Schedule

Minsoo Hong (1993, South Korea) performs Liszt’s Sposalizio from Années de Pèlerinage: Deuxième Année (S161/1) and Bellini/Liszt’s Réminiscences de Norma (S394) during the Solo Finals of the11th International Franz Liszt Piano Competition, held in TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht, in 2017. The competition actively presents, develops, and promotes piano talents from around the world. In doing so, it has become one of the prominent gateways to the international professional classical music scene for young musicians. The International Franz Liszt Piano Competition was founded in 1986 in the Netherlands and has since built a reputation as one of the world’s most prestigious piano competitions.

Before Porpora, Scarlatti and Pergolesi ruled the Neapolitan music scene there was Gaetano Greco, one of the finest music teachers and composers of his day. Andrea Buccarella, a young harpsichordist from Rome (also performing in the Festival with his Abchordis Ensemble), pairs Greco’s most beautiful toccatas and famous Ballo di Mantua with works by his pupil Durante, who with his ‘quattro stagioni’ explores every nook and cranny of the keyboard.

Misha Mengelberg, the forgetting has begun. He is waiting for a taxi he didn’t call to go to a performance that won’t take place. Dutch composer/pianist and grand duke of jazz Misha Mengelberg (1935) has been submerged in the shadow of dementia, ending his life as a musician. At the London jazz club Vortex in 2013 he impressively says his goodbyes to the international stage. It’s also his last major performance with his band, the Instant Composers Pool Orchestra. The musicians find it hard to let him go, but Misha’s decline is constant, and he slowly fades away from their midst. A film about exceptional loyalty, dilemmas, respect and dedication. And about music, the music of Misha Mengelberg.

Swiss conductor Philippe Jordan and the Orchestre de l’Opéra national de Paris recorded all of Ludwig van Beethoven’s symphonies in 2014-2015. In this program, Jordan conducts Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55, ‘Eroica’. Composed in 1803 and 1804, this symphony is regarded as a major turning point in Beethoven’s oeuvre as well as Western music history. Symphony No. 3 is longer in duration than any previous symphony. The customary long introduction is replaced by two powerful chords, followed by the introduction of the main theme by the lower strings. The slow second movement is a Funeral March, followed by a quick Scherzo. The fourth and final movement is dominated by a theme from Beethoven’s ballet music for ‘The Creatures of Prometheus’. This performance was recorded at Opéra Bastille in Paris, France, in 2014.

Acclaimed classical music talent scout Antonio Mormone (1930-2017) lives on as the name-giver of the Premio Internazionale Antonio Mormone (PIAM), awarded to the winner of the Italian music competition of the same name. The first edition of this competition, which was held in various venues in Milan from 2019 to 2021, was dedicated to the piano. As part of this competition, Su Yeon Kim (South Korea, 1994) performs Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Adagio in B minor, K. 540; ‘Les Jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este’ from Franz Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage III; and César Franck’s Prelude, Chorale and Fugue in B minor. This performance was recorded at Auditorium Giorgio Gaber in Milan, in January 2020.

Maestro Zubin Mehta leads the Orchestra and Chorus of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in a performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s comic opera Così fan tutte (1790). Following the successful operas Le nozze di Figaro (1786) and Don Giovanni (1787), Così fan tutte was the third and last collaboration between Mozart and the Venetian librettist and poet Lorenzo Da Ponte. The opera tells the story of two young officers, Ferrando and Guglielmo, who are convinced of the fidelity of their fiancées, the sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella. However, their older friend Don Alfonso contends that women cannot be trusted. He proposes a plan to test his theory: the young men must pretend to be called away to the front but then return disguised as Albanian soldiers to try to seduce their lonely fiancées. The young men reluctantly agree to Alfonso’s test. Will the sisters succumb to the advances of the disguised suitors? Among the soloists are Valentina Naforniţa (Fiordiligi), Vasilisa Berzhanskaya (Dorabella), Mattia Olivieri (Guglielmo), Matthew Swensen (Ferrando), Benedetta Torre (Despina), and Thomas Hampson (Don Alfonso). This performance was recorded at Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence, Italy, on March 28, 2021.

We live in a "renaissance of the piano”, as the New York Times has recently put it. With virtuosic flair and an eagerness to expand the repertoire, a new generation of pianists has revitalized the instrument’s appeal. In addition to the usual classics, they perform formerly scorned works or discover neglected composers. Legato is a series dedicated to presenting some of this new movement's most fascinating pianists – their individual approaches, their fresh ideas and their music. Each episode portrays an artist and shows an aspect of the world of the piano. The sum of these portraits provides viewers with an overall picture of the art of the pianist. Montréal native Marc-André Hamelin is internationally renowned for his musical virtuosity and refined pianism. The Times described one of his performances as “ultimate perfection”. He plays works by Haydn (Piano sonata in E major), Chopin (Piano sonata No. 3), Debussy (‘Préludes’, book two), Hamelin (Etude No. 7), as well as two short pieces by Gershwin (‘Do, Do, Do’ and ‘Liza’).

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 play Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, K. 219, also known as the ‘Turkish Concerto’. Leading violinist Grimal features as the soloist. With the exception of the first violin concerto, Mozart composed his other four violin concertos in 1775 at a time when he was concertmaster at the Salzburg court. It is the third and final movement that gives Concerto No. 5 its nickname, the ‘Turkish Concerto’. This movement features a striking middle section of ‘Turkish music’, which the composer achieves not only by changing the meter, and the mode to minor, but also by letting the cellos and basses play col legno - creating a percussive sound with the wood of their bow. This performance was recorded at Cité de la Musique, France, in 2014.

For over two decades, the Berlin Philharmonic has celebrated its creation on May 1 with the annual Europakonzert, which in 2010 was held in Oxford. Led by Daniel Barenboim, the orchestra performed a program including Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 1.

American conductor Michael Tilson Thomas leads the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) in an energetic performance of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's folk-infused Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Op. 17. Written in 1872, the work is nicknamed 'Little Russian' as the composer used several folk tunes from Ukraine, then known as ‘Little Russia’. This performance was recorded at LSO St Luke's, London, on May 31, 2021.

In this splendid concert, exceptional Russian pianists Nikolay Lugansky and Vadim Rudenko join forces in a program for two pianos comprising works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Maurice Ravel, Anton Arensky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Nikolai Kapustin. Both pianists, laureates of the prestigious International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1994, have received international recognition. They perform regularly in a duo. On the program: Mozart’s Sonata for two pianos in D major, K. 448/375 A; Ravel’s La Valse (arr. for two pianos); Arensky’s Suite No. 1 for two pianos, Op. 15; and Rachmaninoff’s Suite No. 1 (Fantasy) for two pianos, Op. 5. As an encore, the duo performs ‘Romance’ from Rachmaninoff’s Suite No. 2 for two pianos, Op. 17, followed by ‘Overture’ from Nikolai Kapustin’s Sinfonietta, Op. 49. This performance was recorded at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow, Russia, on November 25, 2021.

Rodolfo Barráez conducts the Orchestra and Choir of the Academia de Musica del Palacia de Mineria in a performance of Carl Orff's cantata Carmina Burana. Soloists are Anabel de la Mora (soprano), Andrés Carrillo (tenor) and Daniel Cerón (baritone). Carmina Burana, composed in 1935 and 1936, is based on 24 poems from a medieval manuscript of the same name. The full title is "Songs from Beuern: Secular songs for singers and choruses to be sung together with instruments and magical images". It was first performed at the Oper Frankfurt on June 8, 1937.

The program is introduced with a short documentation about Schönberg's Pelleas et Melisande, based on a text by Claudio Abbado. Every musical theme relates to a special colour appearing on screen. What has been so remarkable about Abbado’s Mahler performances is that their impact has never been achieved at the expense of the multiple sensitivities, subtleties and extreme sophistication. Together with the world's leading youth orchestra – the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester (GMJO) – Abbado performs Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 and Schönberg’s Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5. The Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester was founded in Vienna in 1986, by Abbado’s initiative. The orchestra's high level of artistic quality and its international success have moved important conductors and soloists to work with the ensemble.

Sir Simon Rattle conducts the Berliner Philharmonic during the 2008 edition of the Europakonzert, held in the renowned hall of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow. The first edition of the Europakonzert was in 1991, and since then, the founding of the Berlin Philharmonic on May 1st in 1882 is annually celebrated with a concert in a European city of cultural significance. The orchestra opens with an outstanding performance of Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements. Furthermore, Vadim Repin, one of today’s most fascinating artists, features as soloist in Bruch’s Concerto for Violin No. 1, Op, 26. The orchestra concludes with a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, of which the second movement, Allegretto, gained instant popularity after its premiere in 1813 and remains a crowd favorite.