The Philadelphia Orchestra

November 12, 1940 at GMT-8

Fantasia (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

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May 1, 1978 at PDT

David Bowie Narrates Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf

Smack of the middle of his wild Berlin period, Bowie took time out from party-hopping with Lou and Iggy to make, of all things, a children's album. Peter and the Wolf is a straightforward rendition of Prokofiev's classic, conducted by the legendary Eugene Ormandy. Bowie's narration starts out fairly reserved, but he becomes more playful with the characters as he goes along. By the time the story gets to the squabble between Bird and Wolf, he's clearly having as much fun as we are.

41 Tracks

October 11, 2018 at PDT

Destination Rachmaninov: Departure

This is one of 2018’s most exciting piano concerto recordings. It combines an outstanding, electrifying pianist with an imaginative, commanding conductor, plus one of America’s greatest orchestras. Presented through the prism of Rachmaninov’s travels—fleeing Russia, journeying around the world as a performer, settling in the United States—this recording of the Second and Fourth Concertos is magnificent. The Second is noble, romantic, and wonderfully rich, while the more complex Fourth is superbly realized. Between them comes Bach envisioned by Rachmaninov and played by Trifonov with delicacy and delicious insouciance.

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October 10, 2019 at PDT

Destination Rachmaninov: Arrival

The second installment in Daniil Trifonov’s Rachmaninov piano concerto series is even finer than the splendid first. The Third Concerto is played with terrific virtuosity and fire, full of surging passion but also with loads of personality. The less-often-encountered First is also beautifully done, Trifonov clearly drawn to its not-so-obvious charms. Under the hugely musical Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the fabulous Philadelphia Orchestra—the Rachmaninov ensemble par excellence—add their mastery to this music-making. Trifonov’s own solo piano contributions are superb, especially his gorgeous and sparkling vision of the silver bells from Rachmaninov’s cantata The Bells. A really impressive achievement.

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September 23, 2021 at PDT

Florence Price: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3

Florence Price was the first African American woman to have a symphony performed by a major American orchestra: her Symphony No. 1, by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, in 1933. Nearly 90 years later, the great Philadelphia Orchestra—another major US ensemble—again puts her music center stage. And what lovely music it is, deftly scored with an open-eyed innocence and a folksy gait. The Philadelphia’s winds and strings sound quite gorgeous. Symphony No. 3 (1938-40) shows Price’s growth as a composer and her burgeoning confidence as an orchestrator. Here, the brass play a larger role, which hints at Wagner’s influence. It’s hard to imagine better performances, or a more ravishing sound quality.

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December 31, 1961 at GMT-8

The Glorious Sound of Christmas

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January 28, 2021 at PST

Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 1 & Symphonic Dances

Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 1 has been unfairly dogged since its disastrous, badly rehearsed first performance in 1897, after which the 24-year-old composer withdrew the work entirely. Recent recordings, however—including this terrific live performance—have proven it to be an early masterpiece. Canadian conductor and pianist Yannick Nézet-Séguin and The Philadelphia Orchestra feel at home in this music, the symphony’s vivid first movement a journey of dramatic twists and turns, while its second-movement Scherzo is nervous and obsessive—a finale that blazes in full kaleidoscopic glory. This recording also houses Rachmaninoff’s last major work, the Symphonic Dances. Harmonically rich and orchestrally sumptuous, the dances are full of yearning. Nézet-Séguin brings exquisite detail to them, highlighting the dazzling, waltzing swirl of the second and the muscular heft of the cinematic third, the ancient “Dies Irae” chant driving it to its fateful, thrilling close.

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December 31, 1992 at PST

Leoncavallo: I Pagliacci

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December 31, 1958 at GMT-8

Handel: Messiah

32 Tracks

May 18, 2023 at PDT

Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1; Florence Price: Violin Concertos

Randall Goosby is classical music’s future. The eloquent violinist is also a torchbearer for the artform’s past, aware of its traditions without being ruled by them. His charismatic artistry and heartfelt lyricism are ideally matched to the choice of repertoire for his second album, a revelatory coupling of Max Bruch’s evergreen Violin Concerto No. 1 with the two violin concertos by Florence Price. The latter, completed respectively in 1939 and the year before the African American composer’s death in 1953, vanished from view until their rediscovery in 2009 in a pile of long-neglected manuscripts. Goosby appends both Price concertos with an arrangement for violin and orchestra of her tender Adoration.

“It’s a bit of a mission for me to try to broaden the outlook and scope of classical music,” he tells Apple Music Classical. “I was always inspired by music like Bruch’s Violin Concerto, Beethoven’s great string quartets and all these wonderful things. But I think putting such pieces side by side with music from another background creates a different listening experience. That was the idea behind pairing the Price concertos with the Bruch.”

The violinist identifies a “through line” connecting Roots, his 2021 debut album, to his recording of Bruch and Price. The slow movement of Bruch’s Violin Concerto, he notes, shares common expressive ground with that of Price’s First Violin Concerto and of her Fantasie No. 2, one of the standout pieces from Roots. Both composers used chromatic harmonies to evoke strong emotions and heighten tension in their work. “People want to feel something when they listen to music. Bruch and Price understood that and gave listeners and performers plenty to feel in their violin concertos.”

Goosby’s passionate advocacy of all three concertos is backed to the hilt by the Philadelphia Orchestra and its chief conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, whose earlier recording of Price’s First and Third Symphonies helped secure new admirers for her work. “It was clear to me just how seriously they take this music, how excited they are about it and how much they’ve had time to sit and be with it,” he recalls. “They’re familiar with her musical language in a way that allowed us to really put our own stamp on it.”

Anyone eager to detect the strands of musical influence that Florence Price picked up from white European men, Dvořák and Tchaikovsky among them, will not be disappointed. Yet her music speaks above all with her own unique language. “I think those echoes of various late-Romantic composers are a mark of her respect, her admiration, for their work,” concludes Goosby. “But she really has such a distinctive artistic voice. There’s such a soulfulness to her music. You don’t find that everywhere. And her late-Romantic, fast-moving, very complex harmonies and acrobatics for the violin really amplify the lyrical passages in both concertos. I don’t know if that’s what she was going for, but I think it creates a really jarring effect in the best way for both the players and the audience.”

8 Tracks

December 31, 2006 at PST

Poulenc: Organ Concerto In G Minor, Saint-Saens: Symphony No. 3, "Organ" - Barber: Toccata Festiva

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August 27, 2015 at PDT

Rachmaninov: Variations

73 Tracks

August 8, 1994 at PDT

Beethoven: Greatest Hits

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June 29, 2010 at PDT

Strauss: An Alpine Symphony

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July 13, 1992 at PDT

20 Great Bach & Handel Choruses

20 Tracks

October 3, 2024 at PDT

My American Story: North

Russian-born and now US-resident Daniil Trifonov pays tribute to his adopted homeland in this first instalment of My American Story. This is very much a portrait of modern America, the earliest work included here being George Gershwin’s 1925 Piano Concerto.

This is given a wonderfully characterful and endearing performance by Trifonov and his excellent partners, the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The Philadelphians play with splendid pizazz, as one might expect, in the lively first and final movements. But the slow central “Adagio” is the real winner, with the languid principal trumpet a perfect foil to the perkiness of Trifonov’s playing.

Mason Bates’ concerto, written specifically for Trifonov, is heard here in its premiere performance recorded live in January 2022. As well as reaching outside the US with playful references to the musical mannerisms of Renaissance Europe, it also presents an attractive glitter in the piano writing and orchestral sheen from the world of film music.

Trifonov extends his tribute to the movies with an extract from American Beauty and the energetically jazzy “Memphis Stomp” from The Firm. And there’s more jazz in the form of arrangements by Art Tatum—Trifonov capturing the charming nonchalance of that phenomenal pianist—and Bill Evans.

He also shows a more serious, European-orientated side of American music. In Copland’s modernistic Piano Variations of 1930, Trifonov discovers a feisty and recognizably American spirit in its apparently unyielding flintiness. He also gives a thoughtful performance of John Corigliano’s Fantasia on an Ostinato, drawing out its melancholy before convincingly unveiling its inspiration from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

Inside the Album Booklet
An extensive note on Trifonov’s program includes several quotes from the pianist giving his personal views of the music. Plus there are several color photos of Trifonov at the Cleveland Institute of Music where he studied for five years, and in typical or distinctive North American settings.

Album booklets are available in version 2.0 of Apple Music Classical, which you can download now and enjoy as part of your Apple Music subscription. To access booklets, tap on the book icon at the top of your screen.

14 Tracks

June 11, 2004 at PDT

Great Performances - Elgar: Cello Concerto, Enigma Variations, Pomp and Circumstance Marches No. 1 & 4

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June 29, 2023 at PDT

Rachmaninoff: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 3; Isle of the Dead

No ensemble has greater pedigree in the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff than the Philadelphia Orchestra, with whom the composer made a series of landmark recordings in the pre-LP era. The Philadelphia’s Rachmaninoff tradition continues in this superbly played double album of orchestral music led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the orchestra’s current music director.

While respecting the fabled lushness of the Philadelphia sound, Nézet-Séguin’s approach to the Second and Third Symphonies focuses on a tingling transparency of texture. In both slow movements he carefully avoids over-romanticizing the music, while phrasing with considerable warmth and flexibility. The tone poem Isle of the Dead is appropriately dark-hued and brooding, without overburdening the piece with morbidity. All told, these are wonderfully direct and refreshing performances.

10 Tracks

June 9, 2022 at PDT

Letters for the Future

7 Tracks

October 8, 1990 at PDT

Blue Danube: Strauss Waltzes

8 Tracks

August 6, 2000 at PDT

Johann Strauss Jr. Super Hits (Waltzes and Polkas)

8 Tracks

November 12, 1940 at GMT-8

Ave Maria, D. 839 (As Heard in Disney's "Fantasia")

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December 31, 2005 at PST

Beethoven: Symphony No. 8

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August 18, 2022 at PDT

Secret Love Letters

Lisa Batiashvili embraces the theme of secret love on her aptly titled album Secret Love Letters. “The biggest secret I had as a child was connected to the deepest and strongest human emotion: love,” the Georgian violinist tells Apple Music. “In kindergarten, I fell in love with a four-year-old boy and my stomach ached and leapt when I looked at him. I feared telling anyone, even my mother, who I worried would dismiss the emotions I felt so strongly because I was so young.” Instead, she turned to her instrument as her private confidant, through which she expressed her innermost feelings.

But instead of immediately plunging the listener into this potentially turbulent world of suppressed longing, here Batiashvili eases us in with the Violin Sonata in A Major by César Franck. Written as a wedding present for the Belgian violin virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe, the sublime, four-movement work manages to be at once restrained and emotionally unfettered. Accompanying Batiashvili is Giorgi Gigashvili, who won a scholarship from the Lisa Batiashvili Foundation in 2021. Following the sonata is the Violin Concerto No. 1 by the Polish composer Karol Szymanowski. The highly charged work expresses, says Batiashvili, the composer’s secret feelings for another man. In it, Szymanowski—who sought technical advice on its composition from the violinist Paweł Kochański—lays bare his emotions, at times to an unbearable degree. As Batiashvili says, “It is a dance between eroticism and compassion, between a dream world and tough reality.”

There’s also Poème, another work for violin and orchestra, by Ernest Chausson, which chimes perfectly with Batiashvili’s pursuit of the inexpressible in “all of its nuances of love and beauty,” and Beau soir, a short but touching piece for violin and piano, the latter played by the conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The four works satisfy Batiashvili’s theme of secret love, each in its own way dreamlike, reflective, anguished, and impassioned. Read on as she guides us through each of them in-depth.

Violin Sonata in A Major
“This is the first time I have played with Giorgi [Gigashvili], but I’ve known him now for two years because he’s one of my foundation’s first scholars. He is a diverse musician who doesn’t only play classical music; he can also sing pop and jazz. When a talent like this is so obvious and when the desire for music is so strong, I feel that this diversity has taught him to be incredibly spontaneous, so for me to play with him allowed me to look at the Sonata like an open book. This can happen when you meet a musician: You play a piece you know well, but suddenly it becomes a new piece. We were very much on the same wavelength.”

Violin Concerto No. 1
“I played this music for the first time in 2018, with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, and I fell in love with it. I had an incredible feeling when playing it. Its sensuality and extremely interesting colors and emotions were new to me. When I learned that Szymanowski dedicated the work to his friend Paweł Kochański, who wrote the cadenza, I realized there is so much passion and so much hidden love expressed here. The music is an explosion of emotions. For example, there are moments that the violin goes very high on the E string. It’s like a very sensual singing voice on a huge, orchestral carpet of sound. And then, elsewhere in the middle and also the end, is a habanera. It’s love and dancing, together! We must celebrate love, especially in these terrible times, and music is the language that can do this.”

Poème
“Although it’s not a virtuoso piece, Poème is tricky to play with an orchestra. It bursts with color and emotion, but soloist and orchestra must always be together. Like Szymanowski, Chausson had help from a violinist, Eugène Ysaÿe, when composing it. These violinists were super important for both composers. They helped them see what was musically possible and what sounded better. Personally speaking, I don’t believe you can write a piece for a soloist if you don’t consult a person who will give you expert insight into the instrument you are writing for. This is why, when you play a piece that was very obviously dedicated to or composed with a soloist in mind and who has contributed to it, it’s a completely different experience for the performer.”

Beau soir
“Beau soir is a very intimate piece and another facet of the album’s theme of unexplained and untold love. I had planned to record several Debussy pieces with Yannick, but we ended up doing just this one. Happily, it is a beautiful ‘song.’ Debussy is one of my favorite composers, who gives you incredible freedom of expression, although with very precise score indications. I’ve played and recorded with Yannick before. He is one of the greatest conductors of our time who, like, for example, Simon Rattle and Daniel Barenboim, hears everything while seeing the whole picture. He brings incredible insight to even the shortest piece of music.”

10 Tracks