medici.tv’s April includes Concertgebouw Orchestra’s 125th anniversary concert
Among the exciting medici.tv presentations this month is the 125th anniversary concert of Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra – voted the world’s greatest symphony orchestra by Gramophone magazine. Mariss Jansons will lead the musical festivities at the acoustically resplendent Concertgebouw on April 10, with the program featuring three star soloists: pianist Lang Lang, baritone Thomas Hampson and violinist Janine Jansen. Also on medici.tv this month is conductor Kent Nagano leading the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal in Bruckner and Rossini, as well as Beethoven with pianist Till Fellner (April 16). Then there is a fantastic program of Finnish music both iconic and new, with works by Sibelius and Kaija Saariaho performed by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and soprano Anu Komsi under conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali (April 19).
When the Concertgebouw was inaugurated in 1888, public interest was so great that Amsterdam experienced its first traffic jam…of horse-drawn carriages. Now this great concert hall and its namesake ensemble – the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra – are celebrating 125 years together with a gala anniversary concert, webcast live on medici.tv at 2 p.m. EDT on April 10. Chief conductor Mariss Jansons will be on the podium leading a festive program that includes Wagner’s Overture to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, several orchestral songs by Mahler with Thomas Hampson, the finale of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with Lang Lang, and Saint-Saëns’ Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso with Janine Jansen, as well as Richard Strauss’s waltzing Der Rosenkavalier Suite and the world premiere of a Concertgebouw Orchestra commission from composer Bob Zimmerman.
At 8 p.m. EDT on April 16, medici.tv presents Kent Nagano leading the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal in Bruckner’s granitic Symphony No. 6 and Rossini’s fizzing, ever-popular Overture to William Tell. The program also includes Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with one of today’s excellent young pianists in Classical-era repertoire: the Austrian Till Fellner, whom the New York Times has called “a penetrating musician.”
In another highlight this month, medici.tv offers a very special concert from La Cité de la musique in Paris, at 2 p.m. EDT on April 19: a program of great Finnish music, both vintage and contemporary, performed by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under Santtu-Matias Rouvali. They will perform Sibelius’s Symphony No. 7 alongside Kaija Saariaho’s orchestral works Asteroid 4179: Toutatis and Laterna Magica, as well as Sibelius’s Luonnotar and Saariaho’s Leino Songs, both with Finnish soprano Anu Komsi.
April events at medici.tv
April 10: 2 p.m. EDT
Amsterdam: Concertgebouw
Gala Concert for the 125th Anniversary of the Concertgebouw Amsterdam
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; Mariss Jansons, conductor
Janine Jansen, violin; Thomas Hampson, baritone; Lang Lang, piano
April 11: 2 p.m. EDT
Lyon, France: Auditorium de Lyon
Barber, Gershwin, Stravinsky
Orchestre National De Lyon; Leonard Slatkin, conductor
Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano
April 16: 7 p.m. EDT
Montreal: Maison symphonique de Montréal
Rossini, Beethoven, Bruckner
Orchestre symphonique de Montréal; Kent Nagano, conductor
Till Fellner, piano
April 17: 2 p.m. EDT
Paris: Atelier Lyrique de l’Opéra national de Paris
Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Loewe
Soloists of the Ateler Lyrique De L’Opéra National De Paris
April 18: 6:30 a.m. EDT
Paris: Louvre Auditorium
Schubert, Schumann and Brahms
Adam Laloum, piano
April 19: 2 p.m. EDT
Paris: La Cité de la musique
Sibelius, Kaija Saariaho
Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France; Santtu-Matias Rouvali, conductor
Anu Komsi, soprano
About medici.tv
Critical praise grows for 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.” 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. Consumers of Samsung Smart TVs can now access the medici.tv application – worldwide in 170 countries since March 1, 2013 on the 2011/2012 models and on all future models.
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 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.
Reference opera productions have also been added to the medici.tv library, including Don Carlo at London’s Royal Opera House starring Rolando Villazón and The Fairy Queen at Glyndebourne conducted by William Christie. Also new to the library is archival footage of Leonard Bernstein, Herbert von Karajan and Vladimir Horowitz, alongside master classes by Alfred Brendel and James Conlon.
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© 21C Media Group, April 2013