Written in 1944, Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony is one of his greatest and most complete symphonic statements. At its première, he himself called it “a symphony of the grandeur of the human spirit”. The first movement couples considerable strength with unexpected yet highly characteristic twists of melody. After a violent scherzo followed by a slow movement of sustained lyricism, with a fiercely dramatic middle section, the finale blazes with barely suppressed passion. The Year 1941 is another wartime work, a symphonic suite written in response to the German invasion of the Soviet Union. This is the first volume of  a complete cycle of the Prokofiev Symphonies with the OSESP and Marin Alsop, the orchestra’s newly appointed principal conductor.

Giacomo Puccini is one of the most celebrated and beloved operatic composers that have ever lived. Included in this first installment of Puccini Operas are his breakthrough opera Manon Lescaut, his chef-d’oeuvre La boheme, and his controversial work Tosca. Opera enthusiasts will, without a doubt, relish in this essential collection of superb performances of Puccini’s treasured operas.

Ola Gjeilo was born in Norway in 1978 and moved to America in 2001 to begin his composition studies at the Juilliard School in New York City. Presently a full-time composer and pianist based in the US,  his published concert works are performed all over the world. Ola is also very interested in film, and his music draws a lot of inspiration from movies and cinematic music. “Although many of the pieces on this album are free improvisation recorded in one take, the first three tracks are fantasies around three of my own chorus works: Ubi Caritas, Tota Pulchra Es, and Prelude.” –Ola Gjeilo, 2012

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With her winning combination of consummate technical brilliance, fine musicianship, and personal verve, the pianist Xiayin Wang captures the hearts of audiences where she appears. She is achieving high levels of recognition for her commanding performances as a recitalist, chamber musician, and orchestral soloist in such venues as New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. This is Wang’s second disc for Chandos.

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Although he writes in all genres, Rene Clausen is today one of America’s most popular choral composers, and for more than twenty years he has been the conductor of the internationally acclaimed Concordia Choir of Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. On this release, choral works by Clausen are performed by the Kansas City Chorale, a choir of great international renown. The Mass for Double Choir was commissioned by the Kansas City Chorale. The composer, who had never written a mass before, looked on it as an “interesting challenge.” In the work, emotions ebb and flow kaleidoscopically, to the sorrowful falling lines of the Crucifixion of Christ and the bubbling, dancing figures for the Resurrection. Expressions of praise spill forward atop one another in the Sanctus, a choir of angels too exuberant to be contained.

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Veronique Gens is internationally recognized as one of the greatest sopranos. She has made a big career with baroque repertoire and Mozart, but French repertoire, especially Berlioz and Ravel, are “as natural to her” as the air that she breathes. Her French remains a model of immaculate diction, fluid and luminous. The charismatic conductor John Axelrod is music director of the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire since 2009, following the philosophy of being “open to the world” by extraordinarily diverse repertoire choices and innovative programming. Also internationally he is a sought after conductor both for concerts and opera productions.

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Also Available:
Canteloube: Chants d’Auvergne (Naxos 8.570338)
Canteloube: Chants d’Auvergne, Vol. 2 (Naxos 8.570338)

Gloriously affirming the Salzburg Festival’s long-standing reputation as a supreme musical event, this concert honors one of its founding fathers, Richard Strauss. Renee Fleming, Christian Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra unite for a program of song, opera, and tone poem, genres central to the composer’s extraordinarily fruitful career. Fleming interprets four of his songs with orchestra, including the deeply moving Befreit, and provides a substantial taste of perhaps her finest operatic role, Arabella. New vistas then open as Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic take the spectacular mountain journey mapped by the composer in his titanic Alpine Symphony.

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