Dennis Russell Davies

Artist ∙ Classical

Though respected for his interpretations of works that range across the entire repertoire, conductor Dennis Russell Davies is particularly well known for his skillful presentations of new music. He has conducted the premieres of works by several major composers and has a substantial recording catalog. In 1978, Davies became the second American to conduct at the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, Germany. Davies debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in 1996, conducting the premiere of Glass' The Voyage. He is the music director of the Sinfonieorchester Basel and chief conductor for the Filharmonie Brno and MDR-Sinfonieorchester. His recordings include a complete survey of Haydn's Symphonies with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and Glass: Waiting for the Barbarians. In 2023, Davies conducted the Filharmonie Brno in the New York premiere of Glass' Symphony No. 12 ("Lodger") at Carnegie Hall, featuring soloist Angélique Kidjo.

December 31, 1986 at PST
Glass: Akhnaten
14 Tracks
January 30, 2012 at PST
Philip Glass: Symphony No. 9
3 Tracks
January 19, 2017 at PST
Philip Glass: Violin Concerto No. 1 - Leonard Bernstein: Serenade after Plato’s Symposium
The next entry in Dennis Russell Davies’ exploration of Philip Glass’ works sees two masterpieces—one by Glass, one by Bernstein—taken up by the esteemed violinist Renaud Capuçon. For the former composer’s 1987 concerto, Capuçon’s sharp, driving style is perfectly suited for the work’s elongated arpeggios and dramatic melodies.
8 Tracks
January 15, 1997 at PST
Philip Glass: Heroes Symphony
6 Tracks
October 18, 2018 at PDT
Philip Glass: Symphony No. 11
This world premiere recording is a richly scored, swirling tribute to Dennis Russell Davies’ 15 years as music director/chief conductor of the Bruckner Orchestra Linz and his dedication to the composer’s music. During his time in Austria, Davies worked with Glass on many of his most important works, including the operas The Lost and Kepler, and four of his symphonies. In his 11th, Glass returns to his minimalist roots with a work whose opening movement pulsates with his trademark arpeggios and jagged, almost menacing counterpoint. The second movement acts as the work’s emotional heart: Its rising and falling motifs and brilliantly crafted crescendo deliver the orchestra’s fond farewell to Davies. The percussion’s dominance of the breezy final movement is utterly joyful.
3 Tracks
February 9, 1993 at PST
Glass: Low Symphony, from the Music of David Bowie & Brian Eno
3 Tracks
May 29, 2000 at PDT
Philip Glass: Symphony No.3
8 Tracks
August 15, 2024 at PDT
Thomas de Hartmann Rediscovered
When, six years ago, Joshua Bell first set eyes on a score of Thomas de Hartmann’s 1943 Violin Concerto he felt he was discovering a rare and neglected masterpiece. In its klezmer-inflected themes, he found a profoundly moving response to the Nazi occupation of the composer’s homeland Ukraine—an expression of anguish at the fate of its Jewish citizens that was yet hauntingly beautiful. “I was shocked that something so compelling had been written that I’d never heard of before,” Bell says. “Somehow this piece had slipped through the cracks, and yet it is one of the great 20th-century pieces for violin and orchestra. I just had to get it out there.”

With this in mind, Bell has teamed up with the Ukrainian INSO-Lviv Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the Finnish Ukrainian conductor Dalia Stasevska to perform and record de Hartmann’s Concerto. Taking place in Warsaw last year, amid the Russian war on Ukraine, the recording brought the players together at a time when they, too, were experiencing the fear and oppression that had inspired de Hartmann’s music.

Warsaw was considered close enough, and safe enough, for Stasevska’s players to get to from Lviv, “but still there were a lot of logistical problems,” Bell explains. “They had to queue at the Polish border for nine hours the day before—it took a lot to make it happen.”

But the fraught circumstances only seem to add to the passion heard here. From the outset, the deeply expressive qualities of de Hartmann’s Concerto are on display, beginning with brooding harmonies in the orchestra, out of which the solo violin rises with a melody filled with pathos. In many ways, Hartmann’s writing recalls the soundworld of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s war-scarred works, and fans of English wartime composer William Walton will appreciate the haunting play of light-and-darkness heard here. “But the Concerto is not derivative in any way,” Bell says. “There’s a lot of 20th-century music that sounds painful and dissonant, but I think that’s easy to do compared to writing something like this which shows the pain of war with such incredible beauty.”

Another quality that attracts Bell to the Concerto is its concision. The piece is composed in four movements: the menacing motifs of the first-movement “Largo—Allegro” give way to a modally-inflected “Andante” theme and variations. A brief third movement, “Minuet fantasque,” evokes, as de Hartmann’s wife, Olga, once wrote, “a violinist wandering through the war-devastated Ukrainian steppes, playing his macabre and sorrowful songs,” before a Stravinskian outburst kicks off the folk-inspired vibrant final movement.

“The Concerto’s proportions are wonderful,” Bell says. “It’s got a beautiful slow movement. The ‘Minuet’ is cinematic, and takes you off on a journey before you get back to this intense last movement which has such an exciting ending. So it just delivers on every level; I find no weaknesses in it.”

Certainly de Hartmann writes well for the violin, exploiting its range and register fully with virtuosic ideas that sit nicely under the fingers. The Concerto also presents plenty of interpretative challenges for the soloist. “As a performer, there are different characters in the music that one needs to pay attention to,” Bell explains. “Early on in the piece, there’s despair and darkness, and then in the first movement’s second theme there’s something a little bit more sweet and pleading, maybe one might say feminine. With each of these tunes, you have to get inside a different kind of sound, and with the solo violin, that means using vibrato and varying the sound to create different moods.”

Born in 1884, de Hartmann learned his musical craft with the great Romantic Russian composers Anton Arensky and Sergei Taneyev before studying musical composition with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in pre-revolution St. Petersburg. It was while living in Garches, in the western suburbs of Nazi-occupied Paris, that he wrote the Violin Concerto, secretly dedicating it to the Jewish composer Ernest Bloch. Asked whether the music speaks to the plight of the Ukrainian people today, Bell says it’s not making a political point. “There’s a feeling of war and marching, and I do think you can feel this in the Concerto,” he says. “But in the end it’s simply moving, beautiful music.”
7 Tracks
December 31, 2005 at PST
Philip Glass: The Concerto Project, Vol. III
7 Tracks
March 14, 2006 at PST
Philip Glass: Symphony No. 8
3 Tracks
February 15, 2018 at PST
Arvo Pärt: Lamentate - These Words...
Arvo Pärt’s 2002 Lamentate for piano and orchestra was written in response to Anish Kapoor’s sculpture Marsyas for London’s Tate Modern gallery and is an exquisite commentary on our relationships with time. Built on stunning contrasts, Lamentate emerges with a distant, solitary trumpet call before coruscating orchestra and piano, beautifully shaped and recorded, rip through the peace, ringing like tolling bells. Serenity returns with the gently waltzing “Pregando” and the Bachian “Solitudine – stato d’animo,” while Pärt’s bell effects return in the piercing “Stridendo,” and peace settles once more. The prayerful “These Words…,” which concludes this superb recording, testifies to the power of utter simplicity.
11 Tracks
September 2, 2013 at PDT
Philip Glass: Visitors
6 Tracks
March 18, 2013 at PDT
Philip Glass: Cello Concerto No. 2 "Naqoyqatsi"
7 Tracks
May 29, 2000 at PDT
Philip Glass: Symphony No. 10
6 Tracks
April 30, 1987 at PDT
Pärt: Arbos
8 Tracks
June 16, 2022 at PDT
AFRICA SINGS
AFRICA SINGS takes its name from a collection of poetry by Harlem Renaissance writers, the German translations of which were set to music by the post-Romantic composer Alexander Zemlinsky. These sparsely scored songs for baritone and orchestra are a fascinating window into the way jazz was becoming part of the musical language of Western composers. The album’s star is undoubtedly Beninese singer Angelique Kidjo, whose mighty, multi-tracked version of Togolese singer Bella Bellow’s “Senye” opens the collection on a powerful, defiant note. She brings that incredible energy to her performance with the Bruckner Orchester Linz and conductor Dennis Russell Davies of Philip Glass’ setting of three of her own poems. Glass’ music seems to defy time and place, its fluidity the perfect vehicle for Kidjo’s free-form verse and astonishing voice. At the heart of this album lies Duke Ellington’s 1943 orchestral suite Black, Brown, and Beige, a sprawling, often poignant story of the African-American experience in the US.
14 Tracks
August 3, 2009 at PDT
Philip Glass: Piano Music
13 Tracks
February 14, 2019 at PST
Philip Glass: Three Pieces for Four Hands - Single
3 Tracks
December 31, 1996 at PST
Shchedrin: Carmen-Suite - Satie: Gymnopédies
16 Tracks
July 16, 2007 at PDT
From the Philip Glass Recording Archive, Vol. II: Orchestral Music
6 Tracks
March 11, 2013 at PDT
Philip Glass & Robert Wilson: The Civil Wars: A Tree Is Best Measured When It Is Down
4 Tracks
January 31, 2004 at PST
Dennis Russell Davies Performs Philip Glass
6 Tracks
May 23, 2011 at PDT
Pianos in the Kitchen (From the Kitchen Archives No.5)
7 Tracks
October 10, 2005 at PDT
Reich & Glass: Music 4 Hands
7 Tracks
July 31, 2008 at PDT
Lou Harrison: Seven Pastorales
13 Tracks

Dennis Russell Davies

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