It is now a well-established tradition: every year, on July 14, the Orchestre National de France welcomes the summer with a large musical gathering at the foot of the Eiffel Tower with stunning fireworks. Conducted by Eun Sun Kim, and accompanied by the Chorus of Radio France, the orchestra invites the audience around the world and 1.000 people on the spot, to experience great arias and famous concert pieces in the company of prestigious soloists like Sol Gabetta, Lisa Batiashvili, Sonya Yoncheva, Khatia Buniatishvili, Ludovic Tézier, Fatma Said, Benjamin Bernheim, Lucienne Renaudin Vary and Angelique Kidjo!
Moment Musical – Andreas Ottensamer
As concert halls are silent and theatres dark during the COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic, bringing performers and audiences together demands creative solutions. C Major Entertainment, in collaboration with Arte Concert and DG, is set to launch a series of professional live relays of concerts given by artists at Berlin’s legendary Meistersaal. The programmes focus on solo or duo works. This approach limit the number of artists, technicians and backstage staff involved, in compliance with government regulations, while drawing on the endlessly rich repertoire of chamber pieces past and present. Using remote cameras, members of the audio and video crew are safely dispersed in different rooms. The first episode featuring Berlin-based clarinetist Andreas Ottensamer and pianist Julien Quentin.
Moment Musical – Anna Prohaska
As concert halls are silent and theatres dark during the COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic, bringing performers and audiences together demands creative solutions. C Major Entertainment, in collaboration with Arte Concert and DG, is set to launch a series of professional live relays of concerts given by artists at Berlin’s legendary Meistersaal. The programmes focus on solo or duo works. This approach limit the number of artists, technicians and backstage staff involved, in compliance with government regulations, while drawing on the endlessly rich repertoire of chamber pieces past and present. Using remote cameras, members of the audio and video crew are safely dispersed in different rooms. The second episode featuring Berlin-based soprano Anna Prohaskaand and pianist Caspar Frantz.
Moment Musical – Avi Avital
As concert halls are silent and theatres dark during the COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic, bringing performers and audiences together demands creative solutions. C Major Entertainment, in collaboration with Arte Concert and DG, is set to launch a series of professional live relays of concerts given by artists at Berlin’s legendary Meistersaal. The programmes focus on solo or duo works. This approach limit the number of artists, technicians and backstage staff involved, in compliance with government regulations, while drawing on the endlessly rich repertoire of chamber pieces past and present. Using remote cameras, members of the audio and video crew are safely dispersed in different rooms. The fourth episode featuring Berlin-based mandolin soloist Avi Avital and pianist Ohad Ben-Ari.
Kit Armstrong plays Wagner and Liszt
Bayreuth is not only the city of Richard Wagner, but also of his father-in-law Franz Liszt. Described by the New York Times as a “brilliant pianist” who combines “musical maturity and youthful daring in his exceptional playing”, Kit Armstrong performed at the famous Margravial Opera House Bayreuth, a masterpiece of Baroque theatre architecture, works by Wagner, Liszt and Mozart in a concert that was “technically sophisticated – and poetically poignant”. (Der Opernfreund) Alfred Brendel, who has guided Armstrong as teacher and mentor since 2005, ascribes to him “an understanding of the great piano works that combines freshness and subtlety, emotion and intellect”. PRPGRAM: Works by Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner and W.A. Mozart
Lucerne Festival 2019: Chailly conducts Rachmaninoff
Everything changed for Sergei Rachmaninoff after 1917. As a result of the October Revolution, power impinged directly on his life – and on his art. The new political conditions forced him to leave his Russian homeland and flee into exile in the West. In order to earn a living, he had to perform for the most part as a piano virtuoso, constantly touring Europe and America. Which meant he had hardly any time left over to compose. The program with which Riccardo Chailly and his Lucerne Festival Orchestra open the 2019 Summer Festival orbits around this turning point in Rachmaninoff’s life, pairing the legendary Third Piano Concerto, written in Russia in 1909, with the melancholy Third Symphony, which he created as an émigré in Hertenstein near Lucerne in 1935-36. PROGRAM Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto Nr. 3; Symphony No. 3; Vocalise op. 34 No. 14
Ivor Bolton conducts the Dresden Festival Orchestra
This glamerous concert opened the prestigious Dresden Music Festival 2019. Together with Dresden-born singer René Pape the Dresden Festival Orchestra under the baton of Ivor Bolton dived deeply into the romantic repertoire. Highlight of the evening was the world premiere of songs by Franz Schubert arranged for bass and orchestra, including “Prometheus“ D 674 as well as songs from the cycle “Schwanengesang“: Das Fischermädchen, Am Meer, Die Stadt, Der Doppelgänger, Ihr Bild, Der Atlas and An die Musik. Preceeding is Carl Maria von Weber’s overture to his opera “Euryanthe”, which during his lifetime had no easy lot: the music was greatly praised, the libretto however was laughed at. The spring-like first symphony by Robert Schumann was drafted in only four days and written out in three weeks – in a blissful stage of his life shortly after his marriage to Clara Wieck.
Paavo Järvi – Tonhalle Orchester Zürich, Inaugural Concert
The Tonhalle Orchester Zürich has appointed one of the best conductors of our time as ist new artistic director: Paavo Järvi takes over the post with the 2019/2020 season. Born in Estonia in 1962, Järvi is currently music director of the NHK Orchestra in Tokyo. In 2009, he worked with the Tonhalle Orchestra for the first time and again most recently in December 2016. Kullervo, Op. 7, is a suite of symphonic movements by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. Although often referred to as a „choral symphony,“ the work avoids traditional symphonic structure and its five movements constitute a set of related but independent tone poems. PROGRAM Sibelius: Kullervo
Nelsons conducts Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich
In May 2019, the principal conductor of the Gewandhausorchester, Andris Nelsons, presented Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 in combination with Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with outstanding violinist Baiba Skride as the soloist. With this choice of program, Andris Nelsons continued the Tchaikovsky cycle with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, which he had started as part of the concert series that surrounded his inauguration as Gewandhauskapellmeister in February 2018. PROGRAM Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5; Shostakovich: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra
Luka Sulic: The Four Seasons – Vivaldi & more
After seven years of touring the world as part of the critically acclaimed duo 2CELLOS, Luka Šulic returns to his classical roots. „I‘ve loved Vivaldi‘s Four Seasons since I was a child,“ says Luka Šulic of his newest project, adding, „I‘ve always wanted to play the piece on the cello and love taking on new challenges.“ Even in a Baroque masterpiece, Luka Šulic is ready to defy expectations and shatter boundaries. Though hundreds of traditional recordings exist of The Four Seasons with a violin soloist, Luka Šulic‘s recording is the first complete version – his own painstaking work – that reimagines all four concertos of The Four Seasons for a cello soloist. Joining Luka Šulic for the recording is the Orchestra of Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi di Trieste.