medici.tv presents Thibaudet, Les Arts Florissants, and more this month
This month sees medici.tv offer a French connection to classical music lovers the world over, presenting live concert broadcasts by Gallic stars – from pianists Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Bertrand Chamayou to such ensembles as the early-music group Les Arts Florissants and the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse conducted by the charismatic Tugan Sokhiev. Also, from May 11 to 13, medici.tv will relay the Musicora festival live from Paris, with highlights including jazz violinist Didier Lockwood and pianist Jean-Francois Zygel teaming up for improvisations on themes by Debussy.
Since last autumn, medici.tv has presented the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse in concerts from its home venue of the Halle aux Grains, with events including such world-class soloists as Olga Borodina, Antoine Tamestit, Renaud Capucon, and Joseph Swensen. This month, music lovers can experience Tugan Sokhiev and his players with the virtuoso Thibaudet in the fabulous Salle Pleyel in Paris. Live on May 12 at 2pm EST, medici.tv will broadcast Sokhiev and company from the Salle Pleyel in a French-accented program that includes Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. Thibaudet will undertake the solo role in Liszt’s Second Piano Concerto.
On May 21 and 22, medici.tv will follow Sokhiev and company to Buenos Aires, with a pair of live broadcasts from the hallowed Teatro Colón. The first concert will include the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and Symphonie fantastique alongside Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G performed by rising star Bertrand Chamayou. The second concert will see Sokhiev lead the Toulouse orchestra in Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and Prelude to Khovantchina, with Chamayou as soloist in Liszt’s First Piano Concerto. Chamayou has been much feted for his performances of Liszt, with his recent Naïve recording of the composer’s Années de pèlerinage made an Editor’s Choice in Gramophone magazine.
This month’s live concert with Les Arts Florissants – from Paris’s Cité de la Musique on May 26 – sees Paul Agnew conduct the peerless early-music ensemble in madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi (his complete Book III) and the Franco-Flemish composer Giaches de Wert (1535-96), by whom the great Italian was keenly influenced.
From May 11 to 13, medici.tv will relay Musicora – a festival of classical concerts and discussions – live from the Palais Brongniart in Paris. Performance highlights include not only Didier Lockwood and Jean-Francois Zygel improvising on themes by Debussy, but also concerts by the Ensemble Percussions Claviers de Lyon, including an arrangement of Debussy for marimbas, vibraphones, and xylophone; the period-instrument Orchestre Francais des Jeunes Baroque led by Reinhard Goebel, in repertoire ranging from Charpentier to Bach; the singers and instrumentalists of Ensemble Le Balcon, in a program that spans music from Fauré to Stockhausen; and Ensemble Calliopée, showcasing new works by young composer Krystof Maratka, a leading figure in contemporary European chamber music.
Beyond this month’s new offerings, the extensive library of on-demand programs on medici.tv includes 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 made 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.
Critical praise accrues to medici.tv with each passing month. The Toronto Star called medici.tv “a seismic shift in the world of classical music,” and 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.
May concerts live on medici.tv:
May 11, 5:15am EDT
Orchestre des Benjamins du Conservatoire plays Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf
Lucas Herault, piano; Louis Fima, conductor
Palais Brongniart, Paris
May 11, 8:00am EDT
Ensemble Calliopée plays Fauré and Maratka
Palais Brongniart, Paris (Musicora)
May 12, 8:00am EDT
Ensemble Percussions Claviers de Lyon plays Debussy, Francois Narboni, and Gérard Lecointe
Palais Brongniart, Paris (Musicora)
May 12, 1:00pm EDT
Orchestre Francais des Jeunes Baroque plays Charpentier, Bach, Aubert, and Mascitti
Reinhard Goebel, conductor
Palais Brongniart, Paris (Musicora)
May 12, 2:00pm EDT
Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse plays Debussy, Berlioz, and Liszt
Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano; Tugan Sokhiev, conductor
Salle Pleyel, Paris
May 13, 5:00am EDT
Ensemble le Balcon plays Fauré, Stockhausen, Liszt/Lévinas, and Pedro Garcia-Velasquez
Palais Brongniart, Paris (Musicora)
May 13, 12:00pm EDT
Didier Lockwood and Jean-Francois Zygel improvise on themes by Debussy
Palais Brongniart, Paris (Musicora)
May 21, 2:30pm EST
Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse plays Debussy, Berlioz, and Ravel
Bertrand Chamayou, piano; Tugan Sokhiev, conductor
Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires
May 22, 2:30pm EDT
Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse plays Mussorgsky and Liszt
Bertrand Chamayou, piano; Tugan Sokhiev, conductor
Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires
May 26,
2:00pm EDT
Les Arts Florissants plays Monteverdi and De Wert
Paul Agnew, conductor
Cité de la Musique, 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 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 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 with 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.
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© 21C Media Group, May 2012