Bartok, Casken, Beethoven | ECM New Series 4858391

Bartok, Casken, Beethoven

£13.25

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Label: ECM New Series

Cat No: 4858391

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Orchestral

Release Date: 24th February 2023

Contents

Artists

Ruth Killius (viola)
Thomas Zehetmair (violin)
Royal Northern Sinfonia

Conductor

Thomas Zehetmair

Works

Bartok, Bela

Viola Concerto, BB128 Sz120

Beethoven, Ludwig van

Symphony no.5 in C minor, op.67

Casken, John

That Subtle Knot (double concerto for violin and viola)

Artists

Ruth Killius (viola)
Thomas Zehetmair (violin)
Royal Northern Sinfonia

Conductor

Thomas Zehetmair

About

This powerful New Series album represents "a résumé and a departure" for Thomas Zehetmair, a summing up of his work with the Royal Northern Sinfonia.

In his years as Music Director of the British chamber orchestra, Zehetmair was noted both for bringing compelling new music into the repertoire and for insightful performances of classical and modern composition, qualities very much in evidence on this concert recording from The Sage, Gateshead.

The album opens with John Casken's double concerto That Subtle Knot, written in 2012-3 for Zehetmair, Ruth Killius and the Northern Sinfonia. Inspired by the poetry of John Donne, the composition establishes a broad arc between the English Renaissance and music of today. Ruth Killius shines in a revelatory performance of Bartók's Viola Concerto, and Zehetmair as conductor fully brings out what liner note writer Giselher Schubert describes as "the juggernaut propulsive thrust" of Beethoven's Symphony no.5.

Reviews

Killius finds the right internal warmth, but is also skittish in the helter-skelter finale [of Bartok's viola concerto]. ... it [Casken's double concerto] rises to passionate climaxes, and is given a performance to match.
BBC Music Magazine April 2023
Stunning Intensity from Thomas Zehetmair. ... Killius shapes the long first movement with a folksy familiarity and a warm, speaking tone, and this recitative-like quality extends through the brief but rapturously sustained Adagio, as though Bartok were returning to his Transylvanian farmstead roots one last time.
The Strad

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