Bregenz Festival staged for the first time Giuseppe Verdi’s masterpiece Rigoletto – compelling, blood-curdling and beautiful. The stage and film director Philipp Stölzl (Medicus & Goethe), known for his successful productions in Salzburg as well as for his music videos for Madonna or for the German band Rammstein, created a spectacular setting on the world’s largest stage on a lake, praised by critics as a unique technological masterpiece. The staggering show has attracted not only 200,000 visitors to 20 sold out performances but also close to 2 million TV-viewers in Germany, Austria and Swiss alone. “This Rigoletto on Lake Constance becomes a Hollywood spectacle.” (Handelsblatt); “The performance of the three main characters has been outstanding.” (Der Standard)
Salzburg Festival 2019: Orphée aux enfers
Operetta enthusiast Barrie Kosky has landed a gigantic success with Offenbach’s subversive and hilarious reversion of the Orpheus myth at the Salzburg Festival. Kosky created a magically precise staging in a glittering opulent scenery and a literally devilish choreography. The dialogues are performed by the brilliant German actor Max Hopp as John Styx. Under Enrique Mazzola’s precise conducting the Wiener Philharmoniker provide “a sparkling orchestral sound” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung): “A frantic and fabulous show” (New York Times).
BBC Proms 2019: Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla conducts Elgar and Weinberg
The CBSO and Music Director Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla celebrate the centenary of Mieczyslaw Weinberg the man Shostakovich hailed as ‘one of the most outstanding composers’ of his day – with a rare performance of his Symphony No. 3, a work that combines folk melodies and dances with confessional urgency. That intensity is shared by Elgar’s passionate Cello Concerto, performed here by 2016 BBC Young Musician winner Sheku Kanneh-Mason. The concert opens with Dorothy Howell’s radiant tone-poem Lamia (first performed, like Elgar’s concerto, 100 years ago) and also includes The Way to Castle Yonder, a suite from the much-missed Oliver Knussen’s opera Higglety Pigglety Pop! “A performance of surpassing delicacy and refinement” (The Telegraph) PROGRAM Weinberg: Symphony No. 3; Elgar: Cello Concerto; Dorothy Howell: Lamia; Knussen: The Way to Castle Yonde
BBC Proms 2019: Karina Canellakis conducts Dvorák and Janácek
Janácek’s monumental Glagolitic Mass, steeped in Moravian rhythms, is heard alongside Dvorák’s fairy-tale tone-poem The Golden Spinning Wheel and and a World Premiere by Zosha Di Castri, a new work that marks the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s mission to the Moon. Karina Canellakis conducts the massed forces of the BBC Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, BBC Singers and soloists in one of the 20th century’s great choral masterpieces. “The performance of the season” (The Times) PROGRAM Zosha Di Castri: Long Is the Journey – Short Is the Memory; Dvorak: The Golden Spinning Wheel; Janacek: Glagolitic Mass
BBC Proms 2019: Jakub Hruša conducts Dvorák and Smetana
Czech conductor Jakub Hruša returns with two popular masterpieces from his homeland. With its song-like slow movement and irrepressible, folk-infused finale, Dvorák’s Violin Concerto is one of the best-loved in the repertoire. American virtuoso Joshua Bell joins the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra as soloist. Journey through the Czech countryside in the second half with Smetana’s symphonic suite Má vlast – a colourful celebration of a nation’s landscape, castles and warriors, with the sweeping melody of ‘Vltava’ at its heart. “An absolute triumph” (The Daily Telegraph) PROGRAM Dvorák: Violin Concerto; Smetana: Má vlast (‘My Country’)
John Wilson at the BBC Proms 2019 – The Warner Brothers Story
Ten years since their first Proms appearance together, John Wilson and the John Wilson Orchestra present an evening of sumptuous technicoloured scores from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema. With music from films including The Sea Hawk, The Constant Nymph, Calamity Jane, A Streetcar Named Desire and Harry Potter. “Audiences had a wonderful time, applauding wildly, stomping their feet” (The Times)
Rachmaninoff – The Piano Concertos Nos. 3 & 4
Performing all four piano concertos by Sergei Rachmaninoff in just two days – a challenge for the Orchestre de Paris on the Rachmaninoff Weekend at the Philharmonie de Paris. Together with three different pianists young conductor Stanislav Kochanovsky who is considered one of the most outstanding talents in his homeland Russia, performs the concert. For the first concert of the cycle, Russian Rachmaninoff specialist Denis Matsuev takes on the titanic Concerto No. 3 with all his distinctive enthusiasm, before exploring the more modern outline of the less-known Concerto No. 4. A performance which was hailed by the French press as superlative.
Rachmaninoff – The Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2
Performing all four piano concertos by Sergei Rachmaninoff in just two days – a challenge for the Orchestre de Paris on the Rachmaninoff Weekend at the Philharmonie de Paris. Together with three different pianists young conductor Stanislav Kochanovsky who is considered one of the most outstanding talents in his homeland Russia, performs the concert. In the second concert Nikolai Lugansky opens with the Piano Concerto No. 1, a work started when the composer was a student at the Moscow Conservatoire. The highlight of the evening is the Piano Concerto No. 2, the most popular of Rachmaninoff‘s four piano concertos, performed by the young Uzbek pianist Behzod Abduraimov “who gave a superb account, ardent but never stretching the musical line too far” (Bachtrack).
Concert Monstre
Five hundred artists on stage is just what it takes to do justice to the grandeur and genius of Hector Berlioz. His Symphonie funèbre et triomphale, premiered at the Bastille, draws on this impressive cast of instrumental and vocal forces under the baton of François-Xavier Roth at the Philharmonie de Paris. Also to be heard are Berlioz’ works L’ impériale, Chant des chemins de fer and La Marseillaise in a breathtaking orchestration, sung with the participation of the audience. A gigantic and “outstanding concert” (ResMusica). PROGRAM: Grande Symphonie funèbre et triomphale; L’ impériale, Chant des chemins de fer, La Marseillaise
Stravaganza d’Amore!
Late sixteenth-century Florence was a theatre: first and foremost a political one, in the eyes of the dynasties that wished to use the arts to display their power. A humanist one too, as is shown by these intermedi (interludes) that sought to achieve the perfect blend between music and poetry. Inserted into plays these entertainments were presented with lavish visual and musical resources. After reaching an initial peak in 1589 with the intermedi composed for Baragli’s La Pellegrina, this tradition was prolonged in the burgeoning genre of opera by such composers as Peri, Caccini, and, very soon, Monteverdi and Gagliano. Rather than aiming for the impossible ideal of a reconstruction, Raphae¨l Pichon has devised a sort of imaginary intermedio by selecting the nest gems from this repertory, featuring the gures of Apollo, Orpheus and Eurydice, and above all Cupid: Love, Love, Love!