When the revered writer Alessandro Manzoni died in 1873, Verdi was unable to bring himself to attend the funeral. Instead he composed his monumental Messa da Requiem in Manzoni’s memory and conducted its first performance on the first anniversary of the writer’s death. In addition to its profound spirituality, the work also brings together all the finest qualities familiar from Verdi’s operas, qualities that include endless melodic lines and powerful musico-dramatic effects. The present performance was recorded in Los Angeles’s legendary Hollywood Bowl in August 2013 and brought together three superstars from the world of music: the conductor Gustavo Dudamel, the tenor Vittorio Grigolo and the bass-baritone Ildebrando D’Arcangelo, all of them at the top of their form. “It was an important and exceptional evening … That experience involved a radical and wondrous rethinking of the Requiem on Dudamel‘s part.” Los Angeles Times
Elbphilharmonie Hamburg – Grand Opening Concert
The Elbphilharmonie, the “hall of wonders” (The Guardian), is undoubtedly the new landmark of Hamburg, a monumental synthesis of breath-taking architecture, a unique location and a world-class concert hall. In varying instrumentation the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra under the baton of Principal Conductor Thomas Hengelbrock and several top-class soloists explores in the opening concert the possibilities of the Elbphilharmonie’s Grand Hall and ist acoustics with an exciting programme that spans across all musical eras, from the Renaissance to the present. It culminates in a brand-new commissioned work, created especially for this occasion by the most important living German composer, Wolfgang Rihm.
“A striking building, a scintillating concert!” (The New York Times). BONUS: This documentary accompanies the formation process of this grand building, from the first sketch plans to the rehearsals before it´s festive inauguration and includes statements by the architects Pierre de Meuron and Jacques Herzog, the acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota, Christoph Lieben-Seutter, Thomas Hengelbrock and more.
Kit Armstrong: Bach´s Goldberg Variations and its predecessors
When Kit Armstrong was only 14, he overcame his mentor Alfred Brendel’s reluctance to take on pupils. Said Brendel: “He played so beautifully that I thought to myself, ‘I have to make time for him.’ It was a performance that really led you from the first to the last note.” Soon Armstrong was winning international prizes both as pianist and as composer and was appearing as soloist at some of the world’s foremost venues. At the Concertgebouw, Armstrong mesmerized his audience with Bach’s monumental Goldberg Variations – preceded by earlier polyphonic variation masterpieces by William Byrd, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and John Bull. “Enlightening and exhilarating.” (Revierpassagen). “Armstrong’s phenomenal recital was so exceptional that every attempt to describe it falls short.” (NRC)
Hamlet
This production “offers all an Italian-opera-lover could possibly desire” wrote the FAZ after the revival of this “forgotten gem” at the Bregenz Festival. The festival continued ist rediscovery series with “Amleto/Hamlet”, an opera by Verdi contemporaries Franco Faccio and Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet. Premiered in 1865 in Genoa and restaged in 1871 at Milano’s La Scala, “Hamlet” was only revived in 2014 concertante in the US before ist “triumphal rebirth” (Deutschlandradio Kultur) at the Bregenz Festival, where the opera was also recorded for the first time ever. Faccio, who conducted the first performance of Verdi’s Aida in Italy and the world premiere of Otello, and Boito, Verdi’s librettist of Otello and Falstaff, skillfully and effectively challenge the conventions of Italian opera, which they wanted to revitalize by infusing it with the spirit of Shakespeare’s drama. Anticipating the musical language of later Italian verismo composers, the opera combines lovely musical interludes with superb vocal writing. Heading a supreme cast, Pavel Cernoch as Amleto delivers superbly, “using his colorful tenor skillfully to develop the transformation of the insecure youngling to the ice-cold avenger” (NZZ) and “granting the work large scale” (Abendzeitung). Under the baton of Paolo Carignani with the Vienna Symphoniker and Prague Philharmonic Choir “it carried terrific punch (The Telegraph)”. Olivier Tambosi’s “excellent staging served it well, with a clear focus on the high points (The Telegraph)”. “In the intermission and at the end there was vociferous enthusiasm of the audience for the late first encounter with this music” (Neue Musikzeitung). “There is a lot of exciting music to discover in this opera…What an amazing richness in ideas! This opera is worth to be rediscovered.” (SZ) // “Faccio’s opera is the one that should be performed, and if plans are not already afoot to bring it to the land of Shakespeare, they certainly should be.“ (The Telegraph) // “The Shakespeare year now has a breathtaking Shakespeare rediscovery. Yes, the musically convincing, pompous Hamlet opera does exist!” (FAZ)
Bruckner Symphony No. 3
Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden already released the Bruckner symphonies Nos. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 and continue their Bruckner Cycle at the Philharmonie in Munich with a “radiant and majestic” (The Guardian) performance of Symphony No. 3, also known as “Wagner Symphony”. Thielemann, a more than experienced Bruckner interpreter, has once again proven himself as the top of his class, with masterly control over a shining wind section, which “pushed the audience deeply into their seats”. With “moments of disruptive suspense and intense audio density he displays the full musical maelstrom of Bruckners Symphony No. 3” (Münchner Merkur). „Thielemann and the Dresdeners played the Third Symphony … here radiant and majestic, clean ensemble giving a welcome illusion of structural clarity.” (The Guardian about the performance at the Proms) „… the orchestra unfolds from the beginning in fullest splendor“. (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
Brahms The Complete Symphonies
Before moving into the Elbphilharmonie, chief conductor Thomas Hengelbrock and his NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester performed a “Brahms Marathon” with all four symphonies of the Hamburg-born composer in the historic Laeiszhalle. Brahms’ music has always played an important role in the history of the orchestra, whose defining interpretations of the symphonies by Brahms and Bruckner have become the ensemble’s artistic hallmark. The orchestra, founded in 1945, was led by outstanding conductors such as Günter Wand, Christoph Eschenbach and Christoph von Dohnanyi. Since 2011, chief conductor Thomas Hengelbrock is in charge of continuing the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester’s history. In the bonus program Discovering Brahms, Thomas Hengelbrock offers interesting background information on all four symphonies. “The evening was more than worth it” (Hamburger Abendblatt).
Festive Concert at Grafenegg Festival 2016
Freedom, fraternity and humanity – this is what Beethoven’s 9th Symphony stands for. It opens the 10th Grafenegg Festival, performed by the Tonkunstler Orchestra, joined by 24 alumni of the European Union Youth Orchestra (EUYO) and “a soloist quartet which no one could possibly imagine to be more prestigious” (Die Presse). “Vogt’s tenor and the Wiener Singverein were especially moving” (Wiener Zeitung) and “the vocal performance by excellent bass René Pape, the fabulous soprano Camilla Nylund and the brilliant mezzosoprano Elena Zhidkova … in Beethoven’s Ninth was just sensational. Bravo!” (Kurier). Composer in Residence Christian Jost’s new work also centres around Beethoven, featuring the song “An die Hoffnung” (“To Hope”), and “convincingly used an impressive orchestra” (Der Standard), with “tenor Klaus Florian Vogt as a well-cast soloist” (Salzburger Nachrichten).
Die Zauberflöte
Accompanied by a luxurious team of professionals, consisting of the renowned stage director Peter Stein, his stage designer Ferdinand Wöger and conductor Ádám Fischer, Teatro alla Scala presents with Mozart’s Zauberflöte a production where orchestra, chorus, soloists as well as outfitters all consisted of students of the Academia Teatro alla Scala, the educational institution aimed to train the young talents, founded by the Teatro alla Scala in 2001. The result was more than stunning and an instant success with the audience of the ten sold out performances at La Scala, which is famous for its more than critical loggionisti. According to Die Presse, Fischer “gets the best out of the Academy Orchestra with delicate execution and humane phrasing” while the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung praises Fatma Said as Pamina and Yasmin Özkan as Queen of the Night.
Otello
A superb new Otello from the Salzburg Easter Festival: “Cura is a commanding Otello with his richly coloured tenor and both fragile delicacy and fiery ardour” (Südwestpresse). “Röschmann as Desdemona guarantees effortless perfection” (Neue Musikzeitung). “Álvarez as Iago would be hard to surpass” (Abendzeitung). This Salzburg production – featuring “a cast worthy of any festival” (Südwestpresse) – is conducted by Christian Thielemann, who displays a command of Verdian tragedy to match his celebrated sovereignty in Wagner. He and his great Dresden Staatskapelle, a consummate opera ensemble, “achieve wonders” (Die Presse), “generating Italian ‘Musikdrama’ with their incandescence and precise nuances” (Abendzeitung). In his fascinating staging, director Vincent Boussard integrates video with set and lighting design to create an idealized visual context for what he calls Otello’s “conflict of ancient and modern, of 2D and 3D”. Boussard’s Otello is above all: aesthetic. The nobly designed costumes are from the Parisian fashion designer Christian Lacroix, with whom Boussard has been cooperating for many years. Special attention is given to the handkerchief in this production, the leitmotiv object in which Otello proves the supposed deceit of his wife Desdemona.
Un Ballo in Maschera
Praise for the Bayerische Staatsoper’s new Ballo in maschera: “A formidable vocal feast” (Bayerische Staatszeitung). Ten years after stepping down as music director of the Bavarian State Opera, a “grand Zubin Mehta“ (Bayerischer Rundfunk) returned to Munich in March 2016 to celebrate his 80th birthday conducting Verdi’s masterpiece for the first time in a staged production. His cast features some of today’s finest Verdi singers: soprano Anja Harteros, singing Amelia for the first time and “filling every note with Verdian intensity”, tenor Piotr Beczala as a “visually and vocally dashing Riccardo” and George Petean as an “exemplary” Renato (Neue Musikzeitung). In director Johannes Erath’s musically super-sensitive new production, this historically-based tale of illicit love, conspiracy and betrayal unfolds in a surrealistic, shadowy setting transformed by lighting and projections. Special praise was showered by the enthusiastic critics on Maestro Mehta, who “creates concentrated musical connections, miraculously guiding his orchestra and unsurpassable voices the way a thermal lifts a paraglider … Musically the performance was a dream” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). “A total triumph” (La Razón). “This production shows what a utopia opera can be” (Abendzeitung).