Wagner in Switzerland

This concert is a celebration of Richard Wagner’s 200th anniversary in 2013, featuring famous soloists of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra who perform Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll at his home in Tribschen, Switzerland: The original place, where he composed and world premiered the piece on the staircase in 1870 as a birthday present to his wife Cosima. The program is rounded by the Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder in the original version for female voice and piano, performed by the exceptional mezzo-soprano Elisabeth Kulman and pianist Eduard Kutrowat on Wagner’s original grand piano. The performance-part is complemented by documentary features offering an insight into Richard Wagner’s life at Tribschen.

Bartabas in Salzburg 2016 – Mozart: Davide Penitente

For this spectacular production of Mozart’s Davide penitente on the vast stage of the Salzburg Felsenreitschule at the Mozart Week 2015, Marc Minkowski and the equestrian choreographer Bartabas used dancing horses and thus restored the former riding school to its original function. Horses, riders from the Académie équestre de Versailles and Bartabas himself, whose successful productions are unique in the world of art, perform their elegant dressage arabesques within this exceptional setting. Soloists, chorus and orchestra are ranged over three levels on galleries cut from the bare rock. The result is a unique synthesis of the arts.

The 3 Tenors – Christmas Concert 1999

The 3 Tenors capture the joy and spirit of the season with their first ever Christmas concert, live from Vienna, featuring performances of international season favourites by the best-selling and world-renowned trio. Have yourself a warm, sophisticated Christmas with the 3 Tenors as they cradle the classics with their magnificent voices. Cantique de noel (O Holy Night); Ave Maria, Dolce Maria; Oh Tannenbaum; White Christmas, and more.

Kathleen Battle & Jessye Norman – Spirituals

Kathleen Battle and Jessye Norman teamed up with James Levine for this distinctive selection of famous Spirituals. PROGRAM: In That Great Getting Up Morning; Oh, What A Beautiful City; Lord, How Come Me Here; Over My Head / Lil‘ David; I Believe I‘ll Go Back Home / Lordy, Won‘t You Help Me; Ride on, King Jesus; Swing Low, Sweet Chariot / Ride Up in the Chariot; You Can Tell the World; Scandalize My Name; Great day; Oh, Glory; Calvary / They Crucified My Lord; Talk About a Child; Gospel train; My God Is So High; There is a balm in Gilead; He‘s got the whole world in His hands

Barbara Hannigan – A Late Night Concert

There are pianists who also conduct, and concertmasters who lead their orchestra from the violin chair. But a star soprano who coordinates a large instrumental ensemble while at the same time negotiating the trickiest coloratura singing is something entirely new. That is, until Barbara Hannigan came along to reveal this remarkable skill. “It’s like walking on virgin snow,” says the Canadian “artiste étoile” who teamed up at Lucerne Festival in Summer with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Next to conducting works by Fauré, Mozart and Rossini she performed onstage, decked out in a daring S&M-style leather bodice, Ligeti’s “Mysteries of the Macabre.”

Blomstedt conducts Bach’s Mass in B Minor

Just a few weeks before his 90th birthday, Herbert Blomstedt gifted himself a special birthday present: conducting Bach’s Mass in B Minor, in the Leipzig Thomaskirche – the composer’s former workplace. According to Blomstedt, Bach’s last complete vocal work is the climax of his creativity and is one of the most important works in his life: “It is like a reflection of doubt. It is enormously powerful music in the same way that a wedge is enormously powerful.” For Peter Wollny, director of the Bach-Archiv Leipzig, Bach’s magnum opus is “without doubt the most intellectually and musically varied and challenging of Bach’s compositions” and “one of the greatest achievements of Western culture.” The concert closed the Bachfest Leipzig 2017 and was performed by the Gewandhausorchester, the Dresdner Kammerchor, and the soloists Christina Landshamer, Elisabeth Kulman, Wolfram Lattke and Luca Pisaroni.

Requiem for Hieronymus Bosch

s-Hertogenbosch’s most famous son, the famed painter Hieronymus Bosch lived and worked at the town marketplace, portraying medieval life in his paintings brimming with symbolism, fantasy and riddles. With the international event Bosch 500, ’s-Hertogenbosch is commemorating the five hundredth anniversary of the artist’s death in a spectacular way. The RCO’s house composer Detlev Glanert has been commissioned by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Bosch 500 to write a requiem for soloists, choir, organ and orchestra. The composition translates the demonic nature of Bosch’s paintings with textual counterparts into music. Glanert combines traditional requiem texts with excerpts from the manuscript collection Carmina Burana – each movement of the Requiem is accompanied by a poem about the seven deadly sins.