Download december 2015 new release

DECEMBER 2015 NEW RELEASE
ON SALE DATE: 27/11/2015
Mendelssohn – A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Das Märchen von der schönen
Melusine (The Fair Melusine), Concert Overture No. 4, Op. 32; Ein
Sommernachtstraum (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), incidental
music to the play by Shakespeare, Op. 61; Die Hebriden (The
Hebrides), Concert Overture No. 2, Op. 26
Camilla Tilling, Magdalena Risberg, Swedish Chamber Orchestra,
Swedish Radio Choir, Thomas Dausgaard
BIS2166 (Hybrid SACD)
Dealer Price: £9.00 TT: 69'06
Following a series of acclaimed recordings of 19th-century
music including complete cycles of the symphonies by
Schubert and Schumann, Thomas Dausgaard and his
Swedish
Chamber
Orchestra
turn
to
Felix
Mendelssohn. The team’s latest offering unites three of
the composer's four celebrated concert overtures, written
between 1826 and 1835 and setting new standards for this
emerging genre. The earliest of the three – A Midsummer
Night’s Dream – was composed by Mendelssohn at just
seventeen, and his sister Fanny later remarked how
Shakespeare's play had been a constant presence at their
home, and how ‘at various ages we had read all the
different roles, from Peaseblossom to Hermia and Helena…’
The overture immediately became one of Mendelssohn’s
signature pieces, and seventeen years later he returned to
it, composing additional incidental music for a stage
production of the play. Written for soloists, women's choir
and orchestra, the complete Midsummer Night score is
included here. The disc opens with the last of the four
overtures to be composed, however: The Fair Melusine,
which Mendelssohn wrote after having heard an opera
based on the old French tale of the water spirit Mélusine
and her sad fate. Actively disliking the opera, Mendelssohn
was provoked into his own musical setting of the subject
matter in the form of a concert overture. Water – and its
depiction in music – also plays an important role in The
Hebrides, the closing work on the present recording.
Inspired by the poems by Ossian – which captured the
imagination of an entire generation at the beginning of the
Romantic era – Mendelssohn visited Scotland and the
Hebrides in 1829, and already during this trip he sent a
postcard to his family, with the overture's famous opening
written down in a four-part setting.
Already Released:
“The definition and dynamism that Thomas
Dausgaard and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra have
been bringing to their cycle of Schubert symphonies
are qualities that are radiantly replicated in these
performances of the First and Second.”
Gramophone, December 2014
“Dausgaard secures superbly incisive playing from
the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. Dausgaard favours
swift tempos, especially in the outer movements...
[His] penchant for disjunctive phrasing, and his keen
attention to inner detail, undoubtedly makes this
performance a very stimulating experience.”
BBC Music Magazine, June 2013
Listen to a sound clip:
Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream (excerpt), click here
III. Lied mit Chor from A Midsummer Night’s Dream (beginning), click here
The Hebrides (ending), click here
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