, “The symphony is a world; it must contain everything”. The opening movement, filled with sounds that Mahler remembered from his childhood, depicts “Nature’s awakening from the long sleep of winter”, and is followed by an exuberant scherzo and trio based on a Ländler. The disturbing slow movement funeral march, based on the children’s song Frère Jacques, is unlike anything that had been heard before, and the symphony concludes with music of thrilling dramatic intensity.

8.573043

8.572584

Claude DEBUSSY (1862-1918)
Préludes (orch. Peter Breiner)
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Jun Märkl

Debussy completed his two books of Préludes in 1910 and 1913 respectively, and they contain some of his most visionary and poetic writing for piano. There are evocations of calm seascapes, delicate wind tracery, and snow-covered landscapes. Some moments are steeped in antiquity, such as La cathédrale engloutie, others in expressive portraiture, as in La fille aux cheveux de lin. There is even a cake-walk. The Préludes are performed here in the subtle and colouristic orchestrations of muchadmired Slovak-born composer Peter Breiner.

8.572481

Krzysztof PENDERECKI (b. 1933)
Hymne an den heiligen Adalbert
Song of the Cherubim
Canticum Canticorum Salomonis
Kosmogonia • Strophen
Olga Pasichnyk, soprano
Rafał Bartmiński, tenor
Tomasz Konieczny, bass
Jerzy Artysz, narrator
Warsaw Philharmonic Choir
and Orchestra • Antoni Wit

The range of Penderecki’s music is exemplified by this disc, which presents five works written over a period of nearly 40 years. Hymne an den heiligen Adalbert was composed in 1997 and evokes the martyred eighth-century Bishop of Prague through spare but fervent gestures. More austere, but intense in its focus, is Song of the Cherubim, whilst Canticum Canticorum Salomis is a richly sensuous exploration of the Song of Songs. Kosmogonia explores a complex sound tapestry. Strophen (1959) was a breakthrough work – spare, intricate and marvellously tensile.