Pentatone releases Schumann: Complete Symphonies, together with the Dresdner Philharmonie and Maestro Marek Janowski, in April 2024.
An Energetic and Triumphant Interpretation of Schumann’s Symphonies
Marek Janowski presents Schumann: Complete Symphonies, a comprehensive collection recorded together with the Dresdner Philharmonie. After a fruitful decade as a composer for piano and voice, Schumann then began writing symphonic works in 1841, marking a new phase in his life. Recorded between 2021 and 2023, Janowski interprets Schumann’s symphonies with great vitality and intensity in this release that celebrates the culmination of his tenure as chief conductor with the orchestra.
Marek Janowski is one of the most celebrated conductors of our time. This remarkable recording of Schumann’s complete symphonies follows 2023’s Schubert Unfinished & Great Symphonies (also with the Dresdner Philharmonie), complete recordings of Bruckner, Brahms and Beethoven’s symphonies, several works by Richard Strauss, and Wagner’s ten mature operas. From 2019 to 2023 Janowski was chief conductor and artistic director of the Dresdner Philharmonie, and also realized complete recordings of Beethoven’s Fidelio (2021), Puccini’s Il Tabarro and Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana (both 2020) with the orchestra.
“When a German speaks of symphonies, he speaks of Beethoven: the two matters are regarded by him as one and inseparable, are his joy, his pride,” Robert Schumann stated in a mixture of respect and frustration. Beethoven, Beethoven, always Beethoven. There was simply no way around him. Every composer who attempted the symphonic genre after the “Ninth” was doomed to failure. The bar set by the Ode to Joy was simply too high; what could possibly come after that audacious integration of the human voice into the absolute-musical world of the symphony?
Several half-hearted, regional attempts were made by marginal composers before a new symphonic generation stepped into the limelight with Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Niels Gade and Robert Schumann.”
Excerpt from the liner notes by Jörg Peter Urbach (translation: Calvin B. Cooper)
This is a San Francisco Classical Recording Company Production.
Digital Release Date: 5 APRIL 2024
Physical Release: APRIL 2024
Released as 2 SACDs and in digital formats for streaming and high-resolution downloads.
