Staatskapelle Berlin

The second part of Richard Wagner’s monumental tetralogy in Dimitri Tcherniakov’s new production. He has thoroughly modernised the material and set the action in a research institute in the 1970s. Christian Thielemann is conducting *Der Ring des Nibelungen* at the Berlin State Opera, standing in for the house conductor Daniel Barenboim, who is unwell.

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Ageing misfit Sir Morosus lives alone in an old-style apartment in Charlottenburg in Berlin. He is wealthy, but also lonely and a bit grumpy. Then his nephew Henry moves in with him and his life takes a turn for the better. Director Jan Philipp Gloger homes in on two of the most pressing problems of the day: loneliness and the housing shortage. The Staatskapelle Berlin is conducted by Christian Thielemann.

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For the very first time, Daniel Barenboim tackled Franz Liszt's two highly virtuosic piano concertos in a single concert. With Pierre Boulez, his friend and esteemed colleague of many years, conducting Barenboim’s own orchestra, the Staatskapelle Berlin, they were showered with praise on their tour across Europe. For both musicians, Liszt was one of the most important pioneers of modern music, as composer, conductor and pianist. He influenced revolutionary contemporaries such as Robert Schumann and Richard Wagner. Two examples of the latter's magnificent orchestral work round off this concert programme celebrating Liszt’s bicentenary.

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Anton Bruckner’s 6th Symphony was written between 1879 and 1881: a very happy time in his life. Unlike most of Bruckner’s symphonies, the 6th was not revised. Of all his works, this one seems to come from a single source of inspiration. Bruckner himself called it his “boldest” symphony – probably due to its extreme degree of motivic, rhythmic and harmonic originality. This live recording of the seldom-performed 6th Symphony is the next instalment of the acclaimed Bruckner cycle by the Staatskapelle Berlin and Daniel Barenboim. Anton Bruckner Symphony No. 6 in A major (original version) Daniel Barenboim, Conductor Staatskapelle Berlin Recorded live at the Philharmonie Berlin, 22 June 2010

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With nearly 450 years of tradition, the Staatskapelle Berlin is one of the oldest orchestras in the world. Daniel Barenboim has served as its music director since 1992, and in 2000 the orchestra appointed him Chief Conductor for Life. Having already performed important cycles such as Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann together, Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle turned their focus toward Anton Bruckner's last six Symphonies, performed in the Philharmonie Berlin in the course of only one week in June 2010. This music is more serious and more significant than one had thought, the Berliner Zeitung summarized in its review of Daniel Barenboims celebrated Bruckner cycle with the Staatskapelle Berlin. Bruckners unfinished Symphony No. 9 brought to an end, in a poignant manner, the work of one of the greatest symphonic composers of the Classic-Romantic era.

Daniel Barenboim is an expert in exploiting the impact of cyclical performances of composers works: This time he focuses his sharp intellect on all six of Anton Bruckners mature symphonies. Der Tagesspiegel described Barenboim's performance of the works with the Staatskapelle Berlin on six nearly consecutive evenings in June 2010 as a superhuman accomplishment and went on to praise how: His Bruckner is conceived and performed very theatrically, like an opera without words. Bruckners famous Romantic Symphony No. 4 forms the prelude to a spectacular DVD series from Accentus Music and Unitel Classica, exploring Bruckners symphonic cosmos.

Daniel Barenboim conducts the Staatskapelle Berlin in concert in Berlin, Vienna, and New York. Also included is a 22 minute documentary on the musical world of Mahler as seen by Barenboim and Pierre Boulez.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung summed up this highly acclaimed performance of Bruckner's monumental Fifth Symphony by saying: Both Bruckners belief in God, as it majestically wells up out of the chorale of the Fifth, and his deeply tragic world view, collide with one another in Barenboims interpretation. The operatic experience of the conductor was almost tangible, revealing the sheer dramatic instrumental battle between Bruckners God and the Devil between heaven and hell without betraying Bruckners unerring sense of striking proportions. The release of this contrapuntal masterpiece (as Bruckner, not without pride, referred to this work) is part of Daniel Barenboims Bruckner cycle with the renowned Staatskapelle Berlin.

In Anton Bruckner’s 7th Symphony, the listener encounters a music characterized by great spaciousness and profound solemnity, a music which speaks of grief and lamentation, but also of their transcendence. With its monumental architecture and intensity of sound, the symphony has moved listeners ever since its triumphal premiere in 1884. The Guardian calls Daniel Barenboim’s London interpretation “Tremendous … Barenboim and the Staatskapelle seem to have this work in their systems, and the overall impression was of music unfolding organically at its own pace rather than of a work being self-consciously interpreted or led.” Anton Bruckner Symphony No. 7 in E major (original version) Daniel Barenboim, conductor Staatskapelle Berlin Recorded live at the Philharmonie Berlin, 25 June 2010

In 2005, the Staatsoper Berlin and its orchestra, the Staatskapelle Berlin under musical director Daniel Barenboim, celebrated a series of events to celebrate the 80th birthday of French conductor and composer Pierre Boulez. Artistically associated for decades with Barenboim and Berlin, Pierre Boulez is one of today's most distinguished composers and conductors. As part of the celebration, Boulez conducted a performance of Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony at the Berlin Philharmonie. With his uncompromising approach to the score, Pierre Boulez's Mahler readings have long fascinated critics and audiences alike. Boulez eschews the romanticized readings common in performance tradition and, instead, reveals the real joy and terror in Mahler's large-scale symphonies.

“Clarity was one thing that made this performance a marvel. Another was the flexibility of Barenboim’s speeds…. The flexibility of Barenboim’s tempi meant that Bruckner’s charm – an often overlooked aspect of his genius – shone through, especially in the genial Trio.” (The Telegraph) Bruckner’s 8th is the last symphony completed by the Austrian composer. Many of his contemporaries regarded the symphony as “the pinnacle of 19th century music”. Even today, this monumental work fascinates listeners with its virtuoso orchestral technique, its immensity of sound, and its inexhaustible richness of detail. Symphony No. 8 in C minor (second version 1887-90, Robert Haas Edition) Daniel Barenboim, Conductor Staatskapelle Berlin Recorded live at the Philharmonie Berlin, 26 June 2010

With family and friends present, Daniel Barenboim celebrates his seventieth birthday in the company of Zubin Mehta, and the Staatskapelle Berlin. He starts with Beethoven's Piano Concerto in C minor (No. 3) and ends with Tchaikovsky's Piano No. 1 with an Eliot Carter short atonal piece sandwiched between. Both the Beethoven and Tchaikovsky are exquisitely and passionately performed by Barenboim as he commands the piano and dazzles the audience. The structural composition of each comes alive; especially in the 2nd movement of the Tchaikovsky Concerto when the beautiful Claudia Stein opens with a sad flute introduction repeated by the piano. One marvels at the nuance of the Russian composition played an Argentine Israeli with a German orchestra conducted by a man born in Bombay. Mehta in his marvelous laconic way might be seen as the onlooker but the generous Barenboim does not allow it. He brings in Mehta and makes him part of it at all times.

If Daniel Barenboim is not the world's greatest living classical musician he is certainly the most versatile. In a career spanning more than 50 years, his name is attached to many of the celebrated recordings of opera, symphony, small ensemble and piano solo. With the later half of his career marked by distinction at the podium, one may forget that he is still an accomplished concert pianist. Here we are treated to both talents as Barenboim conducts the Staatskapelle Berlin and plays all five of Beethoven's piano concerti. From the accompanying booklet we find that Barenboim first recorded these works in 1967 at the age of 24 under Otto Klemperer. Now he is revisiting them 40 years later on the occasion of his 65th birthday.

The three main soloists have voices on a scale that can compete with these flashy production values – White and Kasarova, in particular, sing at a level of intensity that would swamp anything less; the climactic seduction trio has rarely been sung so well or with such an overpoweringly polymorphous eroticism. Cambreling marshals his forces effectively, giving full rein to the work's showstoppers like the "Hungarian March" but not neglecting the subtler less kinetic Gluckian side of Berlioz's vocal writing. Recorded live at the Salzburger Festspiele, 1999.

Conducted by Daniel Barenboim, the Staatskapelle Berlin performs THE GAMBLER, Prokofiev's moody, roiling opera based on a story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.