medici.tv presents great European orchestras this month
April offers a grand tour of great European orchestras as medici.tv presents concerts by top ensembles from Amsterdam, St. Petersburg, Vienna, Barcelona, and Lyon. Available now is a concert with the Vienna Symphony from the famed Musikverein, in a colorful springtime program of music by Bizet, Saint-Saëns, Gershwin and more, led by Bertrand de Billy. April 14 showcases the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya led by prize-winning young conductor Vasily Petrenko, in a program of Montsalvatge, Elgar, and the Brahms Violin Concerto with world-class soloist Midori. From April 15 to 25, viewers can enjoy four concerts with the ever-exciting Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev performing signature repertoire: the complete Prokofiev symphonies and four of his five piano concertos. In the concerto performances the Mariinsky is joined by pianists Daniil Trifonov, winner of the 2011 Tchaikovsky Competition (April 15); Gergiev’s frequent collaborator Alexander Toradze (April 16); St. Petersburg native Alexei Volodin (April 24); and American-Armenian Sergei Babayan (April 25). Live on April 19, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra presents Beethoven’s towering Missa Solemnis under one of the orchestra’s great kindred spirits, Nikolaus Harnoncourt. And on April 26, the Orchestre National de Lyon and music director Leonard Slatkin offer moving works by Arvo Pärt and Tchaikovsky, as well as Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 with virtuoso cellist Sol Gabetta.
At 2:15pm EDT on April 19, the live medici.tv presentation of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra – recently voted the world’s greatest orchestra by a panel of critics from Gramophone magazine – sees the Dutch ensemble team with longtime partner Harnoncourt for Beethoven, one of the specialties of this revolutionary conductor. They perform the composer’s vast, intense Missa Solemnis, often called “the Mount Everest of sacred choral music,” with the Netherlands Radio Choir and an all-star lineup of vocal soloists: soprano Marlis Petersen, tenor Werner Güra, alto Elisabeth Kulman and bass Gerald Finley.
Hervé Boissière, founder of medici.tv says: “This is a very exciting time for medici.tv and our growing audience. To have some of the top European orchestras like the Concertgebouw, the Mariinsky, and the Weiner Symphoniker with us is a wonderful new development in our progress – and in the progress of classical music online. Now music lovers can tune in to one place on the Web to experience symphonic music performed from France and Spain to Russia, Amsterdam, and Vienna. This international art can now have an international audience, anytime, every day.”
Beyond this month’s new orchestral offerings, the extensive library of on-demand programs on medici.tv contains performances, documentaries, and archival features, available via subscription. These programs spotlight leading musical institutions and world-class artists – from golden-age legends to today’s top stars. Along with its must-see new opera productions, medici.tv makes available the 30-plus films by documentarian Christopher Nupen. These include not only priceless documents of cellist Jacqueline du Pré (such as Elgar’s Cello Concerto and a number of all-star chamber performances) but also films of Evgeny Kissin, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Nathan Milstein. And now, complete on medici.tv are all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas as performed by Daniel Barenboim in 1983-84.
More praise accrues to medici.tv with each passing month. The Toronto Star called medici.tv “a seismic shift in the world of classical music.” 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. The medici.tv app for iPads, iPhones and other digital devices – available for free at the Apple app store – was named one of the top five apps for classical music by WQXR, the classical music station of New York City.
April concerts on medici.tv:
Available now
Vienna Symphony from the Musikverein: Bizet, Saint-Saëns, Ponchielli, & Gershwin
Bertrand de Billy, conductor
April 14, 1pm EDT (live)
Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona: Montsalvatge, Elgar, & Brahms
Midori, violin; Vasily Petrenko, conductor
April 15, 11am EDT (live)
Mariinsky Orchestra: Prokofiev symphonies and concertos
Daniil Trifonov, piano; Valery Gergiev, conductor
April 16, 11am EDT (live)
Mariinsky Orchestra: Prokofiev symphonies and concertos
Alexander Toradze, piano; Valery Gergiev, conductor
April 19, 2:15pm EDT (live)
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra: Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis
Marlis Petersen, soprano; Werner Güra, tenor; Elisabeth Kulman, alto; Gerald Finley, bass; Netherlands Radio Choir; Nikolaus Harnoncourt, conductor
April 24, 11am EDT (live)
Mariinsky Orchestra: Prokofiev symphonies and concertos
Alexei Volodin, piano; Valery Gergiev, conductor
April 25, 11am EDT (live)
Mariinsky Orchestra: Prokofiev symphonies and concertos
Sergei Babayan, piano; Valery Gergiev, conductor
April 26, 2pm EDT (live)
Orchestre National de Lyon: Pärt, Tchaikovsky, & Shostakovich
Sol Gabetta, cello; Leonard Slatkin, conductor
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 80,000 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. This 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 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 with 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, Salzburg, 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, such as 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 prominent orchestras are such revered 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 (94 in 2011 and 100 planned for 2012), 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 1,000 VOD programs, with 200 new programs to come in 2012. These include concerts, operas, recitals, documentaries, master classes, artist portraits, and archival material. Artists in the spotlight 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. In November, medici.tv added to its library the invaluable film record of Daniel Barenboim performing all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas in the 1980s in Vienna.
Watch medici.tv concerts on iPhone with the free medici.tv App.
www.facebook.com/medicitv
www.twitter.com/#!/medicitv
www.youtube.com/user/medicitv
medici.tv is produced by MUSEEC, in partnership with ROLEX.