BIS releases Minnesota Orchestra's recording of Bruckner's Fourth Symphony

Music Director Osmo Vänskä conducts Bruckner’s Romantic Symphony; Album available in stores and at minnesotaorchestra.org

Bruckner’s Fourth is the 454th work the Orchestra has recorded since 1924

(May 20, 2010) -- The Swedish label BIS Records has released a recording of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, known as the Romantic, performed by Music Director Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra. 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, and will also be available in stores and as a download on major internet music sites.

Vänskä and the Orchestra recorded the Fourth Symphony at Minneapolis’ Orchestra Hall in sessions during January 2009. 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 was described as “maybe the definitive [cycle] of our time” (The New York Times); the recordings earned honors including a Grammy nomination for the Ninth Symphony recording and a Classic FM Gramophone Award nomination for the disc of the Second and Seventh. The Orchestra is now recording all five Beethoven piano concertos with soloist Yevgeny Sudbin, also for BIS.

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

Bruckner’s Fourth: A pinnacle of late Romanticism
Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony has been one of his most popular works ever since its premiere in 1881, when the composer was reportedly called out to take a bow after each movement. Its often-used moniker Romantic is a reference to the literary genre of the medieval romance, rather than to the concept of romantic love. Like many of Bruckner’s works, the Fourth underwent several revisions. The version recorded here is a new edition of the Symphony, published in 2004 by American musicologist Benjamin Korstvedt—that takes into account Bruckner’s 1888 revisions.

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 nearly 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; through a six-concert BBC Radio Performance on 3 series during the 2009-10 season; and through its many recordings dating to 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 three European tours—including the ensemble’s debut at such prominent music festivals as the BBC Proms and Edinburgh Festival—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; and, now in progress, the Beethoven piano concertos with soloist Yevgeny Sudbin. As guest conductor, he has led all the major American and European orchestras. For two decades he was music director of Finland’s Lahti Symphony Orchestra.

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, ranging 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 Vänskä’s Sibelius collection. The label, based in Sweden, is respected for the superior sound quality of its releases.

BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 4 (BIS-SACD-1746)

Minnesota Orchestra
Osmo Vänskä, conductor

BRUCKNER Symphony No. 4, Romantic (1888 version)

Album now available in stores and at minnesotaorchestra.org.

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