In August, PENTATONE releases two enthralling additions to the catalogue: Schubert Unfinished and Great Symphonies with B’Rock Orchestra and René Jacobs; La Passione with Christina Landshamer, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, and Bernhard Forck.
Schubert’s Deliberately “Unfinished”, Coupled with His “Great” Symphony
B’Rock Orchestra, René Jacobs
Multiple prize-winning conductor René Jacobs and the B’Rock Orchestra complete their Schubert cycle on Pentatone with the composer’s two most famous symphonies, the Unfinished and Great. In his extensive liner notes, Jacobs develops a theory that the B Minor Symphony did not remain “unfinished”, but was deliberately left unfinished, because Schubert shaped its two movements in analogy to Mein Traum (My Dream), an autobiographical narration in two parts, written in 1822, simultaneous to the creation of the symphony. While the first half of Mein Traum tells about his mother’s decease and his problematic relationship to his father, the second part enters a magical, Romantic realm, and eventually brings a reconciliation with his father. On this recording, the two parts of the narration precede the two movements of the Unfinished symphony and are recited by Tobias Moretti. Jacobs argues that, after the dream-inspired Unfinished, the Great C Major Symphony, with its solemn character and sublime dimensions, served as a liberation for Schubert. Presenting these contrasting works forms a fitting apotheosis to a cycle that has been designed from the onset as a series of symphonic pairs. The players of the B’Rock Orchestra present these works on period instruments; transparent, but full of fire.
Release Date: 12 August 2022
Passionate Vocal and Symphonic Music from the Classical Era
Christina Landshamer, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin,Bernhard Forck
Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin returns to Pentatone together with soprano Christina Landshamer, presenting La Passione, a collection of dazzling concert arias on love, longing and loss by Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn, paired with the latter’s “La Passione” Symphony. Ranging from pastoral simplicity to exuberant outrage, the programme offers some of the finest vocal writing around 1800, including some of Beethoven’s rare and little-known excursions to Italian bravura opera, as well as one of the most dramatic and expressive symphonies of the eighteenth-century.
The Akademie für Alte Musik is generally seen as one of the best period-instruments ensembles of today, and has a substantial Pentatone discography, including CANTATA with Bejun Mehta (2018), Handel’s Concerti grossi op. 6 (released in 2019 and 2020). Telemann’s Miriways (2020), Handel’s Messiah (2020) and Haydn’s L’isola disabitata (2021). Christina Landshamer featured as Marzelline on Beethoven’s Fidelio (2021).
Release Date: 19 August 2022
