Schedule

Riccardo Frizza conducts the Orchestra Gli Originali and the Coro Donizetti Opera in a performance of Geatano Donizetti’s comic opera L’elisir d’amore (‘The Elixer of Love’, 1832). L’elisir d’amore is perhaps the most famous work in Donizetti’s extensive repertoire. It tells the story of the poor peasant Nemorino who is in love with the beautiful landowner Adina. After hearing about the legend of Tristan and Isolde, the desperate Nemorino wonders if a love potion would help him to gain Adina’s love. He seeks help of the travelling quack Dr. Dulcamara, from whom he purchases a bottle of magic elixir. Directed by Frederic Wake-Walker, this 2021 production is unique as it features the complete, original score as reconstructed by Alberto Zedda based on Donizetti’s autographs. In addition, the orchestra plays on historical instruments to recreate the sound of Donizetti’s orchestra. Among the soloists are Caterina Sala (Adina), Javier Camarena (Nemorino), Florian Sempey (Belcore), Roberto Frontali (Dulcamara), Anaïs Mejías (Giannetta), and Manuel Ferreira (Master of ceremonies). This performance was part of the Donizetti Opera Festival, recorded at Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo, Italy, in 2021.

“The concert was historic…” Daniel J. Wakin, The New York Times „From the start, the concert was exceptional… It felt like history… If this concert… precipitates a thaw, it started here.” Anna Fifield, Financial Times The concert was the ultimate highlight of the New York Philharmonic’s trip to North Korea’s capital Pyongyang: when Music Director Lorin Maazel raised his baton for Arirang, a lilting folk song emblematic of the North and South Korean people, some audience members were obviously misty-eyed. The North Korean audience was on its feet, applauding and waving to the musicians. Does this moment symbolize a change? Can music make a real difference? The concert at the East Pyongyang Grand Theatre was certainly an impressive event. The New York Philharmonic under Lorin Maazel opened with the national anthems of North Korea and the United States, leading on to Wagner’s Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin, Dvorák’s Symphony No. 9 From the New World and An American in Paris.

Iván Fischer conducts the Budapest Festival Orchestra in a concert recorded at the Béla Bartók National Concert Hall in Budapest, Hungary in 2015. The concert opens with Sergei Prokofiev's Overture on Hebrew Themes, Op. 34. After this, Thomas Zehetmair stars as solo violinist in Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2, Op. 63. The second part of the concert is features music by Igor Stravinsky. On the program is music composed for the ballet 'Jeu de cartes' (1937) and the Firebird Suite, No. 2 (1919). 'Jeu de cartes' is one of Stravinsky's neo-classical works and consists of three parts ('deals'). The Firebird Suite, No. 2 is based on the music from the ballet of the same name, which was written for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and premiered in Paris in 1910.

Quarteto Radamés Gnattali performs Heitor Villa-Lobos's String Quartet No. 16 at the Palácio das Laranjeiras in Rio de Janiero, Brasil. The ensemble was founded in 2006 and consists of Carla Rincón and Francisco Roa (violins), Fernando Thebaldi (viola), and Hugo Pilger (cello). The quartet, which specializes in Brazilian music, focuses on educational activities. Their recording of all of Villa-Lobos string quartets is a major achievement and was very well received by international music critics. Except for his Bachianas brasileiras, the performance of many of the Brazilian's compositions is limited to Latin America. Highly regarded as a composer, conductor and educator in his native country, Villa-Lobos has operas, symphonies, concertos, piano repertoire, choral music, and seventeen string quartets to his credit.

Fabio Luisi conducts the Danish National Symphony Orchestra in this powerful performance taken from the 150th Anniversary celebrations of Denmark’s national composer, Carl Nielsen. Alongside Nielsen’s inscrutably ironic Symphony No. 6, this performance features world-renowned French pianist Lise de la Salle as soloist in Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 4. This lesser-known concerto saw three separate iterations throughout the composer’s life and is characterized by bold chromaticism and a distinctly Jazz-like quality. Luisi and de la Salle have prior experience with this piece, having previously performed and recorded it together. This performance was recorded at the DR Koncerthuset in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2017.

Baritone Michael Lafferty (United Kingdom, 1996) performs ‘Gruß’ from Edvard Grieg’s Sechs Lieder, Op. 48; ‘Chera mï vstretilis’ from Sergei Rachmaninoff’s 15 Romances, Op. 26; ‘Ae Fond Kiss’ from Healey Willan’s Songs of the British Isles; ‘Chanson du petit cordonnier’ and ‘Chanson de la grenouillère’ from Malcolm Forsyth’s Three Métis Folk Songs from Saskatchewan; ‘La lune blanche luit dans les bois’ from Gabriel Fauré’s song cycle La bonne chanson, Op. 61; and Francis Poulenc’s Quatre poèmes de Guillaume Apollinaire, FP. 58, during the semi-finals of the Art Song division of the Concours musical international de Montréal 2022 (CMIM). This performance was recorded at the Bourgie Hall of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

At St. Bartholomew Church in Dornheim, Germany, where composer Johann Sebastian Bach married his first wife Maria Barbara, renowned Dutch cellist Anner Bijlsma performs the composer's Cello Suite No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007. It is likely Bach wrote his collection of six Suites for unaccompanied cello during the years 1717-1723. His cello suites are an essential part of the cello repertoire, highlighting the instrument's manifold polyphonic possibilities. As customary in a Baroque suite, each movement is based on a dance type. Bach's Suite No. 1 opens with a prelude, and is followed by six dance movements, divided over five sections: an allemande, a courante, a sarabande, two minuets, and a final gigue.

Every year at the end of August the renowned Early Music Festival takes place in the Dutch city of Utrecht. It is the largest festival focused on early music in the world, attracting an audience of more than 70,000 visitors. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 edition of the festival offered an alternative program that included both live concerts on location and daily livestreams of concerts and archival recordings. As part of this festival, Canadian fortepianist Anders Muskens performs a recital consisting of various sonatas by the German Baroque composer Franz Ignaz Beck, such as L’Éveillée and La Sophie. This performance was recorded at the Gertrudiskapel in Utrecht, August 25, 2020.

Les Dissonances is a collective of artists founded by violinist David Grimal in 2004. The conductorless ensemble consists of musicians from the most prestigious European orchestras, international soloists, and young talents. In this performance, Les Dissonances perform Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36. The composer wrote the symphony between 1877 and 1878, and dedicated it to Nadezhda von Meck – an exceptionally wealthy widow and great admirer of Tchaikovsky’s music, whom the composer described as ‘my best friend’. Tchaikovsky explained in his letters that the symphony is characterization of the nature of fate. The work opens with a powerful motif in the horns and bassoons representing fate. The second movement expresses melancholy, whereas the third presents ‘fleeting images that pass through the imagination when one has begun to drink a little wine’. Although the ‘fate’ motif reappears toward the end of the final movement, the movement has a festive character. This performance was recorded at La Cité de la musique in Paris in 2016.

Pianist Jaeden Izik-Dzurko (Canada, 1999) performs Barbara Assiginaak’s Mzizaakok Miiniwaa Mzizaakoonsak (Horseflies and Deerflies); Ludwig van Beethoven’s Andante favori in F major, WoO 57; and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 28, during the solo recital of the two-part semi-final round of the Piano Edition of the Concours musical international de Montréal 2024 (CMIM). This performance was recorded at the Bourgie Hall of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.