Schedule

Puccini portrayed brilliantly the fragility of a geisha in love who naively believed the dashing North American marine officer also loved her. The musical score evokes agreeably harmonized traditional Japanese melodies. Despite the fiasco of the debut of Madama Butterfly in Milan, the composer stood fast in his determination to make a success of what he considered his most sincere and expressive work. The passing of time has proved him right. Mario Gas places the story in a 1930s film studio. He narrates this moving drama from three simultaneous perspectives: the opera itself, the film being made of the opera, and its projection in black and white on a large screen. The work is performed at the Teatro Real Madrid in 2017, with conductor Marco Armiliato, the orchestra and chorus of the Teatro Real Madrid and star soloists: Enkelejda Shkosa, Jorge de León, Angel Odena, Francisco Vas, Tomeu Bibilioni and Fernando Radó.

Puccini portrayed brilliantly the fragility of a geisha in love who naively believed the dashing North American marine officer also loved her. The musical score evokes agreeably harmonized traditional Japanese melodies. Despite the fiasco of the debut of Madama Butterfly in Milan, the composer stood fast in his determination to make a success of what he considered his most sincere and expressive work. The passing of time has proved him right. Mario Gas places the story in a 1930s film studio. He narrates this moving drama from three simultaneous perspectives: the opera itself, the film being made of the opera, and its projection in black and white on a large screen. The work is performed at the Teatro Real Madrid in 2017, with conductor Marco Armiliato, the orchestra and chorus of the Teatro Real Madrid and star soloists: Enkelejda Shkosa, Jorge de León, Angel Odena, Francisco Vas, Tomeu Bibilioni and Fernando Radó.

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’).

The Russian National Orchestra and the Moscow Synodal Choir are led by maestro Mikhail Pletnev at a concert from the 9th Russian National Orchestra Grand Festival. The orchestra opens with a performance of Maurice Ravel's music suite to the ballet 'Daphnis and Chloe'. Furthermore, Lucas Debargue is the solo pianist in Alexander Scriabin's 'Prometheus: The Poem of Fire', Op. 60, a tone poem for piano, orchestra, choir, and a clavier à lumières ("Chromola"). A clavier à lumières actually is a musical instrument, especially invented by Scriabin for use in this work. Only one copy of the instrument was constructed for a performance of the piece in New York, 1915. As encore, Debargue performs Erik Satie's Gnossienne No. 1. This concert was recorded at Moscow's Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in 2018.

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.

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809): Symphony No. 94 in G major "Surprise". Berliner Philharmoniker; conductor: Mariss Jansons. The European Concert has been a tradition of the Berliner Philharmoniker since 1991. The musicians commemorate the anniversary of the orchestra's founding on May 1st, 1882, playing in different European cities. This concert was recorded in the church "Hagia Eirene" in Istanbul, Turkey.

Bass-baritone Vladyslav Buialskyi (Ukraine, 1997) performs ‘Aprite un po’ quegli occhi’ from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera Le nozze di Figaro; ‘Vous qui faites l’endormie’ from Charles Gounod’s opera Faust; and ‘Come dal ciel precipita’ from Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Macbeth, during the semi-finals of the Aria division of the Concours musical international de Montréal 2022 (CMIM). He is accompanied by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Jacques Lacombe. This performance was recorded at the Montreal Symphony House.

W. A. Mozart composed his Piano Concerto in D Major, KV. 537 in Vienna in February 1788. This concerto was later nicknamed "Coronation" because Mozart played it in October 1790 when Leopold II was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Frankfurt am Main. In this broadcast, the Uruguay-born Swiss pianist Homero Francesch is accompanied by the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, under the baton of Gerd Albrecht. Francesch has performed as a soloist with the most renowned orchestras from the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Wiener Philharmoniker, the New York Philharmonic, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. This program was recorded at the Christian-Zais-Saal in Wiesbaden, Germany.

Violinist Kristof Barati and Pianist Lucas Debargue pair for the first time in a duo concert at the 25th anniversary edition of the Swiss Verbier Festival in 2018. Although this was their inaugural collaboration, the two young artists found a perfect understanding around this romantic programme. The two featured works were written very few years apart from one another (Brahms’ first sonata for violin and piano in 1879 and Franck’s sonata in A in 1886). The Brahms sonata was recorded by Kristof Barati a few years ago, while Franck’s is known to be a favourite of Lucas Debargue. The virtuoso piano part suits his gigantic hands and the fantasy of the third movement his love for improvisation. The cyclic form and the many echoes between the piano and violin parts unite the two artists, like accomplices in possession of the best assets to bring in all the emotion these romantic works have to offer. The listener is suddenly in a position to re-discover the scores and cannot but join the admiration marks that escape from the audience in between the movements. A very moving performance which deserves its benchmark status.

This concert is the result of the collaboration between the “Giuseppe Nicolini,” Conservatory of Piacenza, and the “Giuseppe Verdi,” Conservatory of Milan, as part of the project "MIlanoPIACEnza ... suonare insieme”. On the program are works by the Dutch conductor and composer Johan de Meij. His Symphony No. 1 for woodwind and brass orchestra is titled “Lord of the Rings” and is based on the famous trilogy by writer J. R. R Tolkien. The work exists of five movements, inspired by characters and passages from the story: Gandalf, Lothlórien, Gollum, Journey in the Dark and Hobbits. The symphony premiered in Brussels in 1988. In 2001, a symphonic version was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra. This concert is recorded at the Sala dei Teatini of the Teatri di Piacenza in 2018. Directed by Pietro Tagliaferri.

Soprano Harriet Burns (United Kingdom, 1989) performs Robert Schumann’s Singet nicht in Trauertönen, Op. 98; Franz Schubert’s Atys, D. 585; ‘L’absent’ from Gabriel Fauré’s Trois chansons, Op. 5; ‘Seranilla de la Zarzuela’ from Judith Weir’s A Spanish Liederbooklet; ‘Tournoiement’ (Songe d’opium) from Camille Saint-Saëns’s song cycle Mélodies persanes, Op. 26; James K. Wright’s Quilled Sonnet; Charles Gounod’s Au rossignol, CG. 332; and ‘Och Moder, ich well en Ding han’ from Johannes Brahms’s 49 Deutches Volkslieder, WoO. 33, 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.

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, Micah McLaurin (USA, 1994) performs Frédéric Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 27 No. 2, and Barcarolle, Op. 60; and a selection of Alexander Scriabin’s Etudes: Op. 42 No. 5, and Op. 8 Nos. 11 and 12. This performance was recorded at Teatro EDI Barrio’s in Milan, in January 2020.

Early music specialists Le Miroir de Musique collaborate with multi-instrumentalist Baptiste Romain, performing a handful of sacred works by the 15th-century composer, music theorist, and member of the Burgundian School: Johannes Tinctoris. Though much of the composer's oeuvre has not survived, his extant works demonstrate an impressive passion for complex polyphony. Most renowned are Tinctoris' motets and masses. This performance was recorded as part of the Utrecht Early Music Festival at the Pieterskerk, Utrecht, The Netherlands in 2019.

Composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) is to Brazil what Giuseppe Verdi and Jean Sibelius are to Italy and Finland: his compositions have come to embody the very soul of his native country. In Villa-Lobos: from Bach to Brazil, narrator Carlos de Andrade guides us through young Tuhu's journey through life, from his humble beginnings as the cello-playing son of a demanding librarian serenading performing in Rio de Janeiro's many cafés, to the bigger-than-life maestro Heitor Villa-Lobos whose quintessentially Brazilian music is recognized and respected the world over. Interspersed with numerous contemporary music performances and rare footage of the composer at work and at home, the documentary also sheds invaluable light on Villa-Lobos' estimable role in the development of Brazil's new-found national identity.

In May 2019, the new principal conductor of the Gewandhaus, Andris Nelsons, presented Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 with his orchestra in combination with Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with outstanding violinist Baiba Skride as the soloist. In this composition, the violin does not allow itself a break, continually tells its dark story and gets into a vicious circle of ostinato Passacaglia bass lines again and again falls into beguilingly beautiful singing. Tchaikovsky initially thought his 'Symphony of Fate' was a failure and believed himself to be at the end of his creative powers. It was probably the composer's nature, plagued by self-doubt, that made it almost impossible for him to develop a self-confident attitude to his own creative power. Between this two works, Skride performs Stravinsky's Elegy for Solo Violin.

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. During the competition’s final round, Piotr Pawlak (Poland, 1998) performs Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata No. 28 in A major, Op. 101, and Johannes Brahms’s Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5. This performance was recorded at Sala Verdi of the Conservatory of Milan, in July 2021.

Hartmut Haenchen conducts the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and Dutch National Opera in a production of Richard Wagner's opera Das Rheingold, the first opera of the four-part cycle 'Der Ring des Nibelungen'. Richard Wagner, perhaps the greatest innovator of the opera genre in the nineteenth century, aimed for the creation of a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ in which theatre, music and words are united. The opera cycle was composed between 1853 and 1874, and consists of Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung. Noteworthy about Wagner's operas is his use of the so-called ‘Leitmotiv’, a recurrent melodic motif that stands for a certain idea or character. Moreover, Wagner uses unconventional harmonies and very extensive orchestral instrumentation. The entire cycle is still performed annually at the Bayreuth Festival, where it premiered in 1876. This 2014 performance was recorded at Het Muziektheater Amsterdam under the artistic direction of Pierre Audi. Among the soloists are Thomas Johannes Mayer, Vladimir Baykov, Marcel Reijans, Stefan Margita, and Werner van Mechelen.

Japanese violinist Naoya Nishimura and Italian pianist Andrea Bacchetti perform an intimate recital recorded at the Munetsugu Hall in Nagoya, Japan. On the program are Arcangelo Corelli’s Violin Sonata in D minor, Op. 5 No. 12, “La Folia”; Ludwig van Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 5 in F major, Op. 24, “Spring”; Manuel de Falla’s 7 Canciones populares españolas; Maurice Ravel’s Sonata for violin and piano; Camille Saint-Saëns’ Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso in A minor, Op. 28; Niccolò Paganini’s Cantabile in D major, Op. 17; and Antonio Bazzini’s Scherzo fantastique, Op. 25, “La Ronde des Lutins”. This performance was recorded on June 22, 2019.

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. 3 in G major, K. 216. 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. Violin Concerto No. 3 opens with a theme the composer borrowed from the aria ‘Aer tranquillo’ of his then recent opera Il re pastore. In the beautiful Adagio, the strings are muted and the oboes make way for the flutes, which only sound in the second movement. The finale movement has a dance-like character. This performance was recorded at Cité de la Musique, France, in 2014.

Conductor Eduard Topchjan leads the Armenian National Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37. Russian-born pianist Maya Oganyan (*2005) makes her solo debut with the orchestra. Beethoven composed this concerto in 1800 and played the piano part himself at the piece’s premiere in 1803. Like two of his other major works –Symphony No. 5 and Piano Sonata No. 8 ‘Pathétique’ – this piano concerto is written in the key of C minor, which contributes to the work’s stormy character. As an encore, Oganyan performs Der Bote (‘The Messenger’) by Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov. This performance was recorded at the Aram Khachaturian Concert Hall in Yerevan, Armenia, in 2021.

In September 2016, we celebrated the birthday of one of Japan's best-known conductors: Seiji Ozawa. Renowned for his advocacy of modern composers, Ozawa founded the Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto in 1992. As of 2015, it is better known as the Seiji Ozawa Festival. Seiji Ozawa appeared on stage himself with 63 Saito Kinen Orchestra members, passionately conducting Beethoven's Symphony No. 2 and No. 7. Beethoven's Second Symphony was mostly written during the composer's stay at Heiligenstadt, at a time when his deafness was becoming more pronounced. The work premiered in the Theater an der Wien in Vienna on April 5, 1803. The Seventh Symphony premiered with Beethoven himself conducting in Vienna in 1813 at a charity concert for wounded soldiers. The Allegretto was the most popular movement and had to be encored.

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, Leonardo Colafelice (Italy, 1995) performs Felix Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses, Op. 54, and Frédéric Chopin’s “Heroic” Polonaise in A-flat major, Op. 53. This performance was recorded at Nuovo Teatro Ariberto in Milan, in May, 2021.

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.

J. S. Bach’s six Brandenburg Concerto’s belong to his best-known works. The composer wrote these concertos between 1711 and 1720 and dedicated them in 1721 to Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg. In celebration of the pieces’ 300th anniversary, Czech harpsichordist and conductor Václav Luks and the renowned Baroque ensemble Collegium 1704 recorded all six Brandenburg Concertos on historical instruments in 2021. The concertos are based on the Italian concerto grosso form, in which a group of solo instruments is set against a large ensemble. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos feature remarkable combinations of solo instruments and virtuoso solos. In this performance at the Hall of Mirrors in the Köthen Castle, Germany, Luks and his Collegium 1704 present Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F major, BWV 1047. This piece features trumpet, violin, recorder, and oboe solos. Especially outstanding are the high, virtuoso trumpet parts.

The film Jaroussky sings Bach & Telemann is a portrait of a very special vocalist, and of two exceptional composers. When Philippe Jaroussky - whose angelic voice seems almost timeless, not belonging to any one epoque or decade - sings works by Telemann and Bach, it becomes abundantly clear that the sheer emotional force and the purifying power of their music have not diminished over the centuries. The works performed in this film are Telemann's Jesus liegt in letzten Zügen and Sinfonia from Brockes-Passion; Der am Ölberg zagende Jesus, and Bach's Sinfonia from Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis and Ich habe genug.