Music & Soundtracks
Peter Breiner: Slovak Dances, Naughty & Sad
Peter Breiner is one of the world’s most performed composers/arrangers, with a boundless musicality that has led him to create fusions of music from a variety of genres. Drawing on traditions established by Brahms and Dvořák and showcasing leading folk music soloists, his Slovak Dances are an exuberant and kaleidoscopic monument rooted in Slovak musical folklore. It comprises 16 symphonic fantasias on songs that evoke varying emotions with an autobiographical element that follows Breiner’s life from his origins in Humenné and Košice to New York.
Beatles Go Baroque, Vol. 2
Classical musicians have always recognized the musicality and originality of The Beatles’ songs, Leonard Bernstein declaring the Lennon-McCartney composing team ‘the Schuberts of our time’. This sequel to Peter Breiner’s multi-platinum Beatles Go Baroque (Naxos 8.555010) takes the original concept even further, keeping 18th-century masterpieces such as Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons and Bach’s famously stylish and beautiful Violin Concerto No. 1 largely intact, elegantly combining them with The Beatles’ most enduring melodies to create a joyously genuine 21st-century mashup.
Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition (Orchestrated by Peter Breiner)
Originally written as a set of piano pieces, Mussorgsky’s splendid Pictures at an Exhibition translates the artistry of the composer’s friend Victor Hartmann into unforgettable music. Peter Breiner’s new orchestration creates a showpiece for our times, achieving contemporary sounds through unusual instrumental combinations, right up to a spectacular Great Gate of Kiev performed by 104 musicians. Mussorgsky’s remarkable song cycles contrast encounters with death against the often uneasy world of children in The Nursery.
Tchaikovsky: The Queen of Spades - Voyevoda Suites
Slovak-born composer and conductor Peter Breiner has received considerable international acclaim for his adaptations, and his Tchaikovsky arrangements are particularly impressive examples of his art. He has already arranged The Seasons (8.553510) and Songs (8.555332) but here he turns to opera. With deftness and subtlety he has taken motifs from Tchaikovsky’s first opera Voyevoda to craft six richly scored movements, two of which have rôles for solo strings. The Queen of Spades was composed in 1890 and Breiner’s selections fully explore the music’s romance and drama in their new form.
Janacek, L.: Operatic Orchestral Suites, Vol. 3 - the Cunning Little Vixen / From the House of the Dead
With this disc Naxos completes its acclaimed recordings of Peter Breiner’s powerful and evocative orchestral suites from Janáček’s operas. In very different ways, The Cunning Little Vixen and From the House of the Dead both reflect on love and loneliness, life and death, good, evil and the human condition, with some of the composer’s most effective music. Warmly welcomed as ‘refreshingly new’, Vol. 1: Jenůfa, The Excursions of Mr Brouček (8.570555) and Vol. 2: Kát’a Kabanová and The Makropulos Affair (8.570556) are also available.
Janacek, L.: Operatic Orchestral Suites, Vol. 2 - Kát'a Kabanová / The Makropulos Affair
Following the release of their stunning recording of Janáček’s Operatic Orchestral Suites, Vol. 1 (Jenůfa, The Excursions of Mr Brouček) on 8.570555, Peter Breiner conducts his insightful suites from two popular Janáček operas—Kát’a Kabanová and The Makropulos Affair—with New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster Vesa-Matti Leppänen again playing a featured role. Czechoslovakian-born Breiner is ideally placed to interpret the music of his innovative compatriot.
Janacek, L.: Operatic Orchestral Suites, Vol. 1 - Jenufa / The Excursions of Mr Broucek
The operas of Leoš Janáček have been gaining their rightful place in major opera houses the world over. First staged in 1904, Jenůfa, a powerful tragedy set in a Moravian village, launched Janáček’s operatic career. The Excursions of Mr Brouček, which had its première in 1920, is his most candidly satirical opera, rich in high jinks as the bumptious Prague publican travels to the Moon and back to the 15th century. Peter Breiner, who created the compelling orchestral suites heard on this disc, conducts these world première recordings.
Brahms: Symphony No. 4 - Hungarian Dances Nos. 2, 4-9
The fourth and final release in the major new Naxos cycle of Brahms Symphonies featuring the London Philharmonic and Marin Alsop presents the Symphony No. 4, which won immediate success at the time of its 1885 première and was praised by the critic Hanslick for its demonstration of the composer’s mastery of ‘all the secrets of counterpoint, harmony and invention’. It is coupled with seven of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances imaginatively orchestrated by Peter Breiner in a special Naxos commission for this recording.
Beatles Go Baroque, Vol. 1
Beatles Go Baroque is an anachronistic Magical Mystery Tour through the well-thumbed pages of the Lennon and McCartney songbook. Concerto Grosso No. 1, in the style of Georg Frideric Handel, finds its predictable, if aptly chosen Overture (Track 1) in She Loves You. Recorded by the Fab Four in July 1963, the A side of their fourth single soon became a proud anthem of Swingin' 60s pop-art and the decidedly non- belligerent war-cry of a generation given over to flower-power spontaneity, psychedelia, acid and yeah yeah music. The alternation of various individual instruments in concert with full ensemble justifies the subtitles of this and the other Concerti Grossi.
Gershwin for Trumpet
Gershwin, along with Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and Richard Rodgers contributed more to popular song in the 20th century than any other composer. His songs defined an era and, adopted as jazz standards and immortalised by such performers as Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland and Fred Astaire, now have a global resonance. Here, some of his most popular songs including The man I love, It ain’t necessarily so and They can’t take that away from me are presented in dazzling arrangements for trumpet and piano by Peter Breiner and Juraj Bartos.
"...there must be something..." Peter Breiner
Sonata Ostinata for Violin, Cello and Piano & To Dear Mr Bach on his Birthday
Artists: Tomas Dratva (Piano); Jean-Christophe Gawrysiak (Violin); Dieter Hilpert (Cello)
Ensemble: Trio Animae
Conductor: Peter Breiner
Concerto for Piano, Violin, Cello and Orchestra "...THERE MUST BE SOMETHING..."
Artists: Tomas Dratva (Piano); Jean-Christophe Gawrysiak (Violin); Dieter Hilpert (Cello)
Ensembles: Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra, Kosice; Trio Animae
Conductor: Peter Breiner
Triango Slovakia Tour 2011
Artists: Peter Breiner (Piano); Stanislav Paluch (Violin); Irina Chirkova (Cello); Boris Lenko (Accordion)
Ensemble: Triango
Arranger: Peter Breiner
Triango
Artists: Peter Breiner (Piano); Stano Palúch (Violin); Boris Lenko (Accordion)
Ansemble: Triango
A Christmas Choral Spectacular
There have been so many recordings of holiday music using large chorus and orchestra that it is difficult to avoid clichés in making a new one. But A Christmas Choral Spectacular sidesteps the overly familiar, and the credit for this must go to conductor Peter Breiner, who wrote all of the arrangements. (Goodsound.com, Dec'05)
Christmas Goes Baroque 2
In Christmas Goes Baroque II the Slovak musician Peter Breiner has made again witty arrangements of popular Christmas music in the style of major Baroque composers flourishing in the first part of the eighteenth century, among whom Johann Sebastian Bach, Handel and Vivaldi are pre-eminent. Echoes of Bach dominate "The Virgin Mary Had A Baby Boy, with more than a touch of a Brandenburg Concerto for "Away in a Manger".
Christmas Goes Baroque 1
The volume of the Naxos Musical Journey takes you on a magical European holiday tour swept up by the sounds of such holiday favorites as “Jingle Bells”, “Silent Night,” “The First Noel,” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” “O Tannenbaum” and many more. These eternal favourites are performed in the baroque style of Bach, Handel and Vivaldi – the sound of music as timeless as Christmas itself.
Tchaikovsky: None But the Lonely Heart
"...The 22 songs that Peter Breiner has transcribed here for violin and orchestra, all things considered result in a charming, varied and very colourful suite of sweetly-melancholy melodies, that, gorgeously interpreted, can leave no one untouched. A beautiful CD!" (Rémy Franck, Pizzicato, January 2002)
TCHAIKOVSKY: Seasons (The) (arr. for violin and orchestra)
The Seasons were written between December 1875 and November 1876 in response to a commission from Nikolay Bernard, editor of the periodical Nouvelliste. The resulting collection, however reluctant the composer may have been, has much charm, as it takes the listener through the year, from the fireside in January, through Carnival, the song of the lark, April snowdrops and the nights of May, to the Barcarolle of June, the cutter of the hay, harvest, hunting, October autumn, the November Troïka and to Christmas.
Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1 / Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 20
Peter Breiner
Zuzana Paulechava
Philharmonia Cassovia
Otakar Trhlik
Russian Romance
The repertoire of this disc is drawn from the cream of Russian folk and folk-inspired music, brimming with melody and saturated in emotions ranging from the longings of love to boisterous bacchanalia.
Haydn: Cello Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 / Boccherini: Cello Concerto in B-Flat Major
Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C Major is in the usual three movements. The first of these opens with an orchestral introduction after which the soloist enters in the grand style associated with this choice of key for the cello, its most resonant. Compositions by Boccherini for the cello include a number of quintets, with formidable parts for the first of the two cellos employed, as well as a number of other examples of chamber music. Recent scholars list eleven concertos for the cello, of which the present work is the ninth.
Granados: Spanish Dances / Escenas Poeticas
The Danzas españolas, written for piano, have appeared in various subsequent arrangements. The dances are well suited to the guitar, making use as they do, of idiomatic material most natural to that instrument. They are otherwise varied in character, from the opening Minuet and the Orientale, with its ostinato accompaniment, to a Zarabanda, a Villanesca with a minor central section entitled Canción y estribillo, a fifth Andaluza, followed by a jota from Aragon, a Valenciana, an Asturiana, a dance from Mallorca, a tenth Danza triste, a Zambra and a final Arabesca.
Bizet- Breiner: Carmen Concerto / Granados: Valses Poeticos
Granados wrote the Valses poéticos in 1887 for solo piano, and it was one of his earliest works. It is in seven contrasting sections, all quite short, with two lasting under one minute. They are lightweight and of infinite charm, and have already attracted a number of arrangements including those for guitar. Here Breiner has created a work for guitar and orchestra in eight sections, the score concluding with a repeat of the opening waltz.
Peter Breiner: Guitaralia Notturna for Guitar Quartet and Orchestra
To write the composition was actually quite easy - I sat down at the desk and two weeks later the composition was finished. Similar to several compositions from this period, it is a bit darker, maybe more serious than my preceding compositions. And I am very satisfied with the way the Bratislava Guitar Quartet plays it. They make it into better music, than it really is. (Peter Breiner)
Peter Breiner: The Story, Oratorio for 5 Solos
Breiner: The Story, Oratorio for 5 Soloists, 2 Choirs and large Orchestra
Artists: Adriana Kohútková (Soprano); Hana Stolfova-Bandova (Alto); Ludovit Ludha (Tenor); Robert Pomakov (Bass)
Ensembles: Slovak Radio Children Chorus; Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra; Slovak State Philharmonic Chorus
Conductor: Peter Breiner
Peter Breiner: Battle from a Distance, symphonic poem for large Orchestra
Breiner: Battle From a Distance, Symphonic Poem for large Orchestra
Ensemble: Slovak Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Peter Breiner
Peter Breiner: Concerto for Giora and Orchestra (a clarinet concerto)
Breiner: Concerto for Giora and Orchestra (a Clarinet Concerto)
Artist: Giora Feidman (Clarinet)
Ensemble: Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra, Kosice
Conductor: Peter Breiner
