medici.tv in September presents Slatkin, Angelich, Despax
Following a moving presentation of five live concerts from New York City’s Trinity Church to commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11 (those concerts are still available for on-demand streaming here), medici.tv has an exceptional schedule of live international events for the rest of September. The lineup includes the season-opening concert of the Orchestre National de Lyon featuring music director Leonard Slatkin and guest piano soloist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, as well as a recital by violinist Akiko Suwanai with pianist Nicholas Angelich and another by up-and-coming pianist Emmanuel Despax. Also featured on medici.tv this month are a solo Angelich recital from the 2010 Verbier Festival, John Cranko’s ballet The Lady and the Fool and a Bruno Monsaingeon film on the teachings of soprano great Julia Varady. In addition to these live webcasts, medici.tv also offers an extensive library of video-on-demand programs available via subscription, featuring world-class artists – both legends from the past and many of today’s top stars – and leading musical institutions in performances, documentaries and archival material.
On September 15 at 6 p.m. GMT on medici.tv, the Orchestre National de Lyon will open its 2011-12 season with music director Leonard Slatkin. The live program will include Ravel’s Rapsodie Espagnole and Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, as well as Ravel’s beloved Piano Concerto in G Major with one of today’s most scintillating keyboard artists, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet.
The Auditorium du Louvre will kick off its season on medici.tv at 6 p.m. GMT on September 21 with the recital by violinist Akiko Suwanai and pianist Nicholas Angelich, who will perform the Violin Sonata in D minor by Schumann and the Violin Sonata in E-flat Major by Richard Strauss, along with Prokofiev’s tartly beautiful Five Melodies for Violin and Piano. Suwanai and Angelich have collaborated on several previous occasions, including for a popular Louvre broadcast on medici.tv in 2009. Also from the Auditorium du Louvre comes the recital by Emmanuel Despax, live on September 22 at 10:30 a.m. GMT. The prize-winning French pianist’s program includes Ravel’s spectacularly challenging Gaspard de la Nuit and British composer Stephen Goss’s Portraits and Landscapes, as well as Liszt’s Légendes to help celebrate this year’s bicentennial of the composer’s birth.
Angelich’s recital from the 2010 Verbier Festival sees the American-born pianist perform a poetic mix of Bach, Chopin and Schumann’s Kreisleriana. Famed as a dramatist of dance, choreographer John Cranko (1927-73) conceived The Lady and the Fool to lesser-known music from 15 Verdi operas, arranged by the great conductor Charles Mackerras, who also leads the forces of Covent Garden in a performance from 1959. The Bruno Monsaingeon film on Julia Varady, Gesang als Passion, is devoted to the soprano’s artful way of teaching; from La Gioconda by Ponchielli to The Barber of Seville by Rossini, she dedicates herself wholly to imparting her wisdom to students, insisting on every expressive detail and singing in full voice with her young charges.
“Treasures aplenty” was how Gramophone editor-in-chief James Jolly has described medici.tv as one of the Web’s leading classical music experiences. 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.
September events live at medici.tv
September 15, 6 p.m. GMT: Leonard Slatkin, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Orchestre National de Lyon
Auditorium de Lyon
Ravel, Berlioz
September 21, 6 p.m. GMT: Akiko Suwanai and Nicholas Angelich
Auditorium du Louvre, Paris
Schumann, Strauss, Prokofiev
September 22, 10:30 a.m. GMT: Emmanuel Despax
Auditorium du Louvre, Paris
Ravel, Liszt, Goss
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. 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 650 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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