Lang Lang chose a wide-ranging program for his solo debut in 2003. After a more classical first half with works by Robert Schumann and Joseph Haydn, he interprets the Chinese composer Tan Dun after the intermission, finally culminating with Franz Liszt’s Don Juan Fantasy. Even as a small boy, Lang Lang is drilled to be a pianist by his father: He is to become the best piano player in the world. He is rarely allowed to see his mother so that she does not keep him from practicing. When he invites his father on stage at the end of his Carnegie Hall debut to improvise together on a Chinese folk song, one chapter of life ends – and a new one begins. This defining moment deals with the difficult relationship between freedom and the sacrifices we make for it. Lang Lang lives his father’s dream, which becomes his own dream. It is about musical perfection and personal relationships, about virtuosity and emotions – themes that are reflected in Lang Lang’s performance and in his life. Not only for Lang Lang himself, but also for his long-time companions such as conductor Christoph Eschenbach, composer Tan Dun and his teacher Gary Graffman, this concert was a magical moment. Pianist Claire Huangci has also known Lang Lang since a young age, and Bruce Liu is currently considered the new shooting star on the piano. Together with audio producer Christian Gansch and body language expert Stefan Verra, they retrospectively classify Lang Lang’s legendary recital evening.
Le Concert de Paris 2024
The 2024 Concert de Paris was hosted in occasion of the worldwide followed celebration of the Olympic Games. For this unique occasion, the stage was placed in front of an iconic point of the city: the Hôtel de Ville. Several classical music stars participated in the event: pianists Lang Lang and Khatia Buniatishvili, singers Nadine Sierra, Pene Pati and Fatma Said, cellist Gautier Capuçon and violinist Renaud Capuçon just to mention a few. With them on stage, the Orchestre National de France and the Chorus of Radio France conducted by Cristian Macelaru presented an extremely various program that can be enjoyed by the broadest audience: from the famous Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto no. 2, to the well known French song “Sous le ciel de Paris” and opera arias from the French and Italian tradition.
Daniel Hope – Dance!
Fleet of foot and with the whirling lightness of the waltz, the evening depicts the world of dance in all its variations, from the elegant courtly minuet to the fiery Argentine tango. Universal musician Hope will only be tripping the light fantastic metaphorically as his bow jumps across the violin strings. But who knows what surprises he may have in store? Daniel Hope has long been fascinated by the power of dance to move and inspire. Taking listeners on a journey through seven centuries of music history, DANCE celebrates the rhythms that have set bodies in motion and lifted hearts since time began. With everything from the anonymous 14th-century Lamento di Tristano to Wojciech Kilar’s 1986 work Orawa, via classics by Purcell, Handel, Mozart, Saint-Saëns.
Magic Moments of Music – Sergiu Celibidache and the Berliner Philharmoniker
It was only through the request of the then Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker that the concert came about in 1992. The legendary Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache and the Berlin Philharmonic were to be reconciled. Celibidache had shaped the orchestra in over 400 concerts between 1945 and 1954 after the end of the Second World War. When, after the death of Wilhelm Furtwängler the orchestra chose Herbert von Karajan as his successor instead of Sergiu Celibidache, a dispute arose, and the two eventually parted ways. Celibidache withdrew, deeply offended, and refused any offer of further collaboration. It took 38 years for Sergiu Celibidache to return to the podium of the Berlin Philharmonic. It went down in music history as the so-called ‘reconciliation concert’. Celibidache made it a condition that he would receive twice as many rehearsals as usual. The program included Anton Bruckner’s 7th Symphony. In addition to rehearsal and concert excerpts, the film features Celibidache’s son, Serge Ioan Celebidachi, contemporary witnesses from the Berlin Philharmonic, the orchestra’s horn player Sarah Willis, the young French conductor Marie Jacquot, his last conducting student Rémy Ballot, and the Romanian conductor Cristian Macelaru. They provide insight into Sergiu Celibidache’s personality, working methods, and understanding of music.
Lang Lang: My Favourite Melodies
What are the main features of a touching melody? World famous pianist Lang Lang takes us to a personal journey through his favourite melodies, from Beethoven “Für Elise”, Debussy “Clair de Lune”, J.S. Bach and Johannes Brahms to the most beautiful movies’ soundtracks. Filmed in unique locations in Paris, the Chinese pianist’s performances of Disney pieces such as “The Bare Necessities” from The Jungle Book, the Beauty and the Beast’s “Theme” and The Muppet Show, to Yann Tiersen “Amélie”, are able to captivate the listener’s fantasy and awake some of the best childhood memories.
LSO: Rattle conducts Brahms and Shostakovich
It begins with the engines of industry: mechanical marches, pounding brass. An uneasy second movement, and then a nightmarish vision of life in Stalin’s Russia explodes in a frenzied succession of dance themes. Shostakovich withdrew his Fourth Symphony before its first performance, after hints that he was treading a fine line with the Soviet authorities. It shines on as an extraordinary vision of thwarted humanity. Brahms wrote his Violin Concerto with, and for, his friend, the virtuosic Hungarian musician Joseph Joachim, and its foot-stomping finale honours Joachim’s heritage. PROGRAM Brahms: Violin Concerto; Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4
LSO: Pappano conducts Boulanger, Barber & Rachmaninoff
The sun comes out in Lili Boulanger’s lively tone poem, and lyrical feelings bloom in music by Samuel Barber and Serge Rachmaninoff. D’un matin de printemps is one of the few glimpses we have of Lili Boulanger’s compositional genius, a sparkling miniature that leaves a lasting impression of spring. The emotional sincerity of Samuel Barber’s lyrical Violin Concerto cuts to the heart, its nervy third movement building up to a burst of feeling. And passion reigns in Rachmaninoff’s opulent Second Symphony. Its third movement contains some of the most beautiful music he ever wrote. PROGRAM Boulanger: D’un Matin de printemps; Barber: Violin Concerto; Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 2
LSO: Nathalie Stutzmann conducts Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 and Te Deum
The obsessive Anton Bruckner worked on his Ninth Symphony for the last ten years of his life, but the concluding Adagio remained unfinished at his death in 1896. He is said to have suggested that his Te Deum be used in its place – and leaving aside the tonal shift from the D-minor symphony to a C-major hymn, it feels a fitting grand finale for the famously devout composer, who dedicated his last symphony to God. In a concert billed as A Blaze of Glory, the acclaimed Nathalie Stutzmann – who counts Bruckner among her three favorite composers to conduct – leads the London Symphony Orchestra and London Symphony Chorus, joined by soloists Lucy Crowe, Anna Stéphany, Robin Tritschler, and Alexander Tsymbalyuk, in a program that represents no less than the culmination of Bruckner’s life’s work, a mighty and magnificent call to heaven itself.
LSO: Inaugural Concert – Sir Antonio Pappano
Two giants of British music, two blistering orchestral works from the early 20th century, as Sir Antonio Pappano begins his first season as Chief Conductor of the LSO. Elgar’s lyrical Violin Concerto was inscribed with the mysterious phrase, ‘Herein is enshrined the soul of ….’. Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang joins forces with Sir Pappano for “a concerto performance to treasure” (bachtrack). The whole ensemble glows across three emotionally wide-ranging movements – at times tempestuous, at others heartbreakingly tender. Completed in 1917, Holst’s The Planets can still surprise us. From ‘Mars’ – the piece that inspired countless film soundtracks – to the atmospheric fade-out of ‘Neptune’, this is composition on a cosmic scale.
LSO: Pappano conducts Elgar and Vaughan Williams
At the time of his last symphony, Vaughan Williams had seen the damage of two world wars. The Ninth is a magnificent final statement, balancing dark with warmth, and dread with hope. Reminiscent, ruminating and spiralling: Elgar’s Cello Concerto is unlike his early works and yet remains one of his most popular, from its unforgettable opening gesture, voiced by the cello, to its haunting themes. Bax’s symphonic poem paints Tintagel Castle on a ‘sunny but not windless day’, evoking the characters who once inhabited it.