medici.tv presents Verbier opening-night concert tomorrow

For five consecutive seasons, medici.tv has been the place for classical music lovers around the world to enjoy the spectacular array of top artists who perform at the Verbier Festival, which this summer takes place July 15 – 31.  As Martin T:son Engstroem, the festival’s founder and executive director, says: “Verbier is a tiny Swiss mountain village, far from any big towns, but we can connect with the global internet community and share our wonderful programs with a worldwide audience. People have followed our concerts from some mind-boggling places. Hats off to medici!” This summer, medici.tv will stream concerts again from Verbier, with more than 20 live events from the 18th annual festival; tomorrow’s festival opening-night concert features the Verbier Festival Orchestra under music director Charles Dutoit, performing Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with soloist Nelson Freire and Stravinsky’s Petrushka.
 
The freshly redesigned medici.tv has reaped acclaim as one of the web’s leading classical music experiences. A column by editor-in-chief James Jolly in the June issue of Gramophone magazine details the medici.tv experience at length, marveling over the “treasures aplenty” on the site. The medici.tv app for iPads, iPhones and other digital devices – available for free at the Apple app store – was recently named one of the top five apps for classical music by WQXR, the classical music station of New York City.
 
For complete programs and additional information about the 2011 Verbier Festival, visit www.verbierfestival.com.  
 
 
Verbier Festival events coming to medici.tv:

July 15: Nelson Freire / Charles Dutoit: Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2
July 16: Lars Vogt:  recital of Janacek, Schubert and Beethoven
July 16: David Garrett / Gábor Takács-Nagy: Beethoven’s Violin Concerto
July 17: Béjart Ballet Lausanne: Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring
July 18: Khatia Buniatishvilli / Dutoit: Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3
July 19: Angelika Kirchschlager / Takács-Nagy: Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas
July 20: Bryn Terfel: recital of Schubert, Schumann, Ibert, Quilter
July 21: Stephen Hough:  recital of Beethoven, Hough, Scriabin and Liszt
July 21: Kirchschlager / Thomas Quasthoff / Manfred Honeck: Mendelssohn’s Elijah
July 22: Jan Lisiecki:  recital of Bach, Beethoven, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Bach and Chopin
July 22: Martha Argerich / Renaud Capuçon / Yuri Bashmet /Nelson Goerner: Chamber music
July 23: Martin Helmchen: recital of Bach, Liszt and Beethoven
July 23: Evgeny Kissin: recital of Liszt (not streamed live)
July 24: Terfel / Barbara Frittoli /Aleksander Antonenko / Gianandrea Noseda: Puccini’s Tosca
July 25: Joshua Bell / Renaud Capuçon / Daniel Harding: “Violin Night”
July 26: Khatia Buniatshvili recital of Schumann, Chopin, Prokofiev and Stravinsky
July 26: Verbier Festival Celebrates — Argerich / Bell / Kissin / Bashmet / Quastoff / Gidon Kremer / Mischa Maisky / Ivry Gitlis
July 27: Yuja Wang / Yuri Temirkanov: Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2
July 28: Arabella Steinbacher: recital of Beethoven, Bach and Brahms
July 28: Wang/ Leonidas Kavakos/ Gautier Capuçon: Chamber music
July 29: Quatuor Ebène plays Borodin Quartet No. 2 and Brahms Quartet No. 2
July 29: Bell / Repin / Arabella Steinbacher /Julian Rachlin: “Violin Night 2”
July 30: Valery Gergiev: Dutilleux, Strauss, Wagner (Die Walküre Act 1)
July 31: A Crazy Night in Verbier: “Vadim Repin @ 40”
 
 
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 12 million videos to date. The site currently averages more than 60,000 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. It has been watched more than 347,500 times (live and as video-on-demand) by visitors from 150 countries, an auspicious beginning for the site’s 2010-11 season. Other recent popular offerings from medici.tv include an evening of chamber music at the Atelier Lyrique de l’Opéra de Paris; Georges Prêtre 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 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 600 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.
 
Subscriptions to medici.tv start at $10.90 monthly, and $99 for a one-year subscription.
 
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medici.tv is produced by MUSEEC, in partnership with ROLEX.