Produced by
Anton Berthold, Werner Dabringhaus, Reimund Grimm
With undogmatic lightness.
Do.gma Chamber Orchestra debuts with Tschaikowsky
Do.gma is a young, dynamic, highly professional orchestra, founded in 2004 by Mikhail Gurewitsch, then concert master of the Baden Württemberg Chamber Orchestra "I Sedici".
The orchestra aims to bring classical music to a new generation of listeners. Its young members interpret classical music for a modern day audience. To show how affective such an approach can be, the orchestra has chosen "Serenade for Strings" and the "Souvenir de Florence" by P.I. Tschaikowsky. These fascinating pieces have been recorded many times before, in a variety of styles. Do.gma invites you to compare its recording with those previously made.
The orchestra takes to heart the original intentions of the composer, yet frees the artistic core of the music to reach and speak to a younger generation. The aim is not only to inspire young people but also established classical music enthusiasts.
Two of Tschaikowsky's best know works are newly presented by the do.gma Chamber Orchestra: the popular Serenade for Strings and the lyrical, virtuoso Souvenir de Florence. do.gma, with its warm, yet surprisingly lean orchestral tone, turns the way we usually think of the Russian soul on its head. The young musicians, in this SACD production, succeed in freeing the core of the piece from previous sugary musical interpretations and so come closer to Tchaikowsky's own intentions. He conceived much of his large-scale work, in the first instance, as delicate chamber music composition.
Delicacy certainly applies to his Serenade. In 1880 Tschaikowsky wrote to a string quintet that was later to play the Serenade, his favourite piece : "I love this Serenade beyond all measure..." Souvenir de Florence was begun 10 years earlier, but the sextet had not progressed much beyond sketches. It was 22 years later in 1892 that a rapturous St. Petersburg public could hear the premiere of the work, which to the present day, unlike hardly any other music, can communicate depth and joie de vivre. The do.gma Chamber Orchestra tackles both of these powerful pieces with astonishing ease.
These finely controlled recordings have markedly different instrumental line-ups: Souvenir is produced in the usual sextet formation. The whole stage is set into motion by motifs composed to move through the particular instrumental positioning. The musicians play the Serenade with the 1st and 2nd violins placed opposite each other This allows significantly greater lucidity, but also has an astonishingly taut symphonic impact.
The result: with do.gma#1 the young chamber orchestra achieve a successful debut, surprising us with its sprit, a fascinating freshness and an undogmatic lightness.
