In three chapters, this documentary tells Mahler’s story during the period when he is head of the Vienna Opera, in realist form and going against any romanticized images we may have of the subject. The film places the spectator in Mahler’s shoes and investigates using documented evidence (drawing from the latest research discoveries) and a visual sensuality, the ambiances, sounds and colours, trends, ebbs and flows, successes, and also the fanaticism and hostilities as Mahler felt and experienced them himself. Mahler’s portrait comes to life through the places he took possession of: his office at the Vienna Opera, his conductor’s podium, his summer home where he composed and his fetish objects: glasses, musical scores, manuscripts … . The idea is not to present a fixed image for the spectator, but to suggest the musician’s personality so that those watching can develop their own impressions and images of the musician. His voice only, is played by an actor. This is therefore not a docudrama of an actor incarnating Mahler, but a vision attempting to recreate the soul of a man, rather than an idol.
A Village: Romeo and Juliet (Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe)
Based on the novella “The People of Seldwyla” by Gottfried Keller, this opera was written in 1901 and first performed in German at Berlin’s Komische Oper on 21 February 1907. Its first English-language production was given in London on 22 February 1910. Frederick Delius (1862-1934) obtained his first successes in Germany. He numbers among the late-Romantic composers in the line of Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler. The dramatic weightiness and heroic sweep of these composers is, however, missing in Delius’s music, which is more dream-like and limpid, as in the well-known “Walk to Paradise Garden”, an intermezzo from the opera “A Village Romeo and Juliet”. Delius’s most important opera, it radiates a fairy-tale atmosphere similar to that found in Pfitzner and Humperdinck.
Red Ribbon Celebration Concert 2016 – Orpheus and Eurydice
On the occasion of the Red Ribbon Celebration Concert, Vienna’s famous charity concert for the benefit of HIV and AIDS aid projects, some of the world’s greatest opera stars made their appearance at the venerable Burgtheater. Anna Netrebko, Piotr Bezcala, Juan Diego Flórez and Thomas Hampson took part in this festive concert evening which revolved around the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. With excerpts from corresponding operas by Claudio Monteverdi and Christoph Willibald Gluck, works by W. A. Mozart and Franz Liszt, the audience is taken on Orpheus’ journey to the underworld, from where he desperately tries to take his love Eurydice back to the world of the living by the help of his singing.
Red Ribbon Celebration Concert 2014
In 2012, the Red Ribbon Celebration Concert presented by successfully premièred at the Burgtheater Vienna, Austria. By its third edition, the gala concert has established itself and has become the fixed beginning of the charitable Life Ball weekend.On May 30, 2014 a number of world-famous artists embraced the good cause once again at the Red Ribbon Celebration Concert 2014: Piotr Beczala, Thomas Hampson, Yusif Eyvazov, Luca Pisaroni, Ildar Abdrazakov, Vesselina Kasarova and Jennifer O’Loughlin lent their unique voices to the motto “United in difference”.
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in Salzburg – Concert 2
Program: Franz Schubert Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667 “The Trout” / Heitor Villa-Lobos Aria
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in Salzburg – Concert 3
Program: Max Bruch, Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Schubert, Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf, Pierre Boulez, Kinan Azmeh: Songs and chamber music
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in Salzburg – One day with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra – Concert 2
The idea of uniting young musicians from Israel, Palestine and various Arab countries into a musical ensemble still seems incredible today. Yet such an orchestra has been flourishing since 1999, when Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. The project, says Barenboim, brings together these young people “not so that they forget or hide their differences, but so that they can understand them.” He adds that “making music together gives us the best opportunity to learn to live with one another.” The concerts presented here were recorded at the 2007 Salzburg Festival, during the orchestras residency. The ensemble “proved its status as a first-class orchestra that has no need to shy from comparisons with the philharmonic ‘top dogs’ from Vienna or Berlin” (Munich’s Abendzeitung). Among the highlights of the concerts are Mozart’s “Sinfonia concertante” K. 297b, which gives four young soloists a chance to dazzle, and Igor Stravinsky’s “L’histoire du soldat,” an airy piece with a demanding percussion part. Songs and chamber music, including Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet, showcase the individual talents of the young players. The major orchestral concert comprises a Beethoven overture, an intricate and multi-layered piece by Schoenberg, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, the “Pathétique,” in which Barenboim pulls out all the stops and coaxes rarely heard instrumental lines and accents from the depth of his ensemble. On three afternoons, Daniel Barenboim led a musical workshop called “The School of Listening.” In the first part, Barenboim explores the phenomenon of sound and the importance of the human ear. The second part features the fiery 24-year-old conductor Robin Ticciati in a rehearsal of Beethoven’s third Leonore Overture punctuated by the Maestro’s insightful comments and heated discussions with the young conductor. In the third part the great composer and conductor Pierre Boulez rehearses Béla Bartók’s rarely played “Four Orchestral Pieces,” answering questions from the audience and the musicians. Throughout, Barenboim’s enthusiasm, humor and directness make this three-part series an exceptionally informative and entertaining event. The orchestra’s residency at the 2007 Salzburg Festival will be rounded off with the documentary “Music Is Never The Same,” available in May 2008.
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in Salzburg – Concert
The idea of uniting young musicians from Israel, Palestine and various Arab countries into a musical ensemble still seems incredible today. Yet such an orchestra has been flourishing since 1999, when Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. The project, says Barenboim, brings together these young people “not so that they forget or hide their differences, but so that they can understand them.” He adds that “making music together gives us the best opportunity to learn to live with one another.” The concerts presented here were recorded at the 2007 Salzburg Festival, during the orchestras residency. The ensemble “proved its status as a first-class orchestra that has no need to shy from comparisons with the philharmonic ‘top dogs’ from Vienna or Berlin” (Munich’s Abendzeitung). Among the highlights of the concerts are Mozart’s “Sinfonia concertante” K. 297b, which gives four young soloists a chance to dazzle, and Igor Stravinsky’s “L’histoire du soldat,” an airy piece with a demanding percussion part. Songs and chamber music, including Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet, showcase the individual talents of the young players. The major orchestral concert comprises a Beethoven overture, an intricate and multi-layered piece by Schoenberg, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, the “Pathétique,” in which Barenboim pulls out all the stops and coaxes rarely heard instrumental lines and accents from the depth of his ensemble.
Gala Matinee – Mozart Arias
The most spectacular homage to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on his 250th birthday in 2006 was incontestably the presentation of all of his operas and operatic fragments at the Salzburg Festival, ‘Mozart22.’ Recorded on film, this monumental project has been preserved for posterity as a benchmark of Mozart interpretation in the early 21st century. The ‘Mozart Gala’ held at the Felsenreitschule on 30 July 2006, in the first days of the 2006 Salzburg Festival, presents a kind of microcosm of the Mozart festivities, with a selection of arias and orchestral music performed by the Vienna Philharmonic under Daniel Harding and featuring some of the top vocalists of the 2006 Salzburg Festival.
Salzburg Easter Festival: Strauss, 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 René 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).