medici.tv app named one of top five classical music apps
The freshly redesigned, ever-deepening medici.tv has reaped acclaim as one of the web’s leading classical music experiences. In Gramophone’s June issue, editor-in-chief James Jolly details the medici.tv experience at length, marveling over the “treasures aplenty” on the site. The medici.tv app for iPads, iPhones and other digital devices – available for free at the Apple app store – was just named one of the top five apps for classical music by WQXR, the classical music station of New York City. WQXR points out that the medici.tv app “has classical music videos – lots of them. The library of 600 performances allows you to peek inside great European concert halls. Not all the videos are available on the free app, but you can access several hundred recent concerts, including the Louvre’s chamber music series featuring the Pacifica and Takács string quartets.”
Among this month’s live offerings on medici.tv is star violinist Janine Jansen and pianist Itamar Golan performing sonatas by Debussy and Ravel, plus Schubert’s “Grand Duo” and an early Messiaen gem, his Theme and Variations. The Jansen recital will be filmed at the Salle Pleyel in Paris, and debuts live via medici.tv on May 12. Another must-see concert features violinist Renaud Capuçon performing with the Orchestre National de Lyon and conductor Jun Märkl in an all-French program on May 26.
Other upcoming live events include the ever-stylish German pianist-conductor Christian Zacharias leading the Orchestre National de Lyon in Schumann and Brahms (debuting May 12), and the Takács Quartet playing Haydn, Beethoven and Mendelssohn from the Louvre (May 18). Still available for streaming on medici.tv are wonderful concerts by Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic (offering Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony and, with flamenco guitarist Cañizares, Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez); piano star Yundi (in Chopin and Liszt); Emmanuel Krivine and La Chambre Philharmonique (performing the complete Beethoven symphonies); and the harpsichord duo of Skip Sempé and Pierre Hantaï (in Rameau’s Les Indes galantes).
Upcoming medici.tv events:
Thursday, May 12
Salle Pleyel, Paris, France
Violinist Janine Jansen and pianist Itamar Golan perform sonatas by Debussy and Ravel, plus Schubert’s “Grand Duo” and Messiaen’s Theme and Variations.
Thursday, May 12
Auditorium Orchestre National de Lyon, Lyons, France
Pianist and conductor Christian Zacharias leads the Orchestre National de Lyon in works by Schumann and Brahms.
Wednesday, May 18
Auditorium du Louvre, Paris, France
The Takács Quartet performs string quartets by Haydn, Beethoven and Mendelssohn.
Thursday, May 26
Auditorium Orchestre National de Lyon, Lyons, France
Violinist Renaud Capuçon and the Orchestre National de Lyon under Jun Märkl perform an all-French program of Debussy, Ravel and Lalo’s Spanish Symphony for violin and orchestra.
Still available for streaming at medici.tv
Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic
Europa Konzert 2011, Teatro Real Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2, Chabrier’s España and with flamenco guitarist Cañizares, Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez.
Yundi and Zuohuang Chen perform Liszt and Chopin
National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing, China
Pianist Jean-Philippe Collard recital
Salle Colonne, Paris, France
Works by Chopin, the Wagner-Liszt Isolde’s Liebestod, and Liszt’s Sonata in B Minor
The Bennewitz Quartet with Arnaud Thorette, viola
Auditorium du Louvre, Paris, France
Mozart: String Quintet No. 5 in D, K. 593, and No. 3 in C, K. 515
Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 1-9
Cité de la Musique, Paris, France
Conductor Emmanuel Krivine and La Chambre Philharmonique; Les Éléments Chamber Choir; Christiane Karg, soprano; Carolin Masur, mezzo-soprano; Charles Workman, tenor; Konstantin Wolff, bass
Lang Lang Educational Concert
Cité de la Musique, Paris, France
Excerpts from works by Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Bach, Debussy and Albéniz
Pianist Menahem Pressler recital
Cité de la Musique, Paris, France
Program includes Beethoven’s Sonata No. 31, Op. 110; three Chopin mazurkas; Debussy’s Estampes; and Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat major
Skip Sempé and Pierre Hantaï play Rameau
Cité de la Musique, Paris, France
Les Indes galantes, suite from the opera-ballet, in transcription for two harpsichords
About medici.tv:
Since its official launch in May 2008, medici.tv has gained international recognition, bringing together a community of music and arts lovers from 182 countries – online viewers who have watched over 12 million videos to date. The site currently averages more than 60,000 individual visitors each month. In addition to offering live concert hall events that music lovers can experience on their computers and entertainment systems, medici.tv now offers a free application (available at the Apple App Store) that makes it possible to experience world-class artistry on iPads and iPhones.
One of the biggest successes to date at medici.tv has been the webcast of a Lucerne Festival concert featuring Gustavo Dudamel and the Vienna Philharmonic. It has been watched more than 347,500 times (live and as video-on-demand) by visitors from 150 countries, an auspicious beginning for the site’s 2010-11 season. Other recent popular offerings from medici.tv include an evening of chamber music at the Atelier Lyrique de l’Opéra de Paris; Georges Prêtre conducting La Scala Orchestra in a program of Franck and Respighi; Daniel Harding conducting the same orchestra in Strauss’s Alpine Symphony; and an all-Brahms evening featuring Leonard Slatkin and the Orchestre National de Lyon.
Building on the success of webcasts from the Verbier Festival in 2007, medici.tv has offered high-definition webcasts from many other leading festivals, including Aix-en-Provence, Saint-Denis, Aspen, Glyndebourne, and Lucerne; from such Parisian venues as the Opéra National de Paris, Auditorium du Louvre, Cité de la Musique and Salle Pleyel; and from Milan’s famed La Scala. Many operas and concerts performed by the world’s top artists and orchestras have been webcast as live events and later as video-on-demand (VOD) – all available for free. The list of artists presented at medici.tv is a “who’s who” of today’s stars, including Claudio Abbado, Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Plácido Domingo, John Eliot Gardiner, Valery Gergiev, Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Muti, Anna Netrebko, Maurizio Pollini, Thomas Quasthoff and Simon Rattle. Among the featured orchestras are such renowned ensembles as the Berlin Philharmonic, Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre de Paris, Filarmonica della Scala and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
In addition to webcasts of more than 80 live concerts each year, medici.tv has partnered with the world’s top artists and music institutions to offer subscriptions giving music-lovers the opportunity to watch more than 600 VOD programs, growing to 1,000 programs over the next two years. They include concerts, operas, recitals, documentaries, master classes, artist portraits and archival material. Featured artists include such legendary musicians as Leonard Bernstein, Maria Callas, Glenn Gould, Herbert von Karajan, Yehudi Menuhin, David Oistrakh, Sviatoslav Richter, Mstislav Rostropovich, Arthur Rubinstein, Georg Solti and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, as well as such leading film directors as Bruno Monsaingeon, Paul Smaczny and Frank Scheffer.
Subscriptions to medici.tv start at $10.90 monthly, and $99 for a one-year subscription.
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medici.tv is produced by MUSEEC, in partnership with ROLEX.