Schedule

Das Rheingold is the prologue to Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle. This rendition (2003) features the Staatsoper Stuttgart under the baton of conductor Lothar Zagrosek. Tonight’s soloists are Wolfgang Probst, Motti Kastón, Bernhard Schneider, Robert Künzli, Esa Ruuttunen, Eberhard Francesco Lorenz and Roland Bracht. With beautiful orchestration and an unerring sense of the dramatic, the first opera explains how the Rhinedaughters lost the Ring and how it fell into the hands of Alberich the Nibelung; Wotan, king of the gods; and Fafner the giant. Each time it changes hands, the Ring confers upon the bearer a curse and this pattern is set to continue until it is restored to its rightful owners, the daughters of the Rhine.

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.

Franz Welser-Möst conducts The Cleveland Orchestra in this performance of Brahms' Symphony No. 4. This is the final of the composer's short selection of symphonic works. Described by music critic Malcolm Macdonald as one of the “supreme creative acts of the Romantic era,” Brahms' Fourth Symphony is endowed with a strong undercurrent of subdued melancholy. It seems to pine for an irretrievable past. The past lives on majestically in this work, particularly in the sighing theme of the first movement reminiscent of Baroque practice, and, above all, in the use of the Baroque form of the chaconne in the last movement, around which Brahms spins over 30 variations on a solemn, stately theme. This performance was recorded at Severance Hall in Cleveland, USA, in 2014.

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.

Renowned French string quartet Quatuor Ébène marked the 250th birth anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) with a remarkable project: recording all of the great composer’s sixteen string quartets. For five years, violinists Pierre Colombet and Gabriel Le Magadure, violist Marie Chilemme, and cellist Raphaël Merlin immersed themselves in Beethoven’s 650 pages of sheet music. Their efforts culminated in the performance of the composer’s complete repertoire for string quartet, which covers three decades of Beethoven's musical creativity, during six impressive concerts at Philharmonie de Paris in the autumn of 2020. Quatuor Ébène explored every facet of Beethoven's string quartet repertoire: from the youthful Opus 18 string quartets to the Razumovsky, Harp, and Serioso quartets (Opus 59, 74, and 95) from his middle period, and finally, the depth of his late quartets (Opus 127 to 135). This program features Quatuor Ébène performing Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 2 in G major, Op. 18, No. 2; String Quartet No. 16 in F major, Op. 135; and String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131. This concert was recorded at Philharmonie de Paris on December 16, 2020.

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.