medici.tv launches season with Leonskaja and Brahms (Sep 19)

The new season finds medici.tv coming off a busier-than-ever summer, having webcast 45 live concerts and operas while garnering 2.2 million views from five summer festivals, including the Verbier, Salzburg, Aix-en-Provence and Annecy Classic Festivals, as well as Plácido Domingo’s Operalia competition.

Kicking off its fifth fall season, medici.tv webcasts pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja – a living legend – performing the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 live from Toulouse at 2:00 p.m. EST on September 19, accompanied by Tugan Sokhiev and the Orchestre national du Capitole. This season-opening concert from the Halle aux Grains in Toulouse will also include Brahms’s Symphony No. 2 led by Sokhiev, who – since the orchestra’s live internet debut on medici.tv in 2011– has led the ensemble in concert broadcasts on tour in Paris and Buenos Aires, not to mention La Damnation de Faust from Vienna’s Musikverein.

Also this month, medici.tv continues its association with the Louvre in Paris, with piano wunderkind Jan Lisiecki – recently named Young Artist of the Year at the 2013 Gramophone Awards – opening the Louvre season live on September 26 in a program of Bach, Chopin and Paderewski. Next month from the Louvre, it will be young Uzbek pianist Behzod Abduraimov – a winner of the London International Piano Competition – performing Vladimir Horowitz’s arrangement of Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre live from the Louvre on October 17. BBC Music praised Abduraimov’s Decca recording of the work, singling out his “immaculately controlled pyrotechnics.”.

This season, medici.tv will also be furthering its partnerships with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, including a concert of Messiaen and more led by Myung-Whun Chung on November 8, and with the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya, including Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ conducted by Pablo González on December 21.

New to the medici.tv family this season is a partnership with the conductor/harpsichordist Christophe Rousset and his “Talens Lyriques”. On October 5, at the Festival d’Ambronay, he will conduct Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater– one of the Baroque’s most popular works – which will also include Leonardo Leo’s Judica me Deus and the very rarely heard Stabat Mater of 1750 by Tommaso Traetta, whose mastery of counterpoint and inclination toward solemn chromatic works follows in the great Neapolitan tradition of Leo and Pergolesi. . Later on Nov 27, he will perform Salieri’s opera Les Danaïdes from the Royal Opera of Versailles.

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 masterclasses by Alfred Brendel and James Conlon.

Coming attractions on medici.tv

Thursday, Sep 19, 2:00PM EST

Tugan Sokhiev conducts Brahms with pianist Elizabeth Leonskaja

Orchestre national du Capitole

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Thursday, Sep 26, 6:30PM EST

Jan Lisiecki plays Paderewski, Bach and Chopin

Louvre Auditorium

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Saturday, Oct 5, 2:30PM EST

Mater Dolorosa: Les Talens Lyriques at the Festival d’Ambronay

Christophe Rousset conducts Pergolesi, Leo and Traetta