Sometimes great things are worth waiting for... It has been nearly ten years since the renowned Philadelphia Orchestra made new recordings available on a regular and worldwide basis. This is Ondine’s first release in its new groundbreaking partnership with The Philadelphia Orchestra, which calls for a minimum of three recordings to be released per year. The partnership agreement has attracted international media attention, including major articles throughout the international press (e.g. The Wall Street Journal, July 21, 2005; Gramophone, July 2005).

This release is also the first recording of conductor Christoph Eschenbach with The Philadelphia Orchestra, of which he became musical director in September 2003. Christoph Eschenbach holds a reputation as one of today’s greatest champions of new and undiscovered repertoire. This CD combines a showpiece feature, Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, with two relatively unknown masterpieces, Klein’s Partita for Strings and Martinu’s Memorial to Lidice. The finest SACD recording technology highlights the unique spirit of a live-performance of this legendary orchestra, as well as its world-renowned ’Philadelphia Sound’. The live-captured concerts were highly acclaimed by The Philadelphia Inquirer (May 7, 2005).

This recording was released in 2005 in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II. All three works presented on this disc were written by composers affected by the Nazi regime. Bartók wrote his Concerto for Orchestra (1943) during self-imposed US exile; Martinu composed Memorial to Lidice (1943) to honour the victims of the massacre of an entire village; the Partita for Strings, arranged in 1990 by the Czech composer Vojtech Saudek after the String Trio (1944), is Gideon Klein’s last work which he completed shortly before he was transported to Auschwitz.