Schumann- Symphonies Nos. 2 & 4 [Hybrid SACD]

Schumann: Symphony No. 1; Overtures [Hybrid SACD]	Bizet: L'Arlesienne; Carmen	Grieg: Peer Gynt Suites [Hybrid SACD]	Mahler: Symphony No. 4	Mozart Symphonies 38 Through 41
Shostakovich: Piano Concerto No. 1; Concertino; Piano Quintet	Schoenberg Violin Concerto Op.36/Sibelius Violin Concerto Op.47 In another original pairing violinist Hilary Hahn brings together the familiar, highly commercial and long-awaited recording of the famous Sibelius Violin Concerto with the rarely performed Violin Concerto by Arnold Schoenberg. Hahn brings out the romantic qualities of Schoenberg...	Fiesta Recorded live at the Centro de Acción Social por la Música, Sala Simón Bolívar, January 2008. An album everyone has been waiting for! Gustavo Dudamel and the SBYOV have stunned audiences worldwide with their explosive Latin-American showpieces. Now they deliver this repertoir...	Domenico Scarlatti: Stabat Mater A program entirely devoted to sacred music by Domenico Scarlatti. Four compositions, including the famous Stabat Mater for ten voices, show the composer's diversity.	Brahms: Symphony # 1; Bergrabnisgesang, Op. 13; Schicksalslied, Op. 54; Mendelssohn- Mitten wir in Leben sind Op. 23 Following on from John Eliot Gardiner's critically acclaimed recordings of the symphonies of Beethoven and Schumann, SDG are proud to b e releasing the first disc in a new series exporing teh music of Johannes Brahms. Recorded live during last autumn's Brahms and his antecedents ...

Great performances and recording
Schumann is one of the few Romantic composers of this era that I really enjoy (Brahms is another). I have a few other recordings of these symphonies, including Roy Goodman's recording with another chamber orchestra, the Hanover Band on period instruments. This recording by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra under Thomas Dausgaard is on modern instruments, and with a composer as (relatively) late as Schumann isn't a drawback at all(as it certainly is for baroque composers for example, and even Haydn and Mozart in my opinion). The playing here is crisp and exciting and the recording makes the textures crystal clear. I also really enjoyed the Goodman recordings and really for the life of me I can't see that playing these symphonies on the sparse resources of a chamber orchestra does anything but enhance the excitement of these works. The only reason for using a full orchestra it seems to me is to fill a large concert hall. But for a recording, who needs a modern, full size symphony orchestra for works like these? Schumann isn't Mahler, after all. The clarity of the textures is just exquisite, and the music just makes you want to jump up and dance. The quality of the recording is excellent. However, I would have appreciated more bite in the coda of the last movement of the 4th when the basses come in. In all fairness, however, I've never heard a recording that captures the thrill of a live performance at this moment. Other than this somewhat subdued entrance of the basses, the recording is very "up front" and almost "in your face," it is so close. That's just the way I like recordings. I want to feel immursed in the orchestra, and you certainly feel that in this very intimate recording. The performance of the 2nd Symphony is probably the most enjoyable I've ever heard. In fact, listening to this performance (for the second time) I can see a new appreciation of this work developing. I'm reminded of a live performance of a completely different kind of work I once heard of Mahler's 9th (by dePriest and the Oregon Symphony). Until I heard that performance, the work largely escaped me. Then suddenly previous recordings I had of it showed a completely new life to me. Makes me want to visit my other recordings of the Schumann 2nd that I have, but only after I've enjoyed this Dausgaard performance a few more times. The disk also features a couple of Schumann overtures that I'd never heard before: Overture to "Scenes from Goethe's Faust" and Julius Caesar, both very enjoyable Schumann that are welcome additions.