medici.tv presents hot concerts in January
Starting the New Year with a flourish, medici.tv adds to its must-see schedule of live events and vintage programming with a slate of hot live concerts in January. They range from Antoine Tamestit, one of the world’s most exciting viola players, performing Berlioz’s Harold in Italy to soprano Patricia Petibon soloing in Poulenc’s glorious Stabat Mater; from the world premiere of musique concrète pioneer Pierre Henry’s Paroxysms to boundary-jumping violinist Victoria Mullova collaborating with the Matthew Barley Ensemble. Recognized as the go-to experience for classical music on the web, medici.tv keeps earning reams of accolades, with the Toronto Star pointing out that “medici.tv initiated a seismic shift in the world of classical music.”
On January 13 at 2 pm EST, Tamestit – joining conductor Tugan Sokhiev and the Orchestre National du Capitole in Toulouse – performs the picturesque Harold in Italy on an all-French program that also includes Bizet’s Symphony in C and Massenet’s rarely heard Suite No. 6 for orchestra, “Scènes de féerie.” And on January 15 at 6 am EST, medici.tv presents the world premiere of Paroxysms by composer Pierre Henry, the father of musique concrète and many of the recording techniques used by today’s most adventurous artists across all genres. In 1967, Henry created Psyché Rock, an international hit that has been remixed by the likes of Fatboy Slim, William Orbit, Stereolab, and Christopher Tyng (for the theme to the popular U.S. cartoon show Futurama). The medici.tv program will show Henry at home in Paris demonstrating his creative process (from insemination of idea and gestation of sound to phonetic improvisation with his own voice), and the world-premiere performance of Paroxysms at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) Festival of Music and Art in Tasmania. You can watch a trailer here.
On January 20 at 2 pm EST from the Auditorium du Louvre in Paris, violinist Viktoria Mullova will showcase music from her album The Peasant Girl, which blends folk-accented pieces by Kodály and Bartók with Gypsy music and jazz classics by the likes of John Lewis and Weather Report. Asked by the French magazine Diapason about the title for this rootsy project, Mullova said: “We had to find a title, and my friends and I were laughing because despite my regular performances of Beethoven, Brahms, and Mendelssohn, in the end I am still a peasant. My Ukrainian grandmother could not read or write.” As on the album, the virtuoso violinist is joined for the event by the Matthew Barley Ensemble.
On January 27 at 2 pm EST, conductor Josep Pons leads the Orchestre National de Lyon and a choir he brought with him from Spain – Orfeón Donostiarra – in two of the most mellifluous and moving masterpieces of French sacred music: Poulenc’s Stabat Mater and Fauré’s Requiem. The soloists include high-flying French soprano Patricia Petibon and baritone Lionel Lhote. The Fauré performance will entail a bit of historical synchronicity: the organ used for the creation of the work’s definitive version, in 1900, stands in the Auditorium de Lyon.
In addition to these live webcasts, medici.tv also offers an extensive library of video-on-demand programs, available via subscription. These performances, documentaries, and archival features 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; they 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. New Yorker writer Alex Ross said on his blog, The Rest Is Noise, that “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. 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. The medici.tv app is now available for Android users as well.
January events live at medici.tv
January 13, 2pm EST
Antoine Tamestit and Tugan Sokhiev in a French program: Massenet, Bizet, Berlioz
Antoine Tamestit, viola; Tugan Sokhiev, conductor; Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse
January 15, 6am EST
World-Premiere of Pierre Henry’s Paroxysms (trailer: click here)
Pierre Henry, composer
January 20, 2pm EST
Viktoria Mullova’s The Peasant Girl
Viktoria Mullova, violin; Matthew Barley Ensemble
January 27, 2pm EST
Josep Pons conducts Poulenc’s Stabat Mater and Fauré’s Requiem
Patricia Petibon, soprano; Lionel Lhote, baritone; Josep Pons, conductor; Orchestre National de Lyon
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 more than 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 that makes it possible to experience world-class artistry on iPads, iPhones, Android phones, and other digital devices.
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 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, 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, 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 700 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. 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.
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medici.tv is produced by MUSEEC, in partnership with ROLEX.