The proven Richard Strauss trio of Renée Fleming, Sophie Koch and Christian Thielemann gets together once again at the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden, which continues its series of triumphs after “Rosenkavalier”. In this colorful and humorous staging by Philippe Arlaud, Strauss specialist Thielemann leads his first opera at the head of the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, which performed the world premieres of nine Strauss operas. While Renée Fleming dazzles in her role debut as the spurned Ariadne, Sophie Koch, Robert Dean Smith and Jane Archibald prove themselves worthy counterparts of the American soprano.
Der Rosenkavalier
“The best of the best assembled on stage,” wrote Germany’s leading newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung after the premiere of Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden. Indeed, it would be hard to find a more ideal cast for this late-Romantic Rococo pastiche anywhere in the world. As the Marschallin, stellar soprano Renée Fleming uses her velvety tones and autumnal shadings to complement the youthfully lyrical and dynamic voice of Sophie Koch as her young lover Octavian. Diana Damrau’s Sophie enhances the trio’s sparkle with her ethereal high notes. Next to Franz Hawlata as a swaggering Baron Ochs and the always impressive Franz Grundheber as Faninal, the Baden-Baden production rounds off its male leads with international tenor star Jonas Kaufmann as the “Italian Singer.” Leading his Münchner Philharmoniker, acclaimed Romantic specialist Christian Thielemann revels in Strauss’s lustrous melancholy and obtains a rarely heard transparency from the brass and woodwinds.
Arabella
A “lyric comedy” is how Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal described their final collaboration, on which they worked between 1927 and 1929. Arabella revolves around the true
love between two very different couples – the love that unites two people forever “in joy and sorrow, hurt and forgiveness”, as Arabella herself puts it at the end of the opera. With Renée
Fleming in the title role and a supporting cast that includes Thomas Hampson, Gabriela Benacková and the young tenor Daniel Behle – surely a star of the future – this production from the Salzburg Easter Festival was the first of the piece at the Festival since 1958. Under the Strauss specialist Christian Thielemann, it featured a Strauss ensemble that could hardly be bettered today. Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson are a “dream couple for Richard Strauss” (Salzburger Nachrichten).
André Previn – A Bridge Between Two Worlds
André Previn is one of the leading musicians of our day. The eighty-one-year-old cosmopolitan pianist, conductor and classical composer has not only received no fewer than foru Academy awards for his film adaptations but was also one of the most influential jazz musicians of the fifties and sixties. A Bridge Between Two Worlds is a portrait of Previn´s fascinating musicianship and also looks candidly at his private life, including his relations with his two ex-wives, Mia Farrow and Anne-Sophie Mutter. As a bonus, this release features Mozart´s two Piano Quartets K. 478 and K. 493 with André Previn at the keyboard.
Christian Thielemann – A portrait
This film by Bengt Wennehorst is a portrait of one of the absolute foremost and sought-after conductors of our time. With his own words, charm and humour, Christian Thielemann tells of his childhood and youth in the outskirts of Berlin, how he played the piano as a five-year-old and how, just as early on, he got to accompany his music-loving parents to concerts and opera performances once or twice a week. Extensive video material provides insights into his intensive rehearsal work and documents acclaimed concert and opera performances of his career. The portrait includes interviews with artists such as actress and director Katharina Thalbach, opera singers Anja Kampe and Renée Fleming and Albena Danailova, concert master of the Wiener Philharmoniker.
The Odeonsplatz Concert: Gilbert & Fleming
Nestled in the historic city centre of Munich, the Odeonsplatz provides the perfect venue for one of the open-air highlights of the year: “Klassik am Odeonsplatz”! This time one of the greatest opera stars of our days, soprano Renée Fleming is joining the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under Alan Gilbert’s baton. PROGRAM Songs by Tchaikovsky, Korngold, Bernstein, von Flotow; Tchaikovsky: Symphony No.5
From Berlin to New York – Works by Gershwin, Bernstein and Weill
“From Berlin to New York” is the motto of German Television’s traditional New Year’s Eve Concert in 2013. And true to the motto Maestro Christian Thielemann, the Staatskapelle Dresden and the two world stars Reneé Fleming and Klaus Florian Vogt celebrate the New Year’s Eve 2013 with great hits and works from Eduard Künneke, Paul Lincke, George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein and others.
Wolf, Songs for Soprano and Orchestra & Bruckner, Symphony No. 7
When conductor Christian Thielemann, master interpreter of the romantic repertoire, and Renée Fleming, late-romantic specialist par excellence, weave their talents into the orchestral tapestry unfolded by the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, one of the oldest and most revered orchestras in the world, they create, as put by the Süddeutsche Zeitung, “romantic music as magic for the ears”. For this special concert, the first concert of Christian Thielemann as the principal conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden, they chose the orchestral songs by the Austrian composer HUGO WOLF and ANTON BRUCKNER’s Symphony No. 7.
Gala Concert from the Semperoper Highlights from ‘The Merry Widow‘
This gala evening in the beautiful Semperoper devoted to operetta melodies with classic superstars Renée Fleming and Christopher Maltman under the baton of Christian Thielemann was a tremendous success and, as Deutsche Grammophon put it, started ‘a new tradition’. Thielemann, heading the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden and an ensemble of distinguished soloists and choral singers, presents the most beautiful highlights from Franz Lehár’s ‘The Merry Widow’ and succeeds in giving the famous and universally beloved melodies a perceptive new reading while still creating first-class entertainment. A short entr’acte performed in the foyer by members of the theater’s ballet ensemble allows the viewer a glimpse into the luxurious interior of the Semperoper. The New Year’s Eve gala concert ends with an homage to Dresden: the waltz ‘An der Elbe’, the last waltz written by Johann Strauss.
Thielemann conducts Strauss
A magical evening at the Salzburg Festival: soprano Renée Fleming, conductor Christian Thielemann and the Wiener Philharmoniker perform works by Richard Strauss – ‘one of those musical events that prove that excellence truly is possible’ (El País). In her interpretation of four songs for voice and orchestra by Richard Strauss, along with a scene from ‘Arabella’, Fleming wanders along the summits of vocal artistry as a diva who dares to project the innermost emotions of the music she sings. Without a trace of bombast or heaviness, Thielemann and the Philharmoniker elaborate, as Der Standard writes, ‘a new vision of the Alpine Symphony’ that is characterized by a ‘chamber-musiclike transparency’.