medici.tv launches boldly redesigned site on March 21
medici.tv – the leading web experience for classical music – has been thoroughly redesigned for enhanced cross-media accessibility, technical quality, and ease of use, with the searchable, embeddable Version 2 of medici.tv to debut on March 21. The medici.tv site offers concert hall events that music lovers can access on their computers, home-entertainment systems, iPads, iPhones, and other digital devices by subscription or on-demand. World-class offerings available at the revamped medici.tv will include several new live concerts such as pianist Menahem Pressler at Paris’s Cité de la Musique (March 23), and a recital by Yundi from Beijing’s National Centre for the Performing Arts (April 23), as well as a Lang Lang educational concert from Paris (March 30). A recent and rare production of Vivaldi’s opera Orlando furioso, featuring Jean-Christophe Spinosi conducting an all-star cast at Paris’s Théatre des Champs-Elysées, will be available via delayed streaming for 90 days beginning April 2. New video-on-demand offerings will include concerts from the 2010 Verbier Festival, such as a recital by Yuja Wang and performances by Martha Argerich, Nicholas Angelich, and the Ebène Quartet, plus highlights of the 2010 Silvesterkonzert, with Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and special guest star Elina Garanca.
Music lovers will find the new medici.tv exceptionally easy to use, browse, and search. All the videos have been re-digitized for improved stability when viewing, with programs available in four quality standards so that all computers and devices can access medici.tv quickly and easily. The new persistent video player enables users simultaneously to navigate and browse the site while a program plays in the corner of the screen. medici.tv is more accessible than ever: the iPad and iPhone app is available for free at the Apple app store, and medici.tv will soon be available for use on Android phones and other tablets. In addition to French, English, and Chinese language versions, medici.tv is newly available in Japanese. All programs are fully chaptered. And the joys of medici.tv have never been easier to share, with an embeddable player and online-community tools for sharing via Twitter and Facebook. Through a partnership with Dailymotion, a selection of concerts will be available live on the Dailymotion platform.
Version 2 of medici.tv now enables users to search fully the 600 video titles available on demand, with the powerful search engine and expanded editorial content designed to enhance the site for learning and enjoyment. Encyclopedic content on musical genres, forms, and instruments will be available soon to complement the programs, along with articles about composers, performers, and musical institutions. Each program will be linked to a thematic playlist to facilitate music lovers’ discovery of the rich medici.tv catalog. There are two subscription plans, including one for the iPad application, and both subscription offers include “loges,” i.e., free medici.tv trials for subscribers’ friends.
Available this spring at the new medici.tv:
Upcoming live events:
Wednesday, March 23 at 8pm
Menahem Pressler, piano
Recital
Program includes Beethoven’s Sonata No. 31, Op. 110, three Chopin Mazurkas, Debussy’s Estampes, and Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat major
Cité de la Musique, Paris
Friday, March 25 at 8pm
Skip Sempé and Pierre Hantaï, harpsichords
Rameau’s Les Indes galantes, suite from the opera-ballet, in transcription for two harpsichords
Cité de la Musique, Paris
Wednesday, March 30 at 3pm
Lang Lang, piano
Educational concert
Excerpts from works by Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Bach, Debussy, and Albéniz
Cité de la Musique, Paris
Thursday, April 14
Bennewitz Quartet
Works by Mendelssohn, Schnittke, and Suk
Auditorium du Louvre, Paris
Saturday, April 23
Yundi, piano
Recital from the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing
Vivaldi’s Orlando furioso:
Live event, available via delayed streaming for 90 days beginning April 2
Vivaldi: Orlando furioso
Dramma per musica in three acts RV 728 (1727)
Libretto by Grazio Braccioli,
Adapted from Orlando furioso by Ariosto
A Camera Lucida Production in coproduction with France Télévisions and Mezzo
Paris’s Théatre des Champs-Elysées
Jean-Christophe Spinosi, conductor
Pierre Audi, stage director
Willem Bruls, dramaturgy
Patrick Kinmonth, sets and costumes
Peter van Praet, lights
Ensemble Matheus
Choeur du Théatre des Champs-Elysées
Marie-Nicole Lemieux: Orlando
Jennifer Larmore: Alcina
Verónica Cangemi: Angelica
Philippe Jaroussky: Ruggiero
Christian Senn: Astolfo
Kristina Hammarström: Bradamante
Romina Basso: Medoro
Like later operas by Handel, Rossini, and Haydn, Vivaldi’s Orlando furioso (1727) was inspired by Lodovico Ariosto’s epic poem of the same name. Written during Vivaldi’s tenure as opera director of the Teatro Sant’Angelo in Venice, it features individualized characterization, dazzling arias, and some of the most expressive recitatives in Baroque opera. Jean-Christophe Spinosi, who recently immortalized the work for the naïve label’s Vivaldi Edition, gathered together many of the same performers for this new production at the Théatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris. The New York Times’s George Loomis was on hand to report:
“Judging from the audience’s enthusiastic response, Orlando furioso did score a triumph. … The cast has some of the finest early-music singers around. … Spinosi has long championed Vivaldi operas. He and his crack period-instrument band Ensemble Matheus…do themselves and the music proud.”
Silvesterkonzert 2010 (highlights):
Gustavo Dudamel conducts the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, with Elina Garanca, mezzo-soprano
Encore presentation of live event, available via delayed streaming until April 21
Saint-Saëns: “Bacchanale” and “Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix”, from Samson et Dalila; “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle” from Bizet’s Carmen; Falla: “Danza del molinero” and “Danza final” from El sombrero de tres picos
Other new video-on-demand content:
From ICA Classics
Charles Munch / Boston Symphony Orchestra: Debussy’s La mer and Ravel’s Ma mère l’Oye (“Mother
Goose Suite”) (Diapason d’Or, February 2011)
Beaux Arts Trio: Schubert
Georg Solti: Elgar’s Symphony No. 2 and “Enigma” Variations
Three concerts from the 2010 Verbier Festival
Yuja Wang, piano recital
Martha Argerich, piano; David Guerrier, trumpet; Verbier Festival Orchestra / Gábor Takács-Nagy:
Shostakovich’s Concerto for piano and trumpet
Nicholas Angelich, piano; Ebène Quartet
Still available for free at medici.tv:
Georges Pretre / Filarmonica della Scala from the Teatro alla Scala
Nikolaus Harnoncourt / Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw
Caligula, ballet by Nicolas Le Riche, from the Palais Garnier, Opéra de Paris
Josep Pons and Mireille Delunsch / Orchestre National de Lyon from the Auditorium de Lyon
Paul Meyer and the Jerusalem Quartet from the Auditorium du Louvre
Modigliani Quartet, Jean-Frédéric Neuburger, and Diego Tosi from the Auditorium du Louvre
Christoph Eschenbach conducts Mahler’s nine symphonies with the Orchestre de Paris
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 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 an application that makes it possible to experience world-class artistry on an iPhone. The application is available for free at the Apple App store.
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 offerings from medici.tv to fare well with online viewers include an evening of chamber music at the Atelier Lyrique de l’Opéra de Paris; Georges Pretre 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 since offered high-definition webcasts from many other leading festivals, including Aix-en-Provence, Saint-Denis, Aspen, Glyndebourne, and Lucerne, as well as from such music venues as the Opéra National de Paris, Auditorium du Louvre, Cité de la Musique, and Salle Pleyel in Paris, and Milan’s famed La Scala. Many operas and concerts performed by the world’s leading artists and orchestras have been webcast both 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 leading 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, in partnerships with the world’s top artists and music institutions, medici.tv also offers subscriptions giving music-lovers the opportunity to watch more than 600 VOD programs – growing to 1,000 programs over the next two years – including concerts, operas, recitals, documentaries, master classes, artist portraits, and archive 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 at medici.tv start at $10.90 for a monthly subscription and $99 for a one-year subscription.
Watch medici.tv concerts on iPhone with the free medici.tv App.
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medici.tv is produced by MUSEEC, in partnership with ROLEX.