| Label: ANALEKTA
Catalog: AN299423
Format: CD Juno Award Winner 2009 - Classical Album of the Year: Large Ensemble Performance
The first of these two CDs contains The General, an allegory in the form of a soliloquy with music. The text is based on the writings of General Romeo Dallaire who was head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Rwanda during 1993-4. Beethoven’s entr’acte music for Egmont is heard between the spoken passages conveyed with compassion and conviction by Maximilian Schell, a perfect choice to portray the alienated general whose explicit orders were to merely observe the continuing brutality and slaughter.
- excerpt from Wholenote Magazine review, July 2008
Conceived on the basis of an original idea of Maestro Nagano’s, The General offers an entirely new interpretation of Beethoven’s Egmont, itself based on a poem by Goethe. Offered as a tribute to Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire, this original work, written by author, critic and musicologist Paul Griffiths -relates the staggering events surrounding the Rwanda crisis in 1994.
The second cd includes popular Beethoven’s
5th Symphony and excerpts from Egmont, magnificently performed by OSM and its conductor.
2 CD box-set (english version)
CD1: The General
for orchestra with soprano, choir and narrator music by Ludwig van Beethoven / words by Paul Griffiths,
Maximilian Schell, narrator, Adrianne Pieczonka, soprano, Orchestre symphonique de Montréal Chorus, Marika Kuzma, chorus director
CD 2:
Symphony No.5 Op. 67
Egmont, Op. 84 (excerpts)
5. Overture 8:29
6. Lied DieTrommel gerühret, n°1 3:55
7. Lied Freudvoll und leidvoll, n°4 1:23
8. Opferlied (“Die Flamme lodert”), Op. 121b
 Price: $33.98 |
