Mahler - Symphony no.4, Piano Quartet | Pentatone PTC5186651

Mahler - Symphony no.4, Piano Quartet

£15.15

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Label: Pentatone

Cat No: PTC5186651

Format: Hybrid SACD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Orchestral

Release Date: 16th February 2018

Contents

Artists

Miah Persson (soprano)
Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg

Conductor

Gustavo Gimeno

Works

Mahler, Gustav

Piano Quartet in A minor (single movement) (orch. Colin Matthews)
Symphony no.4 in G major

Artists

Miah Persson (soprano)
Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg

Conductor

Gustavo Gimeno

About

With their combination of modernism and Romantic nostalgia, and alternation of sweeping orchestral gestures with chamber-musical delicacy, Gustav Mahler's orchestral works are as impressive and moving today as they were at the time of their premiere. Mahler's Fourth Symphony: a work that stands at the crossroads between the largely ‘Romantic’ early symphonies nos. 1-3 and the much more ‘Modernist’ middle-period symphonies nos. 5-7. It is also a fundamentally ambivalent piece: its joyous and accessible surface hides a surprising degree of complexity and even contrariness. While still employing many of the tropes of the traditional nineteenth-century symphony, Mahler at the same time undermines those tropes and distances himself from the symphonic tradition he inherited. The entire symphony works towards the pastoral folksong "Das himmlische Leben" in the fourth movement, sung here by the outstanding Swedish soprano Miah Persson.

The Piano Quartet is Mahler's only surviving chamber music composition, and the movement represented on this album is the only one he complete in 1876/77. Colin Matthews's orchestration truly enhances the original; Matthews has turned what is in essence a historical document of Mahler's early development as a composer into something fascinating.

This is Gustavo Gimeno's fourth recording with the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg (OPL) for PENTATONE following two releases in May 2017 of orchestral works by Bruckner and Shostakovich and a Ravel album in August 2017. A further five projects are planned in the coming years.

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