As with previous PentaTone Classics releases, the new album is a single inventory release, available only as a Hybrid Layer Multichannel SACD. The disc features Multichannel SACD, Stereo SACD and Stereo CD versions of the music on the album. It is playable on CD and SACD equipment.

Comments by the Conductor
PentaTone provided these comments from conductor Yakov Kreizberg about this new PentaTone Multichannel SACD recording of the Schmidt: Symphony No. 4 and the Orchestral Music from Notre Dame: “Franz Schmidt’s Fourth Symphony is very dear to me. It is a symphony about love, death and mourning. The first time I heard it, I was struck by its beauty, powerful emotions and highly individual language. Since then I have performed this magnificent and unjustly neglected work many times all over the world, including Vienna, where this work was given its premiиre.

I was thrilled to be able to conduct this symphony in the wonderful acoustics of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra in my first concert following my appointment as its new chief conductor. Schmidt’s music was a real discovery for musicians and audience alike, and everybody was captivated by the beauty and intensity of the score.

A few months later, we recorded the symphony together with exciting excerpts from Schmidt’s opera Notre Dame. It is the first recording in a series of Super Audio CDs for the Pentatone label made in the orchestra’s own hall: the monumental Beurs van Berlage, which was built around the same time this music was written. I hope some of the excitement we felt in the course of this project will also come across in this recording.”

Information on the Performers
PentaTone says that “It could have been a slogan from a TV Commercial: ‘the most versatile orchestra in the country’, but in the case of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra Amsterdam this title is entirely justified. No other orchestra in the Netherlands covers such a broad range of repertoire like the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra Amsterdam does.
With 130 musicians the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra is the largest orchestral organization in the Netherlands.”

As for conductor Yakov Kreizberg, PentaTone notes that: “During the last decade Russian-born conductor Yakov Kreizberg has established a superb international reputation in the opera house and on the concert podium. In September 2003, Hartmut Haenchen will be succeeded as conductor of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra by the dynamic Russian born American conductor Yakov Kreizberg. With Kreizberg the orchestra will broaden its repertoire, raise its international profile and start on a prestigious recording scheme.”

Album Selections
Schmidt: Symphony No. 4 in C (1933)
1. Allegro molto moderato 14.45
2. Adagio 13. 02
3. Molto vivace 14. 54
4. Allegro molto moderato 2. 58
Orchestral Music from “Notre Dame” (1902-1904)
5. Introduction 4. 22
6. Intermezzo 4. 55
7. Carnival Music 5. 21

Album Performers
Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra Amsterdam, Conducted by Yakov Kreizberg
Vadim Tsibulevsky, concertmaster
Christiaan Louwens, cello-solo
Ad Welleman, trumpet-solo