BIS releases Minnesota Orchestra album of Beethoven Piano Concertos No. 4 and 5

Pianist Yevgeny Sudbin performs the Fourth and Fifth (Emperor) Concertos; Osmo Vänskä conducts; Album available in stores and at minnesotaorchestra.org

(December 9, 2010) -- The Swedish label BIS Records has released the first recording of the Minnesota Orchestra’s Beethoven piano concertos series, featuring the composer’s final two piano concertos, the Fourth and Fifth (Emperor), conducted by Music Director Osmo Vänskä and featuring Russian soloist Yevgeny Sudbin at keyboard. The disc, the newest chapter of the highly-acclaimed collaboration between BIS, Vänskä and the Orchestra, is now available through the Orchestra’s website at minnesotaorchestra.org. It will also be available in stores and as a download on major internet music sites.

Vänskä, Sudbin and the Orchestra recorded the concertos at Minneapolis’ Orchestra Hall in sessions during January 2009 and June 2010. The BIS team, led by producer Rob Suff, recorded the album as a Super Audio CD (SACD), using surround sound recording technology to reproduce the sound of the concert hall as faithfully as possible. BIS Hybrid SACDs are playable on all standard CD players.

Vänskä and the Orchestra have earned high praise for their prior recording projects together, including a five-disc Beethoven symphony cycle with BIS that The New York Times wrote “may be the definitive [cycle] of our time”; the recordings earned honors including a Grammy nomination for the Ninth Symphony CD and a Classic FM Gramophone Award nomination for the disc of the Second and Seventh. In addition to the Beethoven piano concertos project, the Orchestra will record the complete Sibelius symphonies for BIS, beginning in June 2011.

The Minnesota Orchestra, founded as the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, issued its first recording in 1924, and has since recorded more than 450 works.

Beethoven’s Fourth and Fifth Piano Concertos
Beethoven’s five piano concertos broke new ground in concerto form and affirmed his reputation as early Romanticism’s pre-eminent composer for the piano. The Fourth Concerto, completed in 1806 and considered the most poetic of the Beethoven concertos, is innovative from its start: the pianist begins with a quiet solo sans orchestra. Equally striking is the second movement, a dialogue between plaintive piano and harsh strings that Liszt compared to the myth of Orpheus taming the wild beasts.

The powerful Fifth Piano Concerto, allegedly given the name Emperor by the work’s English publisher, was completed in war-torn Vienna in 1809. The longest and best-known of Beethoven’s five piano concertos, it was the only one he did not premiere as soloist. After an epic first movement full of wide leaps and frequent cadenzas, a reflective Adagio and a dance-like Rondo cap this touchstone of the piano literature.

The collaborators: Minnesota Orchestra, Osmo Vänskä and BIS Records
Led by Music Director Osmo Vänskä, the Minnesota Orchestra is recognized as one of America’s leading orchestras. Founded in 1903, it performs approximately 175 concerts each year, with 400,000 attending, and reaches more than 85,000 music lovers annually through its education programs. The Orchestra is heard through an award-winning series of weekly radio broadcasts produced by Minnesota Public Radio, with many concerts subsequently heard on American Public Media’s national programs, SymphonyCast and Performance Today, and through its many recordings dating from the 1920s.

Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä became the Minnesota Orchestra’s tenth music director in 2003. During his Minnesota tenure he has led the Orchestra on four European tours as well as three tours to communities across Minnesota. In addition to this disc, his recording projects with the Orchestra have included a Beethoven symphonies cycle; Tchaikovsky’s complete piano-and-orchestra works with soloist Stephen Hough; Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony; and, starting in June 2011, the complete Sibelius symphonies. For two decades he was music director of Finland’s Lahti Symphony Orchestra.

Russian-born pianist Yevgeny Sudbin has earned accolades as soloist, recitalist and recording artist. He performs in many of the world’s most prestigious concert venues, and he has appeared at such major music festivals as the BBC Proms, New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival, the Aspen Festival, La Roque d’Anthéron and the Verbier Festival in Switzerland, where he is a frequent guest. He debuted with the Minnesota Orchestra in 2007 and has since performed with such major ensembles as the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra and Philharmonia Orchestra. His recording of Scriabin works was named CD of the Year by London’s Daily Telegraph.

BIS Records, founded in 1973 by its current president Robert von Bahr, has developed a reputation for recording eclectic repertoire, including early music as well as works by many contemporary composers, from Kalevi Aho to Christopher Rouse. The more than 1,500 titles in the BIS catalogue (www.bis.se) also include many mainstays of the concert hall, from a Tchaikovsky cycle with Neeme Järvi to a Bach Cantata cycle with the Bach Collegium Japan, as well as a complete Sibelius cycle with Vänskä and the Lahti Symphony. The label, based in Sweden, is respected for the superior sound quality of its releases.

BEETHOVEN: Piano Concertos No. 4 and 5 (BIS-SACD-1758)

Minnesota Orchestra
Osmo Vänskä, conductor
Yevgeny Sudbin, piano

BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 4
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 5, Emperor

Album now available in stores and at minnesotaorchestra.org.

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