medici.tv presents NY Phil’s Chinese New Year, Feb 16
Following the success of last year’s Philharmonic 360 presentation, seen by over 65.000 unique viewers to date, medici.tv now looks forward to a second collaboration with the New York Philharmonic. Home audiences worldwide will be able to see the orchestra celebrating Chinese New Year with a gala concert on February 16.
This concert marks the New York Philharmonic’s second annual Chinese New Year celebration, with the orchestra heralding the Year of the Snake with a gala concert spotlighting contrasts and connections between Chinese and Western music. This new Philharmonic tradition honors both the Chinese-American community and the cultural heritages of China and America.
Returning to the Philharmonic to lead the performance is Long Yu, artistic director and chief conductor of the China Philharmonic, music director of the Shanghai and Guangzhou Symphony Orchestras, artistic director of the Beijing Music Festival, and a key figure in the creation of the Philharmonic’s Orchestral Academy and performance residencies in Shanghai. The Snow Lotus Trio, a folk ensemble from the mountains of China, join forces with the Philharmonic to showcase Chinese folk music traditions.
As last year, the concert will open with Spring Festival Overture, a traditional work to ring in the Lunar New Year, and soprano and Peking Opera star Yan Wang singing the Peking Opera classic The Drunken Concubine in makeup and costume. The program’s centerpiece is a pair of works, one Eastern and one Western: the U.S. Premiere of “Imitation of an Old Poem: Long Autumn Night” from The Song of the Earth by contemporary Chinese composer Ye Xiaogang juxtaposed with “Der Einsame im Herbst” from Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde which inspired Ye Xiaogang’s work. Both songs are based on poems of the Tang Dynasty by Li Bai and Wang Wei. Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano performs “Der Einsame im Herbst,” soprano Ying Huang sings “Imitation of an Old Poem: Long Autumn Night,” and archaeologist and television host Hsin-Mei Agnes Hsu recites selected readings of the poems that inspired both works, including the English translation of “Long Autumn Night.” Comparing the two compositions, Maestro Long Yu explains, “Ye uses many Chinese percussion instruments in his piece. If Mahler’s version is an oil painting, Ye’s is an ink-and-wash.”
The webcast will conclude with a special encore performance of Sun Yi-Qian’s Spring Dance by pianist Lang Lang, which he performed in the inaugural Chinese New Year concert in January 2012.
Recent/Upcoming webcasts on medici.tv:
Feb 14 10:45am EST
Detroit Symphony Orchestra
Leonard Slatkin, conductor
Orchestra Hall, Detroit
Beethoven :
“Overture” to Egmont
Symphony No. 1
Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral”
Feb 16 at 1 pm EST
New York, NY
Chinese New Year Celebration with New York Philharmonic
Long Yu, conductor
Ying Huang, soprano
Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano
Yan Wang, soprano
Hsin-Mei Agnes Hsu, speaker
Snow Lotus Trio
Lang Lang, piano
Li Huanzhi: Spring Festival Overture
Mahler: “Der Einsame im Herbst,” from Das Lied von der Erde
Ye Xiaogang: “Imitation of an Old Poem: Long Autumn Night,” from The Song of the Earth (U.S. Premiere)
Traditional/Zou Ye: The Drunken Concubine
Traditional: Selections (with the Snow Lotus Trio)
March 6, 2pm EST
The Tetzlaff Quartet
Louvre Auditorium, Paris
Bartók : String Quartet No. 4
Beethoven: String Quartet No. 15 in A minor
Haydn: String Quartet in C major
About the New York Philharmonic
Founded in 1842, the New York Philharmonic is the oldest symphony orchestra in the United States and one of the oldest in the world; on May 5, 2010, it performed its 15,000th concert. The orchestra has always played a leading role in American musical life, championing the music of its time, and is esteemed around the globe, having appeared in 431 cities in 63 countries –including its October 2009 debut in Vietnam and its February 2008 historic visit to Pyongyang, DPRK.
The Philharmonic’s concerts are broadcast on the weekly syndicated radio program The New York Philharmonic This Week, streamed on the orchestra’s website, nyphil.org, and telecast annually on Live From Lincoln Center on U.S. public television. The Philharmonic has made nearly 2,000 recordings since 1917, with more than 500 currently available. The first major American orchestra to offer downloadable concerts, recorded live, the Philharmonic in 2009-10 released the first-ever classical iTunes Pass. The series continues with Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic: 2012-13 Season. To further the sharing of its concerts through the Internet, in 2012 the orchestra partnered with medici.tv to webcast Philharmonic 360, the acclaimed program that explored the use of space in performance. The orchestra has built on the long-running Young People’s Concerts to develop a wide range of education programs such as the School Partnership Program, enriching music education in New York City; and Learning Overtures, fostering international exchange. In September 2009, Alan Gilbert became Music Director, The Yoko Nagae Ceschina Chair, succeeding Lorin Maazel in a distinguished line of musical giants. Credit Suisse is the New York Philharmonic’s exclusive Global Sponsor.
About medici.tv
Critical praise accrues to 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,” while 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 120,000 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.
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 1,000 VOD (Video on Demand) programs. They include concerts, operas, recitals, documentaries, master classes, 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.
Recently, medici.tv added reference opera productions to its library, including Don Carlo starring Rolando Villazón at the Royal Opera House and The Fairy Queen at Glyndebourne conducted by William Christie; also new to the library is archival footage of conductor Leonard Bernstein, Herbert von Karajan and Vladimir Horowitz, alongside master classes by Alfred Brendel and James Conlon.
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© 21C Media Group, February 2013