or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
or
Amazon Prime free trial required. Sign up when you check out. Learn more
More Buying Choices
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
Available to Download Now
 
Buy the MP3 album for £6.23
  
 
 
 
Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms etc
 
See larger image 
Share your own customer images

Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms etc

Berliner Philharmoniker | Format: Audio CD
Price: £8.54 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk. Gift-wrap available.
Only 1 left in stock--order soon (more on the way).
Want guaranteed delivery by Thursday, June 7? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details
Buy the MP3 album for £6.23 at the Amazon MP3 Downloads store.

Shop on Amazon.co.uk, pay with your currency
Amazon.co.uk Currency Converter
Amazon.co.uk allows you to pay for your items in your local currency. Restrictions apply. Learn More.

Amazon's Berliner Philharmoniker Store

Music

Image of album by Berliner Philharmoniker

Photos

Image of Berliner Philharmoniker
›
Visit Amazon's Berliner Philharmoniker Store
for 257 albums, photos, discussions, and more.

Frequently Bought Together

Customers buy this with STRAVINSKY/HIST. DU SOLDAT;ROSSIGNOL GH ~ Stravinsky Audio CD £16.58

Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms etc + STRAVINSKY/HIST. DU SOLDAT;ROSSIGNOL GH
Price For Both: £25.12

Show availability and delivery details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Product details

Listen to Samples and Buy MP3s

Songs from this album are available to purchase as MP3s. Click on "Buy MP3" or view the MP3 Album.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Samples
Song Title Time Price
Listen  1. Symphonies for Wind Instruments 9:16£0.79
Listen  2. Symphonie de Psaumes - 1. Exaudi orationem meam, Domine 3:11£0.79
Listen  3. Symphonie de Psaumes - 2. Expectans expectavi Dominum 6:07£0.79
Listen  4. Symphonie de Psaumes - 3. Alleluia, laudate Dominum10:38£1.49
Listen  5. Symphony in 3 Movements - 1. Allegro 9:56£0.79
Listen  6. Symphony in 3 Movements - 2. Andante - Interlude (L'istesso tempo)- 6:37£0.79
Listen  7. Symphony in 3 Movements - 3. Con moto 6:05£0.79

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

In a way that oddly prefigures the stance of the "holy minimalists" so currently popular, Stravinsky declared that a motive behind composing his Symphony of Psalms was his "eagerness to counter the many composers who had abused these magisterial verses as pegs for their own lyrico-sentimental 'feelings'". The result issued in one of the 20th century's most perfect choral masterpieces. For all its objective austerity (violins, violas, and clarinets are exiled from the score), the piece is awash in fresh new sound colors and rhythmic vitality (with some family likeness to those Stravinsky explored in Les Noces and Oedipus Rex), ending in a poem of praise (Psalm 150) that radiantly answers the uneasy waiting of the middle movement (Psalm 40). Pierre Boulez maintains the necessary level of diaphanous precision, though he is a measure too sensuous, forceful, and even fast compared with Stravinsky's own visionary account of the work, enveloping the final "Alleluia" with an undeniably beautiful but seductive sheen. Boulez also offers a finely etched, incisive reading of Stravinsky's wartime Symphony in Three Movements that is strong on its astringent ironies. The composer's interests were clearly geared to the symphony more as an exploration of possible sound worlds than to its traditional form, even in his most "neoclassical" period, as in the ritualistic gestures of the Symphonies of Wind Instruments. It's a nice snapshot of earlier Stravinsky, though this disc would be even more compelling if it had instead included the Symphony in C to make a compendium of his best symphonies such as can be found on Georg Solti's Stravinsky collection. But listeners familiar only with the great Stravinsky ballets have a goldmine left to discover in these works. --Thomas May

Suggested Tags from Similar Products

 (What's this?)
Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
 
(8)
(7)
(6)
(5)
(3)
(2)
(2)
(2)
(1)
(1)

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

Customer Reviews

There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.co.uk.
5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:  16 reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Brilliant Colors Compensate for Strangely Rushed Psalm Coda 23 July 2002
By Karl Henning - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Audio CD
To get the unpleasant news out of the way first ... the Symphony of Psalms is generally quite good, but is far from the best. There are runaway crescendos in which the full ensemble gets shriek-ey to a degree which is, actually, shocking for Boulez, who normally (witness the two instrumental selections on the disc) shows such refined sensitivity to Stravinsky's use of color.

But the strangest offense which Boulez here commits against Stravinsky is, the Signature Moment of the Symphony of Psalms, the wonderful coda to the third movement, one of Stravinsky's trademark Codas of Eternal Stillness, which floats off and melds into Time Itself. Unforgiveably, Boulez rushes this. Compounding the offense is the fact that this is billed as the 1948 revision of the Symphony of Psalms, a revision which primarily consisted in Stravinsky specifying refined tempos - and Stravinsky gives a tempo for the coda of 72 quarter-notes to the minute, where Boulez races through at more than twice this rate. Since this tempo specification is, you might say, the whole raison-d'être for the revision, Boulez missing this - a change which Eric Walter White, with somewhat amusing understatement, remarks "affects the speed of the coda" - is puzzling ... for he is a composer/conductor famed for his close reading of the score ....

But an overwhelming, thrice-welcome virtue which pervades this entire disc, is the vibrant colors, the faithfulness to Stravinsky's miraculous chords, so exquisitely voiced. Boulez here offers the original 1920 version of the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, which is really the only way to hear the piece: in later versions, Stravinsky made the ill-advised decision to remove the alto flute and alto clarinet (one passage, in particular, he had to re-compose, to accommodate the range of the regular flute), but these two `unusual' instruments are brilliant components in a number of delicately-scored passages (including just these two in duet) where, frankly, in later versions they are sore missed. I was especially pleased that the high clarinet motto which opens the Symphonies (and returns throughout the work) began so delicately ... it is a passage which can too easily be made shrill, and tire the ear - and while Stravinsky was a tireless seeker after striking colors, he did not aim to tire the ear. This is one reason why, for me, the piece succeeds so much more easily in a performance space, rather than reproduced from a recording; in a concert hall, the ear has more "breathing room", and this recurring high clarinet does not necessarily grow wearisome.

But all of Stravinsky's rich chords shimmer, hum, burr - especially, as we expect, the wonderful chorale which closes out the piece. This piece alone makes this disc a joy to listen to. Could almost say that the release of the last chord is alone worth the price of admission, only it would seem like fanaticism ....

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Stravinsky to hear 27 Mar 2000
By Greg Hales - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Audio CD
This new Boulez/BPO Stravinksy disc is unique. The sound the orchestra produces is not normally one expects in Stravinksy but it works. The strings hold the lines with ease. In the symphony of pslams the woodwinds are fantastic with intonation and color. The openning of the second movement is a great example.

The symphonies of wind intstruments is the best playing I've heard....and I've heard quite abit....

In the symphony in 3 movements there are a few tempos slower than one expects...but the orchestra does a great job with the Boulez approach. I'm not 100% sold on his views in this piece but I will not that let stop me from recommending this disc. I am very happy to have purchased the disc and urge other to do the same

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Between Objectivity and Passion 20 Mar 2001
By Thomas F. Bertonneau - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Audio CD
I don't pretend to have a thorough knowledge of the discography of Igor Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms (1930), written on commission by Serge Koussevitsky for the fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. I know the composer's stereo performance on Columbia, Igor Markevitch's on Philips, Neville Marriner's on London, and two or three others. Stravinsky's recording must be taken as authoritative, although I have always thought that Stravinsky was too austere in his self-interpertation. Markevitch, who uses Russian forces (recorded in the 1960s), is good. British performances miss the mark because the choristers sing too sweetly. It's the opposite interpretive sin from the composer's own. The recent DG disc with Pierre Boulez leading the Berlin Philharmonic and the Berlin Radio Chorus strikes me (based on my limited survey) as the best ever. I confess to having approached this disc with trepidation. Of Boulez the critics sometimes with justice say, "the Iceman cometh." But the champion of musical modernism, who lately has turned his hand to Mahler and (hard to believe) Bruckner, delivers a performance that does not sacrifice vitality to objectivity. Objective it is; no one, on hearing this, would mistake it for a devotional performance. But Stravinsky's passionless delivery is here redeemed by his interpreter's discovery that while the form of the Symphony comes from Bach its harmonies come from Debussy and that they have a life and a warmth (even) all their own. The major coupling is the Symphony in Three Movements. Eduardo Máta made a recording twenty years ago for RCA that still takes the laurels in this repertory, but Boulez reaches nearly the same level. The outer movements invoke the rhythmic pandemonium of "The Rite of Spring." The horns really whoop it up in the Third Movement. The central panel is relaxed in a balletically muscular way: Certain moments possess what might be called poignancy. (Aaron Copland must have listened attentively to this score.) The minor coupling is the plurally entitled "Symphonies of Wind Instruments" (1922). This is the source of the writing for winds in the Symphony of Psalms. Boulez makes it very ritualistic and brings out its relation to the music that another modernist, Edgar Varèse, was composing, in New York, at about the same time. Did Karajan record these works with the BPO? Probably, but I have never heard the results. As Boulez mellows into his seniority, his music-making becomes more attractive, warmer, more plastic and attractive. It's a superior item. Recommended.

Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   
Related forums

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?

› Explore similar items

Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject





i.e., each product must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback


Amazon.co.uk Privacy Statement Amazon.co.uk Delivery Information Amazon.co.uk Returns & Exchanges