Latest Recordings From Manchester Camerata

Manchester Camerata’s two latest recordings – released on the AVIE label – are receiving stunning reviews. They include the latest in the orchestra’s Beethoven series – Symphonies 6 & 9 conducted by Douglas Boyd.  And the first recording with its new music director Gábor Takács-Nagy featuring Miklós Perényi of works by Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev.

Beethoven

Symphonies Nos. 6 “Pastoral” and 8

The latest release in its acclaimed Beethoven Symphony cycle. Like the previous releases in this cycle these live recordings capture the spirit and freshness of these remarkable, genre-busting works, as well as the excitement, atmosphere and energy of the chamber orchestra under Douglas Boyd.

The Times noted Douglas Boyd’s “grasp of Beethovenian idiom” and “pungent underlining of orchestral detail”, praising the musical performance as “sublime and exultant”.

“The pacing of the opening movement (Pastoral) – so often taken too slowly – is just right”  Sunday Times 23 October 2011.

Catalogue No. AV2242

Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev

Rococo Variations,
Symphony No. 1

Manchester Camerata’s first recording with Gábor Takács-Nagy.

Two Russian works that straddle the turn of the 20th century and illuminate different musical strands – Tchaikovsky’s Romantic elegance and Prokofiev’s early, compositional irreverence.

Yet these two works also share a common classicism: the Mozartian intricacy and grace of Tchaikovsky’s cello “concerto”, performed here by Takács-Nagy’s eminent fellow-Hungarian Miklós Perényi – in the composer’s original version rather than the more commonly heard revision by the work’s dedicatee Wilhelm Fitzhagen – and the Haydn-esque symphonic form on which Prokofiev hung his 20th-century harmonies.