Mozart Requiem at Arena di Verona

W.A. Mozart’s famous and moving Requiem was performed for the first time in the 2000-year old Arena in Verona. The concert on the impressively designed stage set in the middle of the Arena with the choir standing in a circle around the arena became a collective prayer in an open-air cathedral. Marco Armiliato conducts four excellent soloists and Chorus & Orchestra of the Arena di Verona. The performance of great symbolic impact is dedicated to the victims of the Coronavirus. “An event of great symbolic impact” connessidellopera.it

L’Orfeo

On the occasion of the 450th anniversary of this genius’ birth, an international cast of soloists together with members of the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists under the baton of their artistic director Sir John Eliot Gardiner commemorate the Italian composer in a series of semi-staged performances at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice. Gardiner, one of the most versatile conductors of our time, is certainly acknowledged as a key figure in the early music revival of the past five decades. His lifelong examination of Monteverdi’s work makes him uniquely qualified to celebrate the composer in all his glory with the semi-staged opera trilogy L’Orfeo, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and L’incoronazione di Poppea. “Anyone who has had trouble to access Montiverdi’s music so far, should listen to this trilogy. A whole world will open up for him or her.” (FAZ)

Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria

On the occasion of the 450th anniversary of this genius’ birth, an international cast of soloists together with members of the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists under the baton of their artistic director Sir John Eliot Gardiner commemorate the Italian composer in a series of semi-staged performances at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice. Gardiner, one of the most versatile conductors of our time, is certainly acknowledged as a key figure in the early music revival of the past five decades. His lifelong examination of Monteverdi’s work makes him uniquely qualified to celebrate the composer in all his glory with the semi-staged opera trilogy L’Orfeo, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and L’incoronazione di Poppea. “Anyone who has had trouble to access Montiverdi’s music so far, should listen to this trilogy. A whole world will open up for him or her.” (FAZ)

L’incoronazione di Poppea

On the occasion of the 450th anniversary of this genius’ birth, an international cast of soloists together with members of the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists under the baton of their artistic director Sir John Eliot Gardiner commemorate the Italian composer in a series of semi-staged performances at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice. Gardiner, one of the most versatile conductors of our time, is certainly acknowledged as a key figure in the early music revival of the past five decades. His lifelong examination of Monteverdi’s work makes him uniquely qualified to celebrate the composer in all his glory with the semi-staged opera trilogy L’Orfeo, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and L’incoronazione di Poppea. “Anyone who has had trouble to access Montiverdi’s music so far, should listen to this trilogy. A whole world will open up for him or her.” (FAZ)

Verdi, Messa da Requiem

Celebrated conductor Lorin Maazel, a young orchestra of outstanding musicians, four high-caliber soloists and one of the great choral works of musical literature – this alone would make this live recording of Verdi’s Requiem a stand-out document of filmed music. But there is more: the venue of this grandiose performance, the Basilica of San Marco in Venice, with its shimmering golden Byzantine mosaics framed by mighty pillars and arches. Modeled on Constantine the Great’s Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, the 11th-century basilica has been the workplace of many a great musician in the past, such as Claudio Monteverdi, Adrian Willaert and Giovanni Gabrieli. Lorin Maazel, Music Director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, is also the Music Director of the Symphonica Toscanini, a young orchestra founded in May 2006 that has performed under Zubin Mehta, Georges Prêtre and Kurt Masur. ‘In recent tours of Europe and the U.S., the musicians expressed their unique musical potential by playing so harmoniously and compellingly as a group that they conquered every audience,’ said Maazel.

Le Concert de Paris 2019

«Le Concert de Paris» is an exceptional event held each year on Bastille Day at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, as a prelude to the traditional July 14th fireworks display. Two of Radio France’s most prestigious musical institutions, the Orchestre National de France and the Radio France Chorus, under the baton of maestro Alain Altinoglu, propose a top-quality programme, giving pride of place to the voice and brings together some of the world’s greatest soloists, including Khatia Buniatishvili, Roberto Alagna, René Pape, Gautier Capuçon, Gaëlle Arquez, Jakub Orlinski and many more!

Kirill Petrenko conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker

The first performance at the Lucerne Festival of the Berliner Philharmoniker with their designated chief conductor Kirill Petrenko – Kirill Petrenko and the Berliner Philharmoniker in Lucerne were joined by the Chinese hypervirtuosa Yuja Wang in Sergei Prokofiev’s most popular Piano Concerto, the spirited No. 3. The program began in the world of Persian fairy-tales with Paul Dukas’s ballet score to “La Péri” from 1911, which recounts the story of a good fairy who is half-angel, half-human. And this Impressionist-flavored piece by no means needs to yield ground to Dukas’s better-known “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” … Kirill Petrenko feels extremely devoted to Austrian composer Franz Schmidt, one of the last of the Romantics, who had to endure a traumatic experience when his only daughter, Emma, passed away in March 1932. He subsequently wrote a kind of Requiem with his Fourth Symphony, which includes elegiac laments, a wide-ranging funeral march, and, at the end, a celebration of farewell: “a dying in beauty,” as Schmidt said, “with the whole of one’s life passing in review.”