Looking for Beethoven – On the Paths of the Beethoven String Quartets

What seems to be the predominant impulse driving this music,” explains viola player Krzysztof Chorzelski of the Belcea Quartet, “is man’s yearning for freedom, the unquenchable desire to expand his limits and to learn the truth about himself in this process Beethoven inspires us as performers to take up this challenge.” The Belcea Quartet’s response to this challenge took place in the Vienna Konzerthaus. The ensemble embarked on the complete cycle of Beethoven string quartets, playing the whole program within twelve days, each concert featuring one work from the early, middle and late quartets.

Salzburg Festival 2013: White Hands Choir Venezuela

As part of the 2013 Salzburg Festival, the visionary and exemplary project El Sistema – The Miracle is presented for the first time in a larger context and in its full diversity outside of Venezuela. Salzburg Festival has invited not only the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra – the orchestral training programme’s flagship, but also five of El Sistema’s other ensembles. The selection of ensembles, especially the invitation of the White Hands Choir (which unites children and teenagers with various disabilities), makes it clear that El Sistema is primarily a social project, which does its utmost to integrate as many social groups as possible, instead of excluding anyone.

A Portrait of Mariss Jansons – Music is the Language of the Heart and Soul

In his film on Latvian conductor Mariss Jansons, Robert Neumüller takes us on a fascinating tour of a life devoted to music. We accompany Jansons as he prepares for his conductorship of the most famous concert in the world, the New Year’s Concert of the Wiener Philharmoniker from the Vienna Musikverein. While historical footage documents important stations of his early career, long-time companions and artists speak about their work with the conductor. We also watch him working with “his” two orchestras, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam.

BEETHOVEN 9 – Making van Beethoven

A one-of-a-kind musical event is in the making! Christian Thielemann, one of the most recognized conductors of our time, joins forces with the prestigious Wiener Philharmoniker and UNITEL, the world’s leading audiovisual production company for classical music, in a monumental project: BEETHOVEN 9, the recording of all nine symphonies by Ludwig van Beethoven for TV, DVD and New Media: the “Beethoven cycle of the 21st century”! Using the newest technology of our century, UNITEL and Austrian Television (ORF) produce this “super-cycle” in the Golden Hall of Vienna’s Musikverein in HD and 5.0 Surround Sound. BEETHOVEN 9 kicked off in December 2008 with the recording of the First and Second Symphonies. At the rate of two recordings per year, the cycle will be completed by April 2010. The genesis and unfolding of this project will be accompanied by a documentary filmed in HD. Between 2010 and 2013 the orchestra will crown the venture with special event performances of the complete cycle in major cities around the world. These concert cycles will rank among the musical highlights of these years. They will be accompanied by the recordings, which will be released prior to the start of the world tour, when international attention is at its peak. Music lovers can enjoy Beethoven’s symphonies either live in the host cities or on television, Internet or DVD. Live transmission from the Golden Hall is possible already during the recording stage. BEETHOVEN 9 brings to a new climax the longstanding collaboration between Thielemann, who enjoys a sterling reputation as an interpreter of Beethoven and the German Romantics, and the Wiener Philharmoniker, which has been cultivating the music of Beethoven since its founding nearly 170 years ago and is one of the few great orchestras to have preserved its unique sound. UNITEL CLASSICA can look back on more than 40 years of collaboration with the Wiener Philharmoniker and on its pioneering cycles of Beethoven’s symphonic works with Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein.

Salzburg Festival: Opening Concert 2010

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Salzburg’s Grosses Festspielhaus, the 2010 Salzburg Festival put together a truly one-of-a-kind program for the Wiener Philharmoniker’s traditional opening concert. Conducted by Daniel Barenboim, the concert opens with Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, whose solo part is also played by the conductor. This is followed by the scintillating “Notations” by Pierre Boulez, who celebrated his 85th birthday in 2010. Concluding the concert is Anton Bruckner’s mighty “Te Deum” featuring soloists Dorothea Röschmann, El?na Garan?a, Klaus Florian Vogt and René Pape.

My time will come – Gustav Mahler as remembered by Natalie Bauer-Lechner

Filmmaker Beate Thalberg has crafted a docu-drama based on a little- known source of information on Gustav Mahler, the diaries of Natalie Bauer-Lechner, Mahler’s long-time confidante. The film portra Mahler’s private and professional life from his student years in Vienna up to his marriage with Alma Schindler. The diaries evoke the man behind the artist and testify not only to Mahler’s erratic character and to his humor, but also to his dramatic struggle for recognition as a composer.

The Beethoven Piano Concertos

No other pianist plays Beethoven in such a supremely classic manner and at such a high level’, writes Vienna’s Kurier about Rudolf Buchbinder’s performance of all five Beethoven piano concertos with the Wiener Philharmoniker. Buchbinder, who has given many cyclical performances of these works all over the world, performs here both as soloist and conductor.

BEETHOVEN 9 – Symphony No.9 in D minor, op.125 “Choral”

In the monumental project BEETHOVEN 9, Christian Thielemann, one of the most widely recognized conductors of our time, joins forces with the prestigious Wiener Philharmoniker for their first-ever highdefinition recording of all nine symphonies by Ludwig van Beethoven.

Also available:

Overture ‘Coriolan’, Op. 62 (11’ – A045005410010),

Overture ‘Egmont’, Op. 84 (11’ – A045005410011)