Nakariakov/Irish Co/Widmann - Symphonies Nos 1 4

ORFEO is delighted to begin a new collaboration with the Irish Chamber Orchestra and its Artistic Director J�rg Widmann to record the symphonies of Felix Mendelssohn, a great, yet still underestimated Romantic composer. The multi-talented J�rg Widmann comes to the project not just as an instrumentalist and conductor but as a composer colleague of Mendelssohn, making this project all the more attractive. Mendelssohn was a Wunderkind who gained prominence with his compositions at an early age. The symphony he numbered his First, in C minor, was not just the work of a 15-year-old boy, but already his thirteenth work in the genre (if one counts his twelve string symphonies too). His background in the large-scale chamber music of his string symphonies perhaps makes it all the more pertinent to approach his oeuvre with a chamber orchestra, not with the usual, heavy, late-Romantic orchestral apparatus. This first edition in the series features a bridging work that is not just the obligatory solo concerto such as one might expect in a concert programme, but a work in a genre popular with Romantic composers such as Schumann and Weber, namely a Konzertst�ck or concert piece. Furthermore, ORFEO is delighted to be able to present not just a first-class soloist here, but also a work written especially for him by the Artistic Director of the project, namely J�rg Widmann's ad absurdam. It takes a masterly instrumentalist to divine and explore the truly transcendental possibilities and musical intelligence that this music presents. Nakariakov's mastery of circular breathing is employed here in particular, and typical of J�rg Widmann's alert creative spirit that he makes use of these unique opportunities with a dash of Romantic irony, heightening them to the point of absurdity - as the title suggests.