The Belcea Quartet is one of the world’s leading chamber music ensembles, having won many international accolades. Now, with the string quartets, the musicians have rediscovered a gem of twentieth century chamber music. “Here is a composer moving gently and magically from the Romantic and Classical canon towards aural visions of lightness, of sublimated pain and brooding escapism. Shame on those who do not know these pieces.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung). The Belcea Quartet succeeds in an outstanding manner in holding the balance between the youthful exuberance of the first two quartets and the lyrical solemnity and sweet morbidity of the third.
Donizetti, La Favorite
“Each note a masterpiece”, said Arturo Toscanini of Donizetti’s La Favorite. Something of a seldom-performed rarity today, it was rarely out of the Paris opera repertoire in the decades that followed its premiere. It is considered one of the composer’s most cogent works of music drama and shows Donizetti at the height of his powers as an orchestrator. The opera is the first original French opera by the Italian bel canto composer – a happy congruence of the Italian and French operatic traditions.
Tormenti e dolce oblio – The Venetian Concert
Repertoire: Claudio Monteverdi, Tempro la cetra (Libro VII dei madrigali) / Claudio Monteverdi, Voglio di vita uscir (Scherzi muiscali) / Benedetto Ferrari, Voglio di vita uscir (Musiche varie a voce sola, libro II) / Francesco Cavalli, Scene dall’Egisto / Claudio Monteverdi, Aria di Ulisse; Dormo ancora (Il Ritorno di Ulisse in Patria) / Tarquinio Merula, Folle è ben (Madrigali et altri capricci)
Rossini Opera Festival 2014: Armida
Armida is one of Rossini’s most beautiful operas and a work which clearly privileges the prima donna, here interpreted by Carmen Romeu, a Spanish soprano who started in Pesaro as a student with the Rossini Academy in 2011 and has graduated to important roles. On her side, a brilliant trio of three tenors: Randall Bills, Dmitry Korchak and the outstanding Antonino Siragusa. In this “Dramma per musica”, loosely based on episodes from Torquato Tasso’s epic “Jerusalem Delivered”, is a visually striking magical opera. Luca Ronconi, the second grand master among the great Italian directors alongside Giorgio Strehler, has staged the conflict between Christians and pagans, between the love of the sorceress Armida and the knight Rinaldo, as a homage to Sicilian puppet theatre. A sold out highlight of the Festival.
Die Feuersnot
From Wagner to Strauss: Unitel opens the Richard Strauss year 2014 with the first ever video recording of Strauss’ early one act opera Feuersnot, the master’s answer to Richard Wagner’s idea of “redemption through love”. The new production from the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, one of the most prestigious opera houses in Europe, is led by Italian conductor Gabriele Ferro.
Verdi, Un Ballo in Maschera
The 2014 Festival of the Arena di Verona is opened by the new stage design of the Verdi’s opera Un ballo in maschera by one of Italy’s great directors, Pier Luigi Pizzi, and conducted by Andrea Battistoni, a rising young talent in the intenational classical music scene.
Aureliano in Palmira
Since 1980 Pesaro, the Italian town at the Adriatic Sea, is celebrating its most famous son: Gioachino Rossini. Besides the well known and famous works of the master, in the intimate setting of the Teatro Rossini also the creations which fell into oblivion were performed. In 2014 “Aureliano in Palmira” was for the very first time part of the festival’s repertoire: a great work about love, war jealousy, loyalty and magnanimity.
SCHILLER: Symphonia
Symphonia, a unique recording of an open-air performance at the legendary Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin – SCHILLER’s musical language knows no bounds, which may explain why he has achieved such huge success over the last 15 years. His endless musical and visual curiosity has won him legions of fans around the world. With anthems like DAS GLOCKENSPIEL – a UK top-5 hit – SCHILLER creates electronica with an emotional core. Since he started taking his live shows on the road, SCHILLER has made a worldwide name for himself. His sell-out tours have delighted hundreds of thousands of fans with their stunning and sophisticated use of surround-sound and breathtaking, state-of-the-art light shows. The one-off live event is also a very special premiere: for the first time, SCHILLER (Christopher von Deylen) performs the most striking songs of his repertoire with a large symphony orchestra. In addition to the orchestra of over 60 musicians, SCHILLER also invites international guest artists: Midge Ure (frontman of the british electropop pioneers Ultravox), the swiss Jael, as well as the exceptional Russian soprano Eva Mali. Symphonia is a unique sound-experience and an exciting highlight in SCHILLER’S output.
Lang Lang & Nikolaus Harnoncourt: Mission Mozart
In spring 2014 the Vienna Musikverein turned into a music laboratory, a recording studio and into a venue for a very exciting enounter of two seemingly very different artists: Nikolaus Harnoncourt, well-known as an intellectual musician who came to attention as a period-practice and Lang Lang, a superstar, a pianist of stunning virtuosity and freewheeling music instincts, together with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra record the Mozart Piano Concertos No. 17 K453 in G major and No. 24 K491 in C minor. This documentary is a revealing insight into the creative process of two of the most distinctive and influential musicians in the world today.
Vivaldi: The Four Seasons Recomposed By Max Richter – The Berlin Concert
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons may be the most widely heard piece of classical music ever composed. As the composer Max Richter suggests, “The piece is part of the musical landscape, and a part of my daily life. I hear it in supermarkets, and it’s always turning up in TV ads.” He has approached his “Vivaldi Recomposed”-project as an admirer of Vivaldi, but no less importantly, as a composer. “Anything that a composer writes is part of a conversation with music that has gone before,” he says. Max Richter’s co-conspirator in the documentary on this project is Daniel Hope, the British violinist; and the orchestra “l’arte del mondo” with violinist Werner Ehrhardt, its artistic director.