Sir Georg Solti – Journey of a lifetime

Sir Georg Solti was one of the greatest recording artists who ever lived – not only his still unequalled record of 31 Grammys® attests to that: the present documentary illluminates the life and work of Sir Georg Solti on the 100th anniversary of his birth. We follow the Hungarian-Jewish conductor’s career: as Toscanini’s assistant at the Salzburg Festival, as music director in Munich and Frankfurt after the war, achieving worldwide fame with his legendary Vienna Philharmonic recording of Wagner’s Ring cycle. It was as the long-serving music director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra that Solti became an international star of classical music, one

whose musical ardour and perfectionism remain unsurpassed to this day.

Thomas Dausgaard, Danish National Symphony Orchestra 4 Symphonies

4 great symphonies that have all played a special role in the close collaboration between Danish National Symphony Orchestra and conductor Thomas Dausgaard. The symphonies are recorded in the beautiful concert hall Koncerthuset in Copenhagen, designed by architect Jean Nouvel and acoustician Toyota Yasuhisa. Bonus material In a series of exclusive interviews Thomas Dausgaard explains about his close collaboration with the orchestra, the concerts and about the four great yet altogether very different master pieces by Brahms, Dvorák, Sibelius and Nielsen.

La vida breve

A national monument in Spain, Manuel de Falla’s La vida breve is perhaps the greatest opera ever written in the Spanish language. A kind of “tragic zarzuela”, it unites verismo atmosphere, Andalusian local colour and a score shimmering with reminiscences of French Impressionism. Written in 1905, La vida breve is the story of a poor gypsy and her lover, who is engaged to wed a wealthy girl. “Simply a stroke of genius”, wrote Spain’s Opera Viva about Giancarlo del Monaco’s austere, minimalist staging at Valencia’s Palau

de les Arts Reina Sofía. Maestro Lorin Maazel, whom El País hailed as the “triunfador” of the evening, leads an exquisite array of soloists headed by Chilean soprano Cristina Gallardo-Domâs, Jorge de León and María Luisa Corbacho.

Salzburg Festival Opening Concert 2011

Dorothea Roeschmann, Anna Larsson, Johan Botha – and rising star Anna Prohaska: master conductor Pierre Boulez the “grand seigneur de subtle minimalism and exquisitely beguiling sounds” (Der Standard), assembled a cast of tremendous distinction for this prestigious concert, conceived as a tribute to Gustav Mahler. After two works by Mahler´s pupil Alban Berg, featuring Roeschmann and Prohaska, the main event of the concert is Gustav Mahler´s large-scale cantata “Das klagende Lied” – a “great spectral opera for the mind´s eye (Wiener Zeitung)

Falstaff

“Everything in this world is a joke,” says Falstaff, and these words are truly given weight by Ambrogio Maestri, one of the finest Falstaffs of our time. The Italian baritone brings a powerful, versatile voice to his role, but also brings to his character a hilarious buffo quality. Daniele Gatti, one of the most acclaimed opera conductors working today, leads a stunning cast of singers, including Barbara Frittoli as Alice Ford. Genuinely warm italianità in all of the music-making, combined with a boisterous production by stage director Sven-Eric Bechtolf, turns Verdi’s commedia lirica into a fireworks display of high spirits as well as what the Neue Zürcher Zeitung called “musically and dramaturgically a feast of life and of love of life”.

Andris Nelsons, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Shostakovich Symphony No. 8

The Latvian maestro Andris Nelsons is already one of the most sought-after young conductors in the world and once again served notice of his extraordinary talent when he conducted two concerts with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam at the prestigious Lucerne Festival. In the present recording of the first of these concerts (which are both available on DVD and Blu-ray from C Major Entertainment), orchestra and conductor demonstrate their brilliance in some of the most spectacular orchestral works ever written. “A profoundly moving interpretation” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung).

Andris Nelsons, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Yefim Bronfman at Lucerne Festival

The Latvian maestro Andris Nelsons is already one of the most sought-after young conductors in the world and once again served notice of his extraordinary talent when he conducted two concerts with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam at the prestigious Lucerne Festival. In the present recording of the second of these concerts (which are both available on DVD and Blu-ray from C Major Entertainment), Beethoven’s majestic Fifth Piano Concerto proves a memorable encounter between Nelsons and master pianist Yefim Bronfman, who remains calm and composed despite the piano part‘s virtuoso passage-work and knuckle-breaking chords. “A return to the magician of the podium: a conductor bursting with temperament and capable of conjuring up the most magnificent orchestral sonorities” (Neue Luzerner Zeitung).

Orfeo ed Euridice

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the small but ambitious Castell de Peralada Festival, the famous Catalan theatre collective La Fura dels Baus and its director Carlus Padrissa staged Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice. A splendid cast as well as an avant-garde production that makes extensive use of large projection screens and includes the members of the orchestra as actors onstage result in one of the most exciting opera performances in recent years. “La Fura’s concept is surprising and its originality demands our attention … it gives rise to moments of great beauty and evocative power” (El País).

Die Entfuehrung aus dem Serail

Barcelona’s prestigious Gran Teatre del Liceu presents Mozart’s beloved Singspiel in an elegant, dramaturgically twisted production with a sparkling cast of top-rank international stars headed by coloratura soprano Diana Damrau as Konstanze and rising star Olga Peretyatko as Blonde. Stage director Christof Loy has conjured up a thought-provoking and strikingly original scenario in which both Konstanze and Blonde are feeling respect, admiration and even profound love for their captors. The result is a tantalizing approach that overturns the traditional patterns of good and evil.

“Diana Damrau achieved a huge success at the Barcelona Liceu.” Opera News

“Franz-Josef Selig, the best Osmin I have ever seen.” Opera News

Tannhaeuser

This exciting modern-day adaptation of Tannhäuser, Richard Wagner’s fable of love and redemption, features one of the great Wagner singers of our time in the lead role, Peter Seiffert. Using the magnificent space of Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu in its entirety, renowned Canadian director Robert Carsen has transformed this mythic narration of medieval troubadours into a compelling and at times very amusing tale that plays out in a world of contemporary painters and art dealers. Thus, the work’s original message of

salvation takes on a new edge: it is now about artistic glory and expressing the inexpressible. “Heldentenor Peter Seiffert ruled the stage” (Opera News).