This is a new installment in the SWR Vokalensemble's country series. It contains excellent performances of rarely performed and recorded choral works. The SWR Vokalensemble is among the best choirs in the world. The accompanying booklet contains the Japanese texts of the works. In it's more than 2000-year history Japan has developed it's own, independent music, whose principal means of expression are single tones and tonal color, which is used in quite a broad spectrum, including sounds. References to nature and it's sounds is another aspect of great significance. This album presents a selection of choral works which were composed after 1950, at a time when a lot of Japanese composers began to free themselves from European and American music as their model and started to develop individual styles. In doing so, they also used elements of Japan's musical tradition and integrated them into their own musical language in various ways.

This is the first release from the recently formed SWR Symphonieorchester Stuttgart, and there was good reason for it to be a performance of a Shostakovich symphony. This live recording under the experienced baton of Eliahu Inbal shows the extraordinary level at which this orchestra is performing after only five years of existence! Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony focuses on the so-called St Petersburg Bloody Sunday which, according to the Julian calendar, took place on 9 January 1905. Following the format of a classical symphony, the work has four movements; these follow one another without a break, creating a continuous narrative flow.

This is the first release from the recently formed SWR Symphonieorchester Stuttgart, and there was good reason for it to be a performance of a Shostakovich symphony. This live recording under the experienced baton of Eliahu Inbal shows the extraordinary level at which this orchestra is performing after only five years of existence! Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony focuses on the so-called St Petersburg Bloody Sunday which, according to the Julian calendar, took place on 9 January 1905. Following the format of a classical symphony, the work has four movements; these follow one another without a break, creating a continuous narrative flow. There’s no denying that the 11th Symphony is not a symphony in the classic sense but rather a symphonic poem or programme symphony. Shostakovich always needed an external subject for his compositions to express the central idea of his music. The SWR Symphonieorchester Stuttgart powerfully expresses the underlying ideas of the work with complete conviction.