This week at medici.tv: Yundi master class and concert
The young and charismatic Chinese pianist Yundi (also known as Yundi Li) performs two programs this week from his homeland that can be viewed for free at medici.tv. On Friday, April 22 he will give a master class – available via delayed streaming – that will illuminate his approach to interpretation and his unique vision of the art of piano playing. The next day, on April 23, medici.tv will offer a live webcast of Yundi’s highly anticipated concert at Beijing’s National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA). The venue’s orchestra, under the direction of conductor Zuohuang Chen, will join Yundi for Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1. Yundi will also perform solo works by the composer with whom he is most closely associated, Frédéric Chopin – including three nocturnes and the Heroic Polonaise, Op. 53 – as well as Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. The concert, part of the NCPA’s celebration of the 200th anniversary of Liszt’s birth, will also include Zuohuang Chen leading the orchestra in the Hungarian composer’s best-known symphonic poem, Les Préludes.
Yundi’s remarkable artistry first received international attention when he won the Chopin Competition in 2000, the youngest pianist ever to receive the prize. His master class will showcase his special affinity for the music of the Romantic era, as he shares anecdotes and gives memorable advice about some of the piano’s most popular repertoire. Is playing an innate gift or is it learned technique? Black magic or strenuous repetition? These are just some of the issues Yundi will touch upon. It promises to be a fascinating “up close” encounter with an artist whom the New York Times has called “a technically astounding pianist who is by turns elegant and rambunctious, coolly expressive and white-hot.”
This special event is made possible by Rolex, sponsor of the National Center for the Performing Arts and medici.tv.
Upcoming live events at medici.tv
Friday, April 22
National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing, China
Yundi master class (via delayed streaming)
Saturday, April 23
National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing, China
Yundi and Zuohuang Chen perform Liszt and Chopin
Still available for streaming at medici.tv
The Bennewitz Quartet with Arnaud Thorette, viola
Auditorium du Louvre, Paris, France
Mozart: String Quintet No. 5 in D, K. 593, and No. 3 in C, K. 515
Beethoven: the complete symphonies, Nos. 1-9
Cité de la Musique, Paris, France
Emmanuel Krivine and La Chambre Philharmonique; Les Éléments Chamber Choir; Christiane Karg, soprano; Carolin Masur, mezzo-soprano; Charles Workman, tenor; Konstantin Wolff, bass
Lang Lang Educational Concert
Cité de la Musique, Paris, France
Excerpts from works by Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Bach, Debussy, and Albéniz
Menahem Pressler recital
Cité de la Musique, Paris, France
Program includes Beethoven’s Sonata No. 31, Op. 110; three Chopin mazurkas; Debussy’s Estampes; and Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat major
Skip Sempé and Pierre Hantaï play Rameau
Cité de la Musique, Paris, France
Les Indes galantes, suite from the opera-ballet, in transcription for two harpsichords
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 a free application (available at the Apple App Store) that makes it possible to experience world-class artistry on an iPhone.
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 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, and Lucerne, as well as from such Parisian music venues as the Opéra National de Paris, Auditorium du Louvre, Cité de la Musique, and Salle Pleyel, 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, 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.
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