medici.tv continues its summer festival season with webcasts from Salzburg
With its rich history, the Salzburg Festival has established itself as one of the most important festivals in the world, and medici.tv, now marking its fifth anniversary season, returns this year to webcast two major events. On July 25 Gustavo Dudamel leads El Sistema’s orchestra (in residence at the festival) in Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand,” and on August 16 Verdi’s Don Carlo will be performed live in a brand new production by Peter Stein featuring Thomas Hampson alongside tenor Jonas Kaufmann.
The July 25 webcast of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, the “Symphony of a Thousand,” features eight soloists, four choruses and the 200 musicians of El Sistema’s Orchestra (the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra). This concert opens the El Sistema residency in Salzburg and also inaugurates the Mahler cycle of this year’s Festival. The orchestra made its Salzburg Festival debut in 2008 and returned in 2011 to perform Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, both appearances conducted by Music Director Gustavo Dudamel, who also serves as the Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and was recently named Musical America’s 2013 “Musician of the Year.”
On August 16 medici.tv will webcast a new production of Verdi’s Don Carlo live from Salzburg. Superstar tenor Jonas Kaufmann sings the title role, with soprano Anja Harteros – the first German to win the Cardiff Singer of the World competition – as Elisabetta di Valois. Thomas Hampson (as Rodrigo) reunites with Antonio Pappano, whom Hampson considers “one of the greatest opera conductors of our time,” for their second Verdi opera of the summer (following Simon Boccanegra at London’s Royal Opera House in June & July), in this new production of Don Carlo from venerable German director Peter Stein. Hampson’s many previous collaborations with Pappano include an acclaimed EMI Classics DVD/CD set of the opera, which was recorded live at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris.
medici.tv once again presents the greatest in classical music during the European summer festival season. The latest medici.tv mobile application is its Festivals App – the gateway for music lovers to enjoy the world’s greatest classical festivals anywhere and anytime. The medici.tv Festivals App – available from the Apple App Store – is dedicated to the festivals of Salzburg, Verbier, Aix-en-Provence, Annecy and Operalia, among others. The Sacramento Bee described medici.tv as “a go-to destination for classical music and opera,” and the new Festivals App makes this truer than ever.
All of these outstanding events are presented in partnership with ROLEX.
About medici.tv
Critical praise grows for 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.” According to Alex Ross’s blog, The Rest Is Noise, “The hits keep coming at medici.tv.” 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.
Since its official launch in May 2008, medici.tv has gained international recognition, bringing together a community of 150,000 music and arts lovers from 182 countries – who have watched over 20 million videos to date. 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. Consumers of Samsung Smart TVs and Blu-rays can now access the medici.tv application – worldwide in 170 countries since March 1, 2013 on the 2011, 2012 and 2013 models and on all future models.
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 1,200 video-on-demand programs. They include concerts, operas, recitals, documentaries, masterclasses, artist portraits and archival material by such legendary musicians as Maria Callas, Glenn Gould, Yehudi Menuhin, David Oistrakh, Sviatoslav Richter, Mstislav Rostropovich, Arthur Rubinstein, Georg Solti and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.
More must-see opera productions have been added to the medici.tv library, including George Benjamin’s Written on Skin – described by Le Monde as “the best opera of the past 20 years” – and Verdi’s La Traviata starring Mireille Delunsch and directed by Peter Mussbach, both stagings from Aix-en-Provence. Other must-see items in the library include archival footage of Leonard Bernstein, Herbert von Karajan and Vladimir Horowitz, alongside master classes by Alfred Brendel and James Conlon.
July 25, 1:00pm EDT
Salzburg Festival
Salzburg, Austria
Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand”
Various soloists; Vienna Singverein; Simón Bolívar National Symphony Orchestra & Youth Choir of Venezuela / Gustavo Dudamel, conductor
July 24, 11:30am EDT
Salzburg Festival
Salzburg, Austria
Verdi’s Don Carlo (August 16)
Antonio Pappano: conductor, Peter Stein: stage director
Matti Salminen (Filippo II)
Jonas Kaufmann (Don Carlo)
Anja Harteros (Elisabetta di Valois)
Thomas Hampson (Rodrigo, Marchese di Posa)
Ekaterina Semenchuk (La Principessa Eboli)
Eric Halfvarson (Il Grande Inquisitore)
Robert Lloyd (Un frate)
Maria Celeng (Tebaldo)
Sen Guo (Una voce dal cielo)
Benjamin Bernheim (Il Conte di Lerma/Un Araldo reale)
Members of the Young Singers Project (Sei deputati fiamminghi)
Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus
Wiener Philharmoniker
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© 21C Media Group, July 2013