One remarkable pianist, one remarkable artist: Yuja Wang presents a very special concert from London’s Lightroom. She performs music by composers ranging from Bach to Berio, carefully selected in response to a series of artworks by David Hockney, which are shown in stunning 360-degree projections as she plays. The result is an all-encompassing audio-visual experience that seeks out connections between the senses, between art and music, and between two major cultural figures of our time.
Hayato Sumino at Budokan
Taking the concert world by storm, pianist and composer Hayato Sumino breathes new life into the term virtuoso. He is not just a pianist; he is a real phenomenon. He plays the piano at a world-class level, has a degree in engineering, composes, arranges and improvises and is also a real YouTube star with over 1.3 million followers under the name »Cateen«. His passion and spontaneity draw his fans to the concert hall, he bridges the gap between the social media world and impressive performances on all the world’s major stages like no other. In the summer, an extensive sold-out 24-recital tour of Japan culminated at Budokan (Tokyo), where he performed for more than 13,000 fans. His unique style blends classical virtuoso tradition with an arranger’s ear and breathtaking improvisational skills, allowing Hayato to share not only classical masterworks, but also his original compositions and arrangements with audiences across the globe, including his rendition of Ravel’s Boléro on two pianos.
Carmina Burana
They are one of the most famous and most frequently performed works of classical music: Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana”. The Latin title refers to a collection of songs from Benediktbeuern dating from the 11th and 12th centuries with texts written in Middle Latin, Old French and Middle High German. Orff chose 24 of these songs, their topics ranging widely from the volatility of happiness and prosperity to the fleeting nature of life, from the joy of the return of spring to the pleasures and dangers of drunkenness, gluttony, gambling, and lust. At the Palau de la Música in València, the Orquestra de València, one of the great Spanish symphony orchestras, together with one of Spain’s oldest choirs, Orféon Pamplones, perform this epic work under the musical direction of Alexander Liebreich. They are joined by the excellent soloists Sara Blanch, Joaquín Asiáin and André Baleiro, creating a memorable musical evening.
Hélène Grimaud – Memory Recital
Hélène Grimaud presents the first part of a special two-part recital from the beautiful natural surroundings of south west Bavaria, a place which the pianist sees as one of her spiritual homes. “Memory” features music from her Deutsche Grammophon album of the same name: Grimaud brings her trademark sensitivity and poetic touch to a personal selection of reflective and atmospheric works by Satie, Debussy, Chopin and Valentin Silvestrov, the Ukrainian composer whose music has fascinated her for decades.
RCO: Mäkelä conducts Strauss and Wagner
The chief conductor has traditionally led the orchestra in the Christmas Matinee – and now its future chief conductor, Klaus Mäkelä, assumes that role, leading the Concertgebouw Orchestra in a programme based on the theme of love. Wagner surprised his wife Cosima with the ‘Siegfried-Idyll’ on Christmas Day, 1870. Marital love also inspired Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben, which he dedicated to the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Unsuk Chin’s subito con forza is a declaration of love for the music of Beethoven. It was with this same work that Klaus Mäkelä opened the programme he conducted on his Concertgebouw Orchestra debut in September 2020, when sparks between maestro and orchestra first flew. PROGRAM Unsuk Chin: subito con forza; Wagner: Siegfried-Idyll; Strauss: Ein Heldenleben
Dancing Queen
‘Everybody dance!’ – With this call, the lautten compagney BERLIN, together with saxophonist Asya Fateyeva, invites the audience to embark on an exciting journey through three centuries of musical history. It seems audacious to link Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) and ABBA (1972-), two absolute giants of European music history. However, even a second listen reveals countless similarities: the originality and catchiness of their melodies, the rhythmic buoyancy and the unrestricted popularity of both building a bridge from the present day to a time when it was less the Queens and more the Kings who could be found on the dance floor. ABBA’s music is arranged, played on instruments from the baroque period and not just juxtaposed with Rameau’s music. In fact, the pieces are sometimes so fused that it is almost impossible to recognise what was penned by the late baroque Frenchman and what came from the Swedish pop quartet’s workshop.
Premieres Revisited – Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Potsdam
This episode marks the start of a captivating series: compositions at their world premiere venues. Mendelssohn composed his famous Sommernachtstraum (Midsummer Night’s Dream) as a teenager, but was not able to incorporate it into the accompaniment to Shakespeare’s fantastic comedy until 16 years later. The incidental music was commissioned by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia and is performed in this special performance at the Theater des Neuen Palais in Potsdam, exactly where the premiere took place in October 1843. Alongside the Kammerakademie Potsdam and its chief conductor Antonello Manacorda, soloists Jeanine De Bique and Christiane Karg, who also appear in Berlioz’s exquisite Les nuits d’été, a work created just two years before Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Verdi: Requiem from Santa Cecilia
Set in the astonishing context of the “Basilica di San Paolo fuori le Mura”, one of the papal basilicas of Rome, this program combines Verdi’s Requiem, the excellent baton of British conductor Daniel Harding and one of the leading Italian orchestras and choir, the Accademia di Santa Cecilia. Harding’s interpretation of Verdi’s famous funeral mass recreates “an immaterial, disembodied, spiritual sound, suitable for this extreme meditation on the end of life and on the mystery that lies after life” (Il giornale della musica). The excellent soloists Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, Yulia Matochkina, Charles Catronovo, Roberto Tagliavini contribute to an outstanding performance and an optimal fusion with the choir’s sound. “The last bars, with the crescendo never heard so full of controlled tension and the following pianissimo “dum veneris judicare saeculum per ignem”, left the audience deeply touched and speechless: Only after a silence of emotional recollection, which seemed to never end, did the intense applause break out” (il giornale della musica).
Christmas in Versailles – Sonya Yoncheva
Sonya Yoncheva is the star of this Christmas concert at the Royal Chapel of the Palace of Versailles. Accompanied by the Choir and Orchestra of the Opéra Royal of Versailles under the baton of Stefan Plewniak, Sonya Yoncheva performs popular carols from around the world. Works by Handel, Gounod, Puccini, Mascagni, Berlin, Adam and Mohr – can be heard while enjoying stunning footage of the various magnificent halls and gardens of the Palace of Versailles, with exclusive access granted to the Bulgarian opera diva.
Arnold Schönberg – The Restless Visionary
He was the founder of a new musical age and the overpowering father figure of musical modernism. With his departure from tonality and the invention of twelve-tone music, Arnold Schönberg left his mark on the music of the 20th century more momentously than any other composer. The founder of the Second Viennese School, whose concerts in the first decade of the 20th century provoked notorious scandals among audiences, did not see himself as a radical subversive but rather as a staunch upholder of the great German-Austrian musical tradition. On his way into new musical territory, he was guided by an uncompromising desire for the integrity of musical expression. To celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth, the 90 min. film Arnold Schönberg. The Restless Visionary uses previously unpublished archival material to paint a long overdue, comprehensive portrait of one of the most important, yet also most original and versatile artistic personalities in history. The film also provides surprising insights into lesser-known aspects of his life and personality: his religious conflicts, his family environment, setbacks, his painful emigration to America, and his enigmatic fear of the number 13.