medici.tv captures Verbier Festival for fifth season
For five consecutive seasons, medici.tv has been the place for classical music lovers around the world to enjoy the spectacular array of top artists who perform at the Verbier Festival, which this summer takes place July 15 – 31. As Martin T:son Engstroem, the festival’s founder and executive director, says: “Verbier is a tiny Swiss mountain village, far from any big towns, but we can connect with the global internet community and share our wonderful programs with a worldwide audience. People have followed our concerts from some mind-boggling places. Hats off to medici!” Beginning July 15, medici.tv will again stream concerts from Verbier, with more than 20 live events from the 18th annual festival, featuring a who’s who in classical music: Martha Argerich, Joshua Bell, Valery Gergiev, Yuja Wang, Bryn Terfel, Angelika Kirchschlager, Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Vadim Repin, Nelson Freire, Renaud Capuçon, Thomas Quasthoff, Khatia Buniatishvili, David Garrett and many more, plus the Verbier Festival Orchestra under music director Charles Dutoit and such ensembles as Béjart Ballet Lausanne.
medici.tv Founder and CEO Hervé Boissière comments: “Martin T:son Engstroem is a magician, because he always invents. He is a kind of ‘world premiere’ man, all the time – when he invites the best musicians to play together without any routine, when he invites us to extend his festival to the world in 2007, before all the others. It’s a real honor to be partners again. We share the same values: excellence, loyalty. Being together with Verbier for his fifth edition is so exciting.”
The freshly redesigned medici.tv has reaped acclaim as one of the web’s leading classical music experiences. A column by editor-in-chief James Jolly in the June issue of Gramophone magazine 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 recently named one of the top five apps for classical music by WQXR, the classical music station of New York City.
For complete programs and additional information about the 2011 Verbier Festival visit www.verbierfestival.com.
Verbier Festival events coming to medici.tv:
July 15: Nelson Freire / Charles Dutoit: Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2
July 16: Lars Vogt: recital of Janacek, Schubert and Beethoven
July 16: David Garrett / Gábor Takács-Nagy: Beethoven’s Violin Concerto
July 17: Béjart Ballet Lausanne: Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring
July 18: Khatia Buniatishvilli / Dutoit: Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3
July 19: Angelika Kirchschlager / Takács-Nagy: Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas
July 20: Bryn Terfel: recital of Schubert, Schumann, Ibert, Quilter
July 21: Stephen Hough: recital of Beethoven, Hough, Scriabin and Liszt
July 21: Kirchschlager / Thomas Quasthoff / Manfred Honeck: Mendelssohn’s Elijah
July 22: Jan Lisiecki: recital of Bach, Beethoven, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Bach and Chopin
July 22: Martha Argerich / Renaud Capuçon / Yuri Bashmet /Nelson Goerner: Chamber music
July 23: Martin Helmchen: recital of Bach, Liszt and Beethoven
July 23: Evgeny Kissin: recital of Liszt (not streamed live)
July 24: Terfel / Barbara Frittoli /Aleksander Antonenko / Gianandrea Noseda: Puccini’s Tosca
July 25: Joshua Bell / Renaud Capuçon / Daniel Harding: “Violin Night”
July 26: Khatia Buniatshvili recital of Schumann, Chopin, Prokofiev and Stravinsky
July 26: Verbier Festival Celebrates — Argerich / Bell / Kissin / Bashmet / Quastoff / Gidon Kremer / Mischa Maisky / Ivry Gitlis
July 27: Yuja Wang / Yuri Temirkanov: Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2
July 28: Arabella Steinbacher: recital of Beethoven, Bach and Brahms
July 28: Wang/ Leonidas Kavakos/ Gautier Capuçon: Chamber music
July 29: Quatuor Ebène plays Borodin Quartet No. 2 and Brahms Quartet No. 2
July 29: Bell / Repin / Arabella Steinbacher /Julian Rachlin: “Violin Night 2”
July 30: Valery Gergiev: Dutilleux, Strauss, Wagner (Die Walküre Act 1)
July 31: A Crazy Night in Verbier: “Vadim Repin @ 40”
Verbier Festival
15 – 31 July 2011
www.verbierfestival.com
Still available for streaming at medici.tv
William Christie and Les Arts Florissants
Cité de la Musique, Paris, France
Lully, Lambert, Campra
Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic
Europa Konzert 2011, Teatro Real Madrid, Madrid, Spain
With flamenco guitarist Cañizares in Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, along with Chabrier’s España and Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2
Violinist Janine Jansen and pianist Itamar Golan
Salle Pleyel, Paris, France
Sonatas by Debussy and Ravel, plus Schubert’s “Grand Duo” and Messiaen’s Theme and Variations.
Pianist/conductor Christian Zacharias and the Orchestre National de Lyon
Auditorium de Lyon, Lyon, France
Schumann and Brahms
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, along with the Wagner-Liszt Isolde’s Liebestod and Liszt’s Sonata in B Minor
Lang Lang Educational Concert
Cité de la Musique, Paris, France
Excerpts from works by Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Bach, Debussy and Albéniz
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.
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