medici.tv August webcasts live from Annecy Festival
Now in its sixth summer, medici.tv is the web’s go-to site for classical music lovers around the globe, enabling them to enjoy the world’s greatest artists performing at its most exclusive festivals. These include Aix-en-Provence, Verbier, Salzburg, and Lucerne, with 30 concerts currently available for 90 days on replay. medici.tv’s upcoming offerings for August include webcasts of nine concerts from the Annecy Classic Festival, featuring such compelling artists as pianists Denis Matsuev and Nikolai Lugansky, cellist Henri Demarquette, organist Thierry Escaich, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit.
This is the second consecutive year that medici.tv will be webcasting concerts from the Annecy Classic Festival in France’s Rhône-Alpes region. For the opening concert on August 21, Charles Dutoit and his Royal Philharmonic Orchestra will present a program of Berlioz, Beethoven, and Dvorák with Denis Matsuev as soloist. The Russian pianist/conductor will also perform in another concert at Annecy, directing the Orchestra of the Stars at Lake Baikal in a program which represents the musical heritage of the countries of the former USSR (including the opening of the movie The Children of Captain Grant and a work by Revaz Lagidze, composer of the Georgian national anthem) as well as a famous tribute to Slavonic culture by Dvorák: the Slavonic Dance, Op. 72, No. 2. medici.tv will also stream live from Annecy one of sacred music’s great monuments – Brahms’s Deutsches Requiem – in a very intimate transcription for two pianos performed by Claire-Marie Le Guay and Christine Lajarrige. A full list of webcasts from Annecy is provided below.
New VOD content available on subscription or for rent at medici.tv includes the widely celebrated production of Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims, performed at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris by Valery Gergiev, the Mariinsky Academy, and the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra. As Opera News marveled:
“The depth of talent that the Mariinsky Academy and Gergiev have formed is impressive. Many major opera houses would hesitate before programming a Rossini opera that demands so many expert Rossinians. The academy miraculously managed to double-cast the work.”
More information about this event is available here.
Upcoming August events at medici.tv:
August 24, 11am EST
Ariane Wohlhuter and Philippe Mouratoglou
Festival de la Chaise-Dieu
More info
Annecy Classic Festival (available on replay for 90 days)
August 21, 2012, 3pm EST
Dutoit, Matsuev: Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3
More info
August 22, 2012, 3pm EST
Dutoit, Demarquette, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra: Saint-Saëns’s Cello concerto
More info
August 23, 2012, 3:15pm EST
Lugansky: Chopin, Liszt, and Rachmaninov
More info
August 24, 2012, 3pm EST
Spivakov, Aglatova, Vasiliev, Kharitonov, Moscow Virtuosi
More info
August 26, 2012, 3pm EST
Marco, Le Guay, Lajarrige, Maîtrise de Paris, Choeur Accentus: Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem
More info
August 27, 2012, 2pm EST
European Camerata: Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf
More info
August 28, 2012, 2pm EST (delayed streaming from concert on August 27)
Chamayou, Kawamura, Tiempo, Lim: “Piano Night”
More info
August 28, 2012, 3pm EST
Matsuev, Orchestra of the Stars at Lake Baikal
More info
August 30, 2012, 2pm EST
Escaich: “Around the Toccata”
More info
More critical praise accrues to medici.tv with each passing month. The Toronto Star called the site “a seismic shift in the world of classical music,” and the Baltimore Sun said: “This is an amazing site for lovers of classical music.” Alex Ross said on his blog, The Rest Is Noise, that “the hits keep coming at medici.tv,” while offering “treasures aplenty” was how Gramophone editor-in-chief James Jolly put it, naming medici.tv as one of the web’s best classical experiences.
The medici.tv webcast of the New York Philharmonic’s “Philharmonic 360” event earlier this month was a tremendous success. The Philadelphia Inquirer declared: “Besides being a logistical feat, the project had true event status in a city where even everyday life can be an event.” More than ever, classical music lovers have reason to make visiting the site an habitual pleasure, as the best classical videos according to fans of medici.tv – concerts, operas, documentaries, and archival treasures – are available for rental for just $3.99–$4.99 until September 15. See this array of the most viewed programs on medici.tv.
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 twelve million videos to date. The site currently averages more than 80,000 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 and for the Android) that makes it possible to experience world-class artistry on iPads, iPhones, and the Android.
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 that has been watched more than 347,500 times (live and on-demand) by visitors from 150 countries. Other recent popular offerings from medici.tv include the New York Philharmonic’s “Philharmonic 360” concert conducted by Alan Gilbert, Plácido Domingo’s Operalia Competition Final Round at Beijing’s NCPA, the Berlin Philharmonic summer concert at the Waldbühne in Berlin, Renée Fleming in Ariadne auf Naxos at the Baden-Baden Festival, and Rossini’s Otello starring Cecilia Bartoli.
Building on the success of webcasts from the Verbier Festival in 2007, medici.tv has offered high-definition webcasts from other leading festivals, including Aix-en-Provence, Saint-Denis, Aspen, Glyndebourne, Salzburg and Lucerne; 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 and Beijing’s NCPA. 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) for a limited time – 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, Renée Fleming, John Eliot Gardiner, Valery Gergiev, Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Muti, Anna Netrebko, Maurizio Pollini, 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 100 live concerts each year, medici.tv has partnered with the world’s top artists and music institutions to offer subscriptions that give music lovers the opportunity to watch more than 1,000 VOD programs. They include concerts, operas, recitals, documentaries, master classes, artist portraits and archival material by such legendary musicians as Leonard Bernstein, Maria Callas, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Glenn Gould, Herbert von Karajan, Yehudi Menuhin, David Oistrakh, Sviatoslav Richter, Mstislav Rostropovich, Arthur Rubinstein, and Georg Solti, as well as such leading film directors as Bruno Monsaingeon, Paul Smaczny, and Frank Scheffer. Recently, medici.tv added a number of definitive opera productions to its library, including Don Carlo starring Rolando Villazón at the Royal Opera House and The Fairy Queen at Glyndebourne conducted by William Christie; also new to the library are archival performances of Van Cliburn.
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medici.tv is produced by MUSEEC, in partnership with ROLEX.
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© 21C Media Group, August 2012