Internationally acclaimed Chinese film-maker Chen Kaige (Palme d’Or 1993 for Farewell My Concubine) delivers an opulent staging of the fairy-tale story of Chinese Princess Turandot, who will only marry a prince capable of solving her riddles. With sumptuous costumes and palace sets designed in China, Kaige’s production adds a compellingly authentic accent to Puccini’s exotic orchestral palette. Zubin Mehta and his brilliant Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana offer “genuine fireworks of sound” (Wiener Zeitung), Maria Guleghina triumphs as Turandot.
LSO: Nathalie Stutzmann conducts Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 and Te Deum
The obsessive Anton Bruckner worked on his Ninth Symphony for the last ten years of his life, but the concluding Adagio remained unfinished at his death in 1896. He is said to have suggested that his Te Deum be used in its place – and leaving aside the tonal shift from the D-minor symphony to a C-major hymn, it feels a fitting grand finale for the famously devout composer, who dedicated his last symphony to God. In a concert billed as A Blaze of Glory, the acclaimed Nathalie Stutzmann – who counts Bruckner among her three favorite composers to conduct – leads the London Symphony Orchestra and London Symphony Chorus, joined by soloists Lucy Crowe, Anna Stéphany, Robin Tritschler, and Alexander Tsymbalyuk, in a program that represents no less than the culmination of Bruckner’s life’s work, a mighty and magnificent call to heaven itself.