C L ASSIC AL A UDI O PROFIL ALESSANDRO SCARLATTI PROFIL ANTON BRUCKNER IL TRIONFO DELL’ONORE SYMPHONY NO. 8 PH16055 | 881488160550 2 CD | SRP US $33.99 CA $40.99 COMPOSER: Alessandro Scarlatti • According to Alessandro Scarlatti’s own work catalogue, he wrote 117 dramme per musica. Even if some of them may have been only improvements or modifications, the number remains impressive. Il Trionfo Dell’Onore represents several of Scarlatti’s works in a masterful program on this release. • What makes Bruckner’s eighth symphony so special to JukkaPekka Saraste is the richness of it’s atmosphere. He is always excited by the dramatic first subject of the first movement, which is based on the same rhythmical motive as appears in the beginning of Beethoven’s Ninth symphony. • Saraste chooses to perform the Haas edition because it contains some fascinating sections taken from Bruckner’s first version. In his version, Bruckner, advised by his well-meaning supporters, appears to have tried to create a greater symphonic unity and line. PH16061 | 881488160611 1 CD | SRP US $16.99 CA $20.99 COMPOSER: Anton Bruckner ARTIST: Orchestra Lirica di Milano • Carlo Maria Giulini (conductor) ARTIST: Symphonieorchester des Westdeutschen Rundfunks • Jukka-Pekka Saraste (conductor) PROFIL LUIGI CHERUBINI PROFIL BRAHMS VS. TCHAIKOVSKY REQUIEM MASS ATRIUM STRING QUARTET PH16056 | 881488160567 1 CD | SRP US $16.99 CA $20.99 COMPOSER: Luigi Cherubini • In the post-war gramophone record era, the great conductor Arturo Toscanini was the first to record the work on February 19, 1950. Carlo Maria Giulini followed him only two years later and conducted Cherubini’s Requiem in C Minor in his first studio recording. It is that which is presented on CD here for the first time. • Brhams worked at his First String Quartet for twenty years, not publishing it until 1873. • He wrote as follows about it to his surgeon friend Theodor Billroth, to whom the piece is dedicated: “Composing is not difficult, but it is fantastically difficult to get rid of the superfluous notes”, humorously adding that a doctor was urgently needed to assist this “forceps birth”. Billroth replied: “It contains a great many beautiful things in compressed form: yet it is enormously difficult not only technically, but also in content.” He meant that to the density of the motivic work was unique in Brahms’s oeuvre. All four movements of the quartet develop out of a single motif in the firs tmovement. PH16070 | 881488160703 1 CD | SRP US $16.99 CA $20.99 COMPOSER: Johannes Brahms • Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky ARTIST: Orchester Stabile e Coro dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia • Carlo Maria Giulini (conductor) ARTIST: Atrium String Quartet 93 NAXOS OF AMERICA | NAXOS OF CANADA | NEW RELEASE GUIDE