Schedule

The Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra also known simply as Tafelmusik, is a Toronto-based Canadian baroque orchestra, specialised in early music. Its musical director is Jeanne Lamon. Together with the Trio Arabica they celebrate the music and culture in the eighteenth century. The cities of Leipzig and Damascus both lay at the crossroads of ancient trading routes and are important centres of scholarship and famous for their coffee houses, where music was performed by the most brilliant musicians of the day. This concert presents works by Bach, Telemann, Handel and treasures of classical Arabic music. In this cross-cultural café, music, words, and images are used to explore the ways in which people separated by great distances are bound together by trade, ideas, and art. Recorded at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto. Created by Alison Mackay and staging by Marshall Pynkoski.

The Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (Florence Musical May) is Italy’s oldest opera and arts festival. It was founded in 1933 with the aim of presenting contemporary and forgotten operas. Over the years, the scope widened, and orchestral concerts have long been an integral part of the festival. As part of the festival’s 2021 edition, maestro Daniel Harding leads the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in a wonderful concert program featuring Johannes Brahms’s Tragic Overture in D minor, Op. 81, and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D major, ‘Titan’. Brahms composed his concert overture during the summer of 1880. With its dark and tumultuous character, it could be regarded as the serious counterpart of his more joyful Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80. Mahler completed his first symphony eight years later, in 1888. Originally a five-movement piece, the composer discarded the second movement ‘Blumine’ some years later, resulting in the final four-movement version we know today. This performance was recorded at Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence, Italy, in 2021.

The documentary “Clara Haskil - Le mystère de l’interprète” (2017) tells the remarkable life story of Romanian pianist Clara Haskil (1895-1960). Born in Bucharest into a Jewish family, she began her career as a child prodigy, entering the Bucharest Conservatory at a very young age. She continued her music studies in Vienna and Paris. Haskil suffered from chronic health issues and lived through two world wars, which held back her career. Only after WWII, Haskil’s fame began to take off and she finally enjoyed international recognition. She performed as a soloist over the world with the foremost orchestras, and collaborated with acclaimed musicians including Eugène Ysaÿe, George Enescu, and Pablo Casals.

Mahler's Symphony No. 4, composed between 1899 and 1901, depicts a child's vision of heaven, a theme central to the work's innocent and lyrical character. The symphony is notable for its relatively smaller orchestral forces compared to his other symphonies and its focus on melody and a sense of wonder. The final movement features a soprano solo singing about the joys of heaven, providing a serene and optimistic conclusion.

Piano soloist Boris Berezovsky is accompanied by the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Alexander Sladkovsky in a performance of Sergei Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto no. 1, Op. 1. Rachmaninov composed his first concerto while studying at the Moscow Conservatory at the age of 18. The concert opens with 'Heavenly Movement', a composition by the young Russian composer Elmir Nizamov (*1986). This concert was recorded at the Tchaikovksy Concert Hall of the Moscow Philharmonic Society on April 28, 2017.

After recording all 32 Ludwig van Beethoven piano sonatas to celebrate the composer's 250th birth anniversary, celebrated Italian pianist Riccardo Schwartz decided to record solo piano works by Robert Schumann. In this performance, Schwartz presents Schumann’s Novelletten, Op. 21. The eight pieces for piano that make up this song cycle are often performed separately. It bears a dedication to pianist Adolph Henselt. Schumann composed the pieces between January and April of 1838, around the same time as Kinderszenen, Op. 18, and Kreisleriana, Op. 16. Novelletten is the most substantial yet least-known of Schumann’s piano cycles. Acclaimed pianist Riccardo Schwartz (1986) has performed as a soloist with many world-renowned conductors, including Gustav Kuhn and Yuri Temirkanov. His acclaimed performances include recitals and concertos for piano and orchestra in many prestigious concert halls.

Maestro Iván Fischer leads the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in a remarkable concert program of works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonín Dvořák. Mozart’s Symphony No. 34 in C major, K. 338 opens the program. Completed in the summer of 1780, this was the last symphony Mozart wrote in Salzburg, where he worked as a court musician. The three-movement symphony features two vibrant outer movements with fanfares and rousing themes, while the quieter second movement is scored for strings alone, deviating from the typical four-movement structure of the time. Next on the program is Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70, completed in March 1885 and premiered one month later in London conducted by the composer himself. With its dramatic and dark style, this symphony stands in stark contrast to the predominantly optimistic tone of Dvořák’s broader oeuvre. This performance was recorded at Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence, Italy, on January 29, 2021.

Luca Vignali (oboe), Angelo De Angelis (clarinet), Carmine Pinto (horn), Eliseo Smordoni (bassoon), and Linda Di Carlo (piano) perform Ludwig van Beethoven’s Quintet for piano and winds in E-flat major, Op. 16. The piece, completed in 1796, is assumed to have been modelled on Mozart’s Quintet for piano and winds, K. 452. Both quintets are scored for the same unusual instrument combination, are in the same key, and feature the same three-movement structure. A marked difference is that Beethoven, as a piano virtuoso, wrote the piano parts to highlight the strengths of his playing. Besides, the composer regularly places this instrument in the center of attention. Beethoven published the work in 1801 in two versions: as a quintet for piano and winds, and as a quartet for piano and strings (also designated Op. 16). This performance was recorded at Perugia’s Auditorium Santa Cecilia, Italy, on June 23, 2022.

“The Unanswered Ives” is the first documentary about American modernist composer Charles Ives (1874-1954). Ives was among the first generation of American composers that achieved international acclaim. Born in 1874, in Danbury, Connecticut, Ives took music lessons at a young age, becoming a church organist at the age of 14. Following his graduation from the music department at Yale University, the young composer decided to pursue a career outside of the arts. He started working in insurance, co-founding an innovative and highly successful insurance company. It was in his spare time that Ives composed his ambitious music, in which he experimented with advanced features including polytonality, twelve-tone technique, and quarter tones. The documentary film “The Unanswered Ives” (2018) sheds light on Ives’s life and work in all its facets, exploring his aural world by showing music performances in churches, concert halls, open-air venues, and a circus tent. Using interviews with relatives, insurance brokers, musicologists, and musicians, documentary filmmaker Anne-Kathrin Peitz explores the question “who was Charles Ives?"

After recording all 32 Ludwig van Beethoven piano sonatas to celebrate the composer's 250th birth anniversary, celebrated Italian pianist Riccardo Schwartz decided to record solo piano works by Robert Schumann. In this performance, Schwartz performs Humoreske in B-flat major, Op. 20. Schumann composed the work in 1839 and dedicated it to German-Austrian composer Julie von Webenau. The piece’s title refers to humor as an emotional state. Schumann took his inspiration from German Romantic writer Jean Paul, who defines humor as “an infinity of contrast”, “a setting of the small world beside the great”, and where “a kind of laughter results which contains pain and greatness”. Humoreske is one continuous piece consisting of contrasting sections. Acclaimed pianist Riccardo Schwartz (1986) has performed as a soloist with many world-renowned conductors, including Gustav Kuhn and Yuri Temirkanov. His acclaimed performances include recitals and concertos for piano and orchestra in many prestigious concert halls.