A pair of concerts recorded by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra will be available on Friday, Sept. 15, exclusively on Apple Music Classical.
The recordings – David Lang’s “man made” and Christopher Rouse’s Symphony No. 6 – serve as a celebration of the talented group of CSO musicians. But they’re also an informal send-off for the orchestra’s longtime music director, Louis Langrée.
The CSO recorded both albums at Music Hall in Dolby Atmos spatial audio in the hopes of providing what the organization called “an immersive 3D listening experience.”
The albums will be available through Apple Music Classical, a platform featuring more than 5 million tracks, 120,000-plus works, 400,000 movements and 20,000 composers. Apple Music subscribers can download and use the Apple Music Classical app as part of their existing subscription at no additional cost.
“Commissioning and championing new music have been a vital part of my musical mission since I first came to Cincinnati, and collaborating with the CSO on our bold and boundary-pushing programming has been one of the great joys of my time here,” said Langrée, who’s been with the CSO since 2013.
Langrée and his CSO colleagues recorded and produced the albums over the past three years. The CSO described the albums in part as a tribute to the maestro’s “transformational impact on the orchestra” during his 11-year tenure as music director.
By the conclusion of this season, Langrée will have appointed between a third and a half of the CSO’s current musicians. Those additions include Stefani Matsuo, the orchestra’s first female concertmaster.
Langrée has commissioned 65 new works and conducted 27 world premieres during his time leading the music development program at CSO.
These two newest recordings add to the more than 200 albums released by the orchestra since 1917. They’re its first full-orchestra releases since its Grammy-nominated “Transatlantic” album in 2019.
Langrée described making these recordings as a way to “(breathe) new life into important music.”
Lang’s “man made” was recorded in September 2021. It’s the second of Lang’s works recorded by the CSO, with the first being the world premiere of “Mountain” on the orchestra’s 2014 album “Hallowed Ground,” Langrée’s first recording with the CSO. “Man made” features the CSO and its 2015 and 2021 MusicNOW collaborators Sō Percussion.
The CSO commissioned Rouse’s Symphony No. 6 as part of its 125th anniversary celebration in 2019, and was the composer’s final work, completed just weeks prior to his passing, and its premiere, in September 2019. The CSO recorded Symphony No. 6 over the course of three days last fall.
“The audience’s receptiveness and willingness to follow us on this journey, and the extraordinary performances and recordings that have come out as the result of it, leave a legacy that we can all be proud of – and these two works are no exception,” Langrée said.