Credits:

Stephen Rice

Description:

Kurt Sanderling (1912-2011), a famous German conductor, studied music at the Gimnasium in Königsberg from the age of 10. In 1931, at the age of 19, he became a chorépétite at the Staatsoper Berlin, but was persecuted by the Nazis and fled to the Soviet Union. There he studied as an assistant conductor with the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 1960, he returned to East Germany and became the artistic director and principal conductor of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. He is known for his dramatic improvement of the orchestra's technique.He went on to perform with the Staatskapelle Dresden and the Philharmonia Orchestra, as well as with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra and the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, where he gave excellent performances until 2002, when he announced his retirement from conducting. He was a master of Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Mahler, and other late Romantic works, but he was not very active in recording, so his performances can only be heard on a few recordings, He was known for his passionate and sensitive expression, especially the beautiful sound of stringed instruments. In this performance with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, the two works that have been his forte since his youth, Rachmaninoff and Mussorgsky, are featured, and we can fully hear the unwavering interpretation of Sanderling, who was praised as "the authority on Rachmaninoff.Digitally remastered from the original tapes in the SWR collection. Naxos Japan