Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition, Borodin Symphony No.2, Polovtsian Dances : Rattle / Berlin Philharmonic

Mussorgsky / orch. Ravel:
Pictures at an Exhibition

Borodin:
Symphony No.2 in B minor
Polovtsian Dances (from Prince Igor)

Berliner Philharmoniker
Simon Rattle, conductor

On 31 December 2007 the Berliner Philharmoniker and Simon Rattle rang in the New Year with a Silvesterkonzert in Berlin's Philharmonie. A video diary following the making of the recording is available at www.rattlemussorgsky.com.

For the Silversterkonzert of 2004/2005 Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker chose another popular work, Orff's Carmina Burana. The concert and TV broadcast attracted a larger-than-usual audience and resulted in a bestselling album that subsequently featured in numerous television programmes and films. Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmonker have gained an international reputation for their initiatives, via educational projects, film music and the release of recordings of popular works like The Planets, to make classical music accessible to a wider audience.

Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) began his career in the military but abandoned the army for music after meeting Mily Balakirev and Alexander Borodin who inspired in him a sense of nationalistic ardour and a mission to compose music based on Russian themes and folklore. In 1874, after the death at the age of 39 of Mussorgsky's friend, the painter and architect Victor Hartmann, an exhibition of Hartmann's watercolours and drawings was held at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. To honour his memory, Mussorgsky composed a large piano work about the exhibition, in which he recreated in sound the subjects of Hartmann's best canvases. Serge Koussevitzky commissioned the orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition by Maurice Ravel in 1922. Since its premiere the following year, the colourful orchestral work has become a showpiece for virtuoso orchestras and conductors - and a perennial audience favourite.

Alexander Borodin (1833-1887) was both a composer and a professor of chemistry at the St. Petersburg Medical School. He met Balakirev in 1862 and, moved by his nationalistic fervour, became a colleague and a member of "The Five", dividing his life between chemistry and music. Like his opera Prince Igor, Borodin's Second Symphony is intensely national in spirit and incorporates some thematic material from the opera, on which he worked for many years. Composed between 1871 and 1876, the symphony was premiered in 1877. Borodin began the composition of Prince Igor in 1869, but it was unfinished at the time of his death in 1887. The brilliant Second Act Polovtsian Dances are performed for the captured Prince by musicians and dancers of the Mongol chief.

Sir Simon Rattle has been Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Berliner Philharmoniker since 2002. In the summer of 2007, at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, Sir Simon and the Orchestra gave four performances of Wagner's Die Walkure and four programmes of symphonic works by Berlioz, Pascal Dusapin, Debussy and Ravel followed by concerts featuring works by Mahler, Brahms, Schumann, Ligeti, Stravinsky and Gubaidulina at the Salzburg and Lucerne festivals.

The 2007/2008 season marks the Berliner Philharmoniker's 125th anniversary. Sir Simon Rattle will lead the orchestra in 72 concerts in Berlin and on tour in Austria, Switzerland, the U.S.A., France, the Baltic States and Scandinavia.

Sir Simon's association with EMI dates back to the 1970s and has resulted in many award-winning and ground-breaking releases. Previous critically acclaimed recordings with the Berliner Philharmoniker encompass works by Bruckner, Brahms, Haydn, Holst, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Schoenberg, Richard Strauss, Schubert, Mahler and Debussy. Their release of Holst's The Planets won 'Classical Recording of the Year' at the 2007 Classical Brit Awards and Ein deutsches Requiem by Brahms gained the 'Choral Award' at the 2007 Gramophone Awards. ( EMI )