This week at medici.tv: complete Beethoven symphonies and more!
Emmanuel Krivine and La Chambre Philharmonique will perform the Complete Beethoven Symphonies on period instruments at Paris’s Cité de la Musique on April 14-17. All nine symphonies – Beethoven’s complete symphonic cycle – will be available for free streaming at medici.tv, the leading web experience for classical music. Also available for free streaming this week at medici.tv will be the Bennewitz Quartet and violist Arnaud Thorette, playing Mozart’s String Quintets Nos. 3 and 5 from Paris’s Auditorium du Louvre. Like other offerings at the newly re-designed medici.tv, music lovers can watch this week’s concerts on their home computers, home-entertainment systems, iPads, iPhones, and other digital devices.
Created under the aegis of Emmanuel Krivine, La Chambre Philharmonique is the product of a utopian ideal. A new type of orchestra, composed of instrumentalists from the finest European ensembles with a common musical purpose, La Chambre Philharmonique places pleasure and discovery at the heart of its musical adventure. The group’s structure is original, in that conductor and players enjoy equal status and current members choose new players, which helps promote a sense of cohesion. A project-based ensemble, La Chambre Philharmonique, which debuted in 2004, is also a space for research and exchange. The size of the ensemble is flexible, bringing together the appropriate players, instruments, and historical techniques for each program.
Krivine and La Chambre Philharmonique have recorded Beethoven’s nine symphonies for the Paris-based label naïve. A previous release of the partnership’s recording of Beethoven’s Ninth won much kudos. A reviewer for the Washington Post called it a “poetic and flowing” performance, “its unforced orchestral blending perhaps partly attributable to the use of original instruments but more strongly to the conductor’s skill.” London’s Independent called it “a refreshing, bold reading.”
Soon after its establishment at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague in 1998, the Bennewitz Quartet found its way among prominent Czech chamber ensembles. Named after the famous Czech violinist and teacher Antonin Bennewitz (1833-1926), the young, award-winning quartet has just completed a highly successful U.S. tour.
Upcoming live events at medici.tv
Thursday, April 14 – Sunday, April 17
Beethoven: the complete symphonies, Nos. 1-9
Cité de la Musique, Paris
Emmanuel Krivine and La Chambre Philharmonique
Les Eléments Chamber Choir
Christiane Karg, soprano
Carolin Masur, mezzo-soprano
Charles Workman, tenor
Konstantin Wolff, bass
April 14: Symphonies Nos. 4 in B-flat and 7 in A (8pm, Paris time)
April 15: Symphonies Nos. 2 in D and 6 in F “Pastoral” (8pm, Paris time)
April 16: Symphonies Nos. 5 in C minor and 8 in F (4:30pm, Paris time)
April 16: Symphonies Nos. 1 in C and 3 in E-flat “Eroica” (8pm, Paris time)
April 17: Symphony No. 9 (4:30pm, Paris time)
Friday, April 15
The Bennewitz Quartet with Arnaud Thorette, viola
Mozart: String Quintets Nos. 5 in D, K. 593, and 3 in C, K. 515
Auditorium du Louvre, 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 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 an application that makes it possible to experience world-class artistry on an iPhone. The application is available for free at the Apple App store.
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 offerings from medici.tv to fare well with online viewers 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 since offered high-definition webcasts from many other leading festivals, including Aix-en-Provence, Saint-Denis, Aspen, Glyndebourne, and Lucerne, as well as from such music venues as the Opéra National de Paris, Auditorium du Louvre, Cité de la Musique, and Salle Pleyel in Paris, and Milan’s famed La Scala. Many operas and concerts performed by the world’s leading artists and orchestras have been webcast both 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 leading 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, in partnerships with the world’s top artists and music institutions, medici.tv also offers subscriptions giving music-lovers the opportunity to watch more than 600 VOD programs – growing to 1,000 programs over the next two years – including concerts, operas, recitals, documentaries, master classes, artist portraits, and archive 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.
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