With multiple critically-acclaimed symphonic cycles already under their collective belt, The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and its artistic director Paavo Järvi follow up their 2009 Beethoven cycle and 2011 Schumann cycle with a Brahms cycle! In concerts at Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, they present all of Brahms’s symphonic masterpieces. “A Brahms revelation” The New York Times
“Hommage à Gounod” Gounod Birthday Concert
The Palazzetto Bru Zane joins forces with the Orchestre National de France to present a special concert retracing the composer’s career through rare and little-known pieces: his cantata for the 1837 Prix de Rome (Marie Stuart), the unpublished first version of the Poison Aria from Roméo et Juliette, his opera Cinq-Mars (revived only in 2015), excerpts from his epic sacred oratorio Mors et Vita, and the big female duet from Le Tribut de Zamora, the composer’s last opera. As is appropriate for a tribute, the concert also recalls some of Gounod’s greatest successes, with the Overture to Mireille and the Ballet Music from Faust, which have constantly delighted music lovers for more than a century now. “Bravos for the soloists and orchestra!” (Operawire)
El Prometeo
After its premier in 1669, Antonio Draghi’s opera El Prometeo has never been performed again – until Leonardo García Alarcón used the only remaining handwritten copy of the score to revive it in Dijon. Alarcón, who is the Opéra de Dijon’s artist in residence together with his orchestra Cappella Mediterranea, has made it his speciality to bring forgotten masterpieces to light, He thus descovered a missing link in the history of opera between the Venetian opera tradition and the one to rule Vienna in the following centuries.
La Princesse Légère
A princess who is as light as a feather: The opera La Princesse Légère by Violeta Cruz, premiered in 2017, follows the fairytale The Light Princess by George MacDonald. Written for children and those with a child’s soul, his tales enchanted J.R.R. Tolkien and Lewis Carroll. The Light Princess calls to mind, with humor and poetry, the way children confront the gravity of the adult world and how parents learn to recognize the uniqueness of each child. The score is an outburst of life, in which electronics meet chanson and the sound of opera.
The Fiery Angel
The young Renata hears voices. Since childhood, she has been visited by a fiery angel exuding a sublime radiance. Besotted with him, she goes looking for him when he leaves her and meets Ruprecht, a knight who, out of love for her, will try to tear her away from this carnal possession. Moving from tavern to convent, against a backdrop of spiritualism and exorcism, collective hysteria and burlesque humour, The Fiery Angel is a powerful piece that has it all, bordering the very limits of expressionism. Inspired by the symbolist novel of the same name by Valery Bryusov, this opera is Prokofiev’s most striking operatic masterpiece. Its premiere at the Festival d’Aix see it transported into the tumultuous world of director Mariusz Trelinski, while Prokofiev’s score resounds to the baton of Kazushi Ono conducting the Orchestre de Paris. “Masterful and very inspired direction by Kazushi Ono, who transmutes an Orchestre de Paris of stunning sonic beauty” (Le Monde); “The Fiery Angel at Aix-en-Provence Festival – a benchmark performance!” (Financial Times)
A Prelude to Debussy
Claude Debussy died one hundred years ago. His writings reveal him to have been profoundly non-conformist and extreme. Whether they find it mysterious and impenetrable or fascinating and brilliant, no one is indifferent to his music. Through correspondences, interviews with contemporary artists, archival materials and lots of music, this film brings to life the man and his work. In this film, contemporary artists – among them conductor Philippe Jordan, singer Barbara Hannigan and pianist Alexandre Tharaud – recount ‘their Debussy’, providing keys to a better understanding of the composer’s works and the radical rupture they constituted at his time. The portrait is completed by up to now unpublished archival interviews and excerpts of performances by great ‘Debussians’ like Samson François, Leonard Bernstein and Pierre Boulez.
Karajan vs. Bernstein – Battle of Giants
Bernstein vs. Karajan: a musical Yalta. They were on top of the world of classical music, reflecting also the political conflicts of their time: the grandson of a rabbi against a member of Hitler’s national-socialist party, America against Europe, modernists against traditionalists. These two conductors mostly distinguished themselves by renovating the music industry, television and opera. They were icons of the 1970s who created a special sort of glamour in classical music and at the same time contributed to its democratization.
Leonard Bernstein: Mass
Monumental, delirious, transgressive – Mass by Leonard Bernstein is doubtlessly one of the most abundant scores in musical history. On the occasion of the composer’s 100th birthday, Bernstein expert Wayne Marshall, the Orchestre de Paris, its Chorus and Children’s Chorus and the Ensemble Aedes take on this “extravagant, exuberant and endlessly inventive creation” (The New York Times). Oscillating between playful experimentation and musical comedy, between brass band and gospel, the Theatre Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers creates whirlwinds of grandeur in a post-1968 atmosphere. Bernstein mixes jazz, rock and classical music, combines traditional liturgical elements with Broadway style compositions, and brings on stage electric guitars alongside three choirs and 24 soloists. Commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy, Bernstein’s Mass premiered in September 1971 at the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Bernstein composed the exceptional score at the time of sexual revolution, of the women’s and the environmental movement and the peak of the Vietnam War. In this very tense political situation, Mass caused fierce controversy, because it contained messages of peace and fraternity which were supposed to indirectly proclaim Bernstein’s rejection of the Vietnam War and his antiestablishment attitude. “Arguably the best thing Bernstein ever wrote!” (The Washington Post)
Quatuor Diotima: Livre de Boulez
At the Cité de la musique in Paris, the Quatuor Diotima, one of the world’s most in-demand ensembles, presents Pierre Boulez’ Livre pour quatuor. Written between 1948-49 in a period of complete radicality, this work is an exercise in formality and fragmentation. Boulez’ work has been profoundly revised in collaboration with the Quatuor Diotima. The unaccomplished fourth movement has been completed by Philippe Manoury.
Les p´tites Michu
In this delightful comedy by Andre Messager, award-winning conductor Pierre Dumoussaud and his young, creative team capture the audience’s imagination at the Theatre Graslin in Nantes with this “hilarious game of misunderstandings” (Le Figaro). After ist phenomenal Broadway run in 1907, Les p’tites Michu became an international hit. In Nantes, the bright colouring and the illustrations by Marianne Tricot give the operetta a cheerful, contemporary look.