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World music CD DVD shop and Classic distribution
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ID: CDMAN124
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Subcollection: Piano |
| 20.00 eur Buy |
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ID: CDMAN128
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Subcollection: Piano |
| 20.00 eur Temporarily out of stock |
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ID: SIGCD052
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Collection:
The Great Composers
Signum Records are delighted to present the second recording on SignumClassics of the CBSO, under the direction of Mark Elder.
In his youth Shostakovich devoted much time and energy to composing for the theatre and the cinema, writing for an astonishing variety of movies, political plays, satires, the music-hall and the ballet.
The music for Nikolai Akimov’s outrageous and scandalous production of Hamlet was composed in the winter of 1931 - 1932. Akimov had decided that tragedy was irrelevant to the modern Soviet audience, and therefore presented the play as a satirical farce in which the play was turned up-side-down, by reversing all the usual assumptions about the plot and how it should be acted. The alterations to Shakespeare’s work are reflected in the titles of several of Shostakovich’s numbers. He was asked to provide music for scenes that Shakespeare only refers to but which Akimov insisted on representing on stage, for example the feast where "funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables". The overall character of Shostakovich’s music is often abrasive and satirical, and flippant just where we would expect the music to be more serious. There are also some funny moments, with particular sharp parodies of various well-known musico-theatrical clichés.
In 1954 Kozintsev had also attempted to direct a staged version of Hamlet. For this occasion he decided to reuse music that Shostakovich had already written for him to use in a staged production of King Lear in 1941. All that Kozintsev asked Shostakovich to add for the 1954 Hamlet were a Gigue and a Finale, both of which are included on this recording as an appendix to the music for Akimov’s 1932 production.
The music that Shostakovich wrote for Kozintsev’s 1941 King Lear production inhabits a strange and transitional world, halfway between the bright and brilliant sarcasm of the music for Akimov’s Hamlet of ten years earlier and the more soberly functional manner of his post-war theatrical music. Gone is most of the cheekiness, the fondness for the experimental and the grotesque. There is much in this often oppressively dark music that is characteristic of what was by now Shostakovich’s public symphonic manner.
Perhaps the most powerful and unusual part of the score is the bizarre cycle of Fool’s songs, with which the Fool mocks the mistakes of his master, the King, in the course of the first three Acts. The music of these songs is as strange and quirky as the words they set. Taken as a whole, these ten songs make up a miniature cycle of sourly absurd, almost expressionistic outbursts for voice and orchestra. They seem to form a whole in themselves, standing apart from. |
| 20.00 eur Buy |
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ID: SIGCD118
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Collection:
Orchestral Works
Subcollection: OrchestreThe Sapporo Symphony Orchestra take on Elgar’s Symphony No.3 under Tadaaki Otaka’s baton with as much flair as they did in their Japanese premiere of the work in 2004.
In 1995 Anthony Payne was commissioned to complete an ‘elaboration’ of the entire symphony and completed Elgar’s original ‘sketches’ of the work in what can be immediately recognised as Elgarian style.
Payne similarly completed Elgar’s Pomp & Circumstance March in 2006, Elgar’s first large orchestral work since the Cello Concerto, pulling out all the stops in a brilliant orchestration. This is only the second recording to be made of this work.
The Japanese orchestra affirm their accolade as one of the finest orchestras in Japan in this stunning performance.
The orchestra has received high praise from critics and public alike, distinguished by its clear sound and dynamic powers of expression. |
| 20.00 eur Buy |
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ID: SIGCD135
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Collection:
Orchestral Works
Subcollection: OrchestreFestive Overture
One of Shostakovich’s most famous works originally composed for a concert to commemorate the 37th anniversary of the October Revolution in 1917.
Symphony No. 5
Its position as one of the 20th Century’s most popular and successful symphonic works is beyond any doubt, the triumph was immediate and greeted Shostakovich’s rehabilitation as a truly great Soviet artist.
The Philharmonia Orchestra is widely recognised as the UK’s finest orchestra with an impressive recording legacy. Vladimir Ashkenazy has a longstanding relationship with the orchestra, and in 2000 he was appointed their Conductor Laureate.
Philharmonia Orchestra
Vladimir Ashkenazy, conductor |
| 20.00 eur Buy |
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