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Alessandro Crudele’s second album on Linn Records – featuring Britten’s Four Sea Interludes and Elgar’s Violin Concerto performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra with Michael Barenboim as soloist – is released worldwide today, 8 September 2023. It is available on streaming platforms and in stores:

Apple Music
Spotify
Amazon Music
Idagio
Linn Records
Outhere Music
Other platforms and stores

The album was recorded exactly one year ago at the Blackheat Halls in London. Read how Linn Records describes this second discographic project with Alessandro Crudele:

After an acclaimed Respighi recording, Alessandro Crudele makes his second appearance on Linn, this time teaming up with violinist Michael Barenboim who makes his Linn debut, and the Philharmonia Orchestra. The programme offers a glimpse of two contrasting, yet defining figures of British music. Depicting an outsider within an isolated community – very much reflecting Britten’s situation at the time of its composition – Peter Grimes remains his most performed opera. Following its success, Britten extracted four ‘interludes’: brilliantly orchestrated portraits of the North Sea, performed here with Crudele’s distinctive mastery of orchestral colours. The self-taught Elgar was somewhat reluctant to compose a concerto for violin, but after meeting the great Fritz Kreisler he came to create ‘an immortal work’, the Austrian violinist’s own words. Benefiting from recent live performances, the execution brings all the facets of the work to light and successfully blends the solo part with the orchestral accompaniment in a show of perfect symbiosis.

Alessandro has been happily living his paternity leave for a few months now, enjoying the first moments of life of his first-born daughter Ambra.
In the meantime, some concerts have been announced for his next season, which will be full of great highlights:
On 24 September 2023, Alessandro will open the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Eastbourne season with a programme that includes Mendelssohn’s Calm sea and prosperous voyage, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4, and Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, with violinist Chloë Hanslip.
On 12 October 2023, he will conduct the Philharmonia Orchestra in a concert at London’s Britten Theater with music by Britten, Elgar, and Respighi.
Again, with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Alessandro will be engaged in the closing concert of their season in Bedford on 10 May 2024.
The programme will include Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony and Mozart’s Piano concerto K451 with Martin Helmchen.
Other numerous engagements, to be announced soon, will see him travel to Germany, the Czech Republic, Turkey, and see him return to Asia, after the long break due to the pandemic.

On September 7^th and 8^th, Alessandro Crudele will conduct the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Blackheath Halls (London) for his second discographic project with Linn Records.

He will record a programme with an English flavour: Four Sea Interludes (from Peter Grimes) by Benjamin Britten and Edward Elgar’s majestic Violin Concerto, along with Michael Barenboim as soloist.

This recording follows Alessandro’s very successful discographic debut with Linn Records: his Respighi album with the London Philharmonic Orchestra – released in June 2022 –  was extremely well received by the international press. 

You can stream or download it here.

The first impressions from the international press are unanimously enthusiastic about Alessandro Crudele’s Respighi album with the London Philharmonic Orchestra on Linn Records.

Andrew McGregor said on BBC Radio 3:

You might want to sample a new recording of Ottorino Respighi from the London Philharmonic conducted by Alessandro Crudele. Respighi’s Pines of Rome is the big hit here, but the other two pieces are major reasons to investigate I think – comparative rarities: Brazilian Impressions and Belkis, Queen of Sheba, one of Respighi’s last major works for enormous forces. The four-movement suite from Belkis draws outstanding playing from the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Alessandro Crudele.

Matthias Käther said in RBB Kultur “Meine Musik” podcast:

[…] Crudele elaborates the quiet, sensual and exotic aspects of this music better than Muti, more convincingly. […] Thanks Linn for this fine album!

Music critic Paolo Locatelli wrote on Classic Voice:

Here, then, is Alessandro Crudele’s debut disc, at the helm of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, which, besides being a great listen, goes some way towards filling a gap. And above all, it does so with great class. Crudele’s Respighi is colourful and virtuoso, imaginative and iridescent. […] This is helped by the orchestra, which has flexibility and plenty of quality to spare. And what you hear is thus a Respighi who combines a lucidity of radiographic analysis with a springy discursiveness.

Sven Kerkhoff wrote on Musik an sich:

Here, Alessandro Crudele is a truly expert administrator who works with a sure instinct and resists the temptation to run after the flashy effect by applying too much colour.

On Suonare News, Angelo Foletto wrote:

An incisively beautiful reading key.

Finally, the French newspaper La Voix du Nord wrote:

Italian conductor Alessandro Crudele knows this soundworld inside out. With his skilful London orchestra, he never slips into the easy spectacle, so as to showcase all the colours and feelings which this music provides.

Last but not least, the album has been nominated for The German Record Critics’ Award (Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik) – the most important prize dedicated to recordings in Germany. The winner will be announced on August 15.

Alessandro Crudele’s debut album on Linn Records – featuring music by Respighi performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra – is released worldwide today, 3 June 2022. It is available on streaming platforms and in stores:

The album was recorded last October at the Henry Wood Hall in London and represents a compendium of programmatic works spanning the artistic life of Ottorino Respighi:

This colourful journey across different times and places marks the first recording of Italian conductor Alessandro Crudele and the London Philharmonic Orchestra for Linn. At the helm of the flamboyant LPO the versatile conductor has recorded a compendium of programmatic works spanning the artistic life of Ottorino Respighi. Starting with one of his first masterpieces, the evocative and at times epic Pini di Roma is a botanical journey through Rome at different times of the day. The more impressionistic, travelogue Impressioni brasiliane, the result of a trip Respighi made in Brazil, is suffused with local music and culture and dates from the mature years of the composer. Much in the same vein, the late ballet Belkis, regina di Saba describes a mythological voyage this time; the little-known work recounts the Queen’s route across the desert to meet Solomon, King of Israel, with whom she is in love.

Alessandro Crudele travels to Bulgaria this month to make his debut with the Sofia Philharmonic, one of the most prestigious orchestras in Eastern Europe, founded in 1928. The concert will take place on March 10^th, 2022, in the Bulgaria Concert Hall and will feature music by Camille Saint-Saëns – the Piano concerto no. 5 “The Egyptian”, with young soloist Emanuil Ivanov, winner of the 62nd Ferruccio Busoni competition – and Cesar Franck’s Symphony in D minor.

The concert will also be live-streamed: info here.

This important debut expands Alessandro Crudele’s worldwide engagement and affirms his presence in Easter Europe, where he also conducted orchestras such has the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra, the Janacek Philharmonic, the Prague Symphony Orchestra FOK and the Brno Philharmonic just to mention a few. 

On 17th and 22nd January 2022, Alessandro Crudele comes back on the podium of the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen for the New Year’s Concert with the star saxophonist Asya Fateyeva. The concert will be presented in the magnificent acoustic of the Stadthalle in Reutlingen and will be repeated in the town of Nagold, on the border of the Northern Black Forest.

The “pictorial” programme, inspired by ballet, film music and visual art, includes Spectre of the Rose Wlatz by American avant-gard composer George Antheil, La création du monde by Darius Milhaud, Jacques Ibert’s Concertino da camera for alto saxophone and orchestra and Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, orchestrated by Ravel.

Crudele has already successfully conducted last New Year’s Concert of the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen – a live streamed concert due to the Covid-19 restrictions – receiving enthusiastic reviews by the German press. Christoph B. Ströhle described the concert on the Reutlingen General-Anzeiger as “a balm for the corona-afflicted souls”.

This month, Alessandro Crudele comes back on the podium for a double appointment with the Orchesterzentrum|NRW, a joint institution of the four state colleges of music in North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) and the first inter-college training center in Europe for future orchestral musicians. He will conduct Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, the world’s most famous musical fairy tale.  

The first concert will be held at the Orchesterzentrum NRW’s Konzerthaus in Dortmund on Saturday 27^th, November with Tilmann Böttcher as narrator. The second one, on Sunday 28^th, will take place in the Alfried Krupp Saal of the Philarmonie Essen with the famous Götz Alsmann as narrator, who “will lend his individual charming and humorous touch to the well-known story”, as the Theater website promises.

Keen to nurture young musicians, Crudele has devoted his time to working with young artists since the very beginning of his career; and collaboration with youth orchestras is still one of his priorities. From 2003 to 2006, Alessandro was a regular guest of the Orchestra dell’Accademia del Teatro alla Scala, and in 2014/2015 he conducted the Jeune Orchestre International de Monte-Carlo, an orchestra that includes some of the best young musicians from across Europe. 

These concerts with the Orchesterzentrum|NRW consolidates Alessandro Crudele’s commitment with youth orchestras. The Orchesterzentrum|NRW offers the master’s degree Programme “Orchestra Playing”, in which students are provided over the course of four semesters with practical and targeted preparation for a career in renowned orchestras. With numerous public chamber and symphonic concerts, the Orchesterzentrum|NRW provides concertgoers and music-lovers with the opportunity to experience the musical results of the training courses, to follow the progress of the young musicians and to take advantage of an excellent and varied range of concerts, mostly free of charge.