Comes in a beautiful softpack card case, with artwork by Claude Monet and design by Calum Hadden. Includes a 16-page programme booklet with an in-depth essay by the composer and photographic illustrations.
Includes unlimited streaming of Richard Wagner in Venice
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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Streaming + Download
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
This album presents Wagner not as the famous composer of operas but as a radical composer of symphonies, both real and imaginary. The Mahler Players present the world premiere recording of "Richard Wagner in Venice: A Symphony", by Matthew King. Composed in 2021, this Symphony brings to life for the first time many of Wagner’s late sketches, left unfinished at the time of his death in 1883, and until now largely unknown and unheard outside specialist circles. Matthew King describes it as “a piece that plays with history, and tries to imagine something that never happened, drawing connections between tiny scraps of music which would otherwise remain forever separate and fragmentary”. Also on the album is Wagner’s beautiful masterpiece for chamber orchestra, originally titled “Symphony” and written for his wife’s birthday on Christmas Day 1870, "Siegfried Idyll".
"For sheer chutzpah King’s symphony is impressive, but the result is also truly uncanny in the way it transports us into an authentically Wagnerian world . . . What is most remarkable is the way King evokes the endless "spun melody" Wagner dreamed of, but also conjures a real sense of symphonic drama. We hear tantalising scraps of melody at the beginning which only later take full shape, and in the middle there’s even an astonishing moment which anticipates the hyper-romantic world of the young Arnold Schoenberg . . . the music has a wonderful twilight melancholy, and is beautifully performed by the Scottish Highlands-based Mahler Players. Anyone who loves Wagner’s music – and even those who don’t – should find it fascinating."
Ivan Hewett, The Telegraph. Four stars
“King creates a 21-minute dreamscape that conjures up Wagnerian gestures, colours and emotions while spinning a melodic line that wriggles through shifting harmonies like a very long worm.”
“. . .the adventurous, excellent Mahler Players.” “A really fascinating album.”
Geoff Brown, The Times. Four stars
"unpretentiously and convincingly Wagnerian . . . a very fine debut album from an enterprising group."
Ken Walton, The Scotsman
“…a moving 21st-century adventure into the late 19th century by Matthew King that raises intriguing questions about the nature of authenticity and the as ifs of music history.”
John Deathridge, Emeritus King Edward Professor of Music at King’s College London and author of "Wagner Beyond Good and Evil"
credits
released October 22, 2021
The Mahler Players, conducted by Tomas Leakey
Violin I: Emma Donald (leader), Simon Evans, Ruth Kalitski, Alexandra Darolți, Sarah Perricone
Violin II: Eleanor Cameron, Francis Moore-Colyer, Hazel Younger, David Murray
Viola: Jon Rutter, Rachel Farmer, Ewa Bartmann
Cello: Irini Dimitriadou, Ian Sharp, Elias Rooney
Double Bass: Tam Darlugdach
Flute: Catherine O'Rourke
Oboe: Leslie Callander
Clarinet: Mhairi Callander, Mike Weare
Bassoon: Bruce Gordon
Horn: Rob Farmer, Christine McGinley
Trumpet: Alasdair Grant
Recorded 19th and 20th June 2021 at Strathpeffer Pavilion, Highlands of Scotland.
Recorded, mixed and mastered by Roderick Buchanan-Dunlop.
Artwork: Claude Monet "San Giorgio Maggiore by Twilight" (1908) courtesy of Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales.
Design by Calum Hadden at Birnam CD.
With thanks to Tony Shoults, The National Lottery through Creative Scotland, The Hugh Fraser Foundation, The Wagner Society of Scotland, The Wagner Society, High Life Highland and HRI | Munro Architecture for making this recording possible.
The Mahler Players is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO), Charity No. SC044711
The Mahler Players is a chamber orchestra based in the Highlands of Scotland, founded by Tomas Leakey in
2013.
We played a lot of Mahler and are now often to be found exploring Wagner; from the first Act of Die Walküre to new commissions like "Richard Wagner in Venice: A Symphony" by Matthew King.
"Outstanding...Scotland's best kept musical secret."
Michael Tumelty in the Herald Scotland...more
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