Bizet: Carmen Ballet

Fiedler and the Boston Pops recorded from the 1950s through the 1970s with RCA records (with brief excursions to other labels toward the end), issuing disc after disc of classical overtures and ballet pieces, as well as arrangements of movie themes, Beatles hits, and other pop tunes. Pops concerts were packaged as fast-moving one-hour shows on the PBS television network. Critics usually ignored or snickered at Fiedler's handling of pop music, but they almost always approved of the verve he brought to light and not-so-light classics; indeed, his 1930s recording of a particular Beethoven overture was held in higher esteem than Toscanini's. Whether Fiedler's Beethoven Seventh could have stood up to Toscanini's will never be known.

Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No. 1 & Cello Sonata

�[Bertrand] wears the piece lightly, dancing rather than carving through it, with a silvery line that can be ghostly or piercing but never gruff�her bright, neat staccato is effective even if climaxes lack heft�The BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Pascal Rophe, however, really does dance on hot coals and give the requisite blast�[the Moderato in A minor] has a haunting poetry and one can hardly imagine it better played.� --BBC Music Magazne, May 3013

 

�In the Concerto, almost all of the playing is of intense musicality and virtuosity, which this highly original work demands...I feel that Bertrand does overdo at times the 'expressive' nature of her interpretation, but this observation is brought about solely because the rest of her performance is so impressive.� --International Record Review, May 2013

�Bertrand is nothing if not a gutsy player. The close-up recording captures her every breath and every rasp of bow on string. Pascal Rophe makes sure that the BBC NOW responds in kind...If she is as good live as she sounds here, and if she is as full of insight in the rest of her repertoire, I would certainly travel a distance to hear her.� --IGramophone Magazine, June 2013

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5

�Eschenbach's live recording of Shostakovich Five with the Philadelphia is a monumental reading, seeking drama in the work's gaunt architecture rather than its moment-to-moment events.� --BBC Music Magazine, May 2008 ****

�formidable Ondine/Eschenbach/Philadelphia partnership� --Gramophone Magazine

One Five that won... - This release in the successful recording series with The Philadelphia Orchestra and its Music Director Christoph Eschenbach features Dmitri Shostakovich's epic and monumental Fifth Symphony, which has become a signature piece of the orchestra. The Largo movement - one of the most heartrendingly beautiful slow movements written by the composer - and the bombastic Finale of this perennially popular work provide for an entrancing super audio listening experience with the world-renowned sound of The Philadelphia Orchestra. Officially viewed as "the practical creative reply of a Soviet artist to just criticism," this symphony was the Russian composer's mid-career coup - after his music had been politically attacked, he got back into the good graces of both communist officials and the public, who stood and cheered its premi�re in 1937.

An added bonus of this CD is the spellbinding song cycle 'Seven Romances on Poems of Alexander Blok' (1880-1921), making this unusual coupling a unique release; Christoph Eschenbach accompanies on piano the acclaimed mezzo-soprano Yvonne Naef and two members of the The Philadelphia Orchestra.

The Philadelphia Orchestra deservedly takes pride in its long and triumphant association with the music of Shostakovich, beginning with the U.S. premiere of his First Symphony in 1928, conducted by Leopold Stokowski. In fact, through 1973 the Orchestra gave the U.S. and Western premieres of seven of the composer's symphonies variously, as well as the First Cello Concerto, the First Piano Concerto, and the Five Pieces for Small Orchestra. Since Leopold Stokowski led the first Philadelphia performances of the Fifth Symphony in March 1939, the Orchestra has performed the work many times, as well as featured it on domestic and international tours, including performances in Russia under Eugene Ormandy in 1958.

Shostakovich: Cello Concertos

Swedish cellist Frans Helmerson was born in 1945 and began playing the cello at the age of 8. After studies in Goteborg, Rome and London, followed by a debut in Stockholm, his solo career has taken him on countless tours all over Europe as well as the USA, Asia and Russia. He has performed with many of the finest orchestras under the baton of some of today's greatest conductors. He is also renowned throughout the world as one of the great teachers of the cello. He holds professorships at the Musikhochschule in Cologne, where he is based, and at the Escuela Superior de Musica Reina Sofia in Madrid. A regular teacher at the Verbier Festival Academy.