Rudolf Kempe, Conductor
MÜNCHNER PHILHARMONIKER
A new artist has been added to the catalogue of the orchestra’s own label »MPHIL«: for the first time, the label is releasing recordings of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Rudolf Kempe.
As with all of the label’s archive releases, the stereo tapes stored in the archives of Bayerischer Rundfunk were restored and digitised using a complex process for this album. For users of digital streaming platforms, the album is thus also available as an immersive audio experience.
The double CD contains Three previously unreleased live recordings from 1971 and 1973 offer an exemplary insight into the breadth of Richard Strauss’s output as a composer, ranging from the monumental scale and metaphysical aspirations of the Alpine Symphony to the otherworldly sonorities and elegiac intimacy of Metamorphosen, via the wit and elegance of his mock-Baroque music to Molière’s comedy Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. Kempe, whose distinctive readings are remarkable for their structural clarity and for the translucency of the sound-world that they inhabit, qualities that are combined here with a subtle sense of drama. The result not only documents Kempe’s era with the orchestra, it also offers a timeless homage to one of the leading Straussians of the twentieth century.