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PG02:16:002021HD

Italian conductor Speranza Scappucci leads the Philharmonia Zürich and the Chorus of the Opernhaus Zürich in a performance of Gaetano Donizetti’s tragic opera ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ (1835). Salvatore Cammarano based his libretto on Sir Walter Scott’s novel ‘The Bride of Lammermoor’ (1819). Set in 17th century Scotland, the opera tells the story of Lucia, who falls in love with Edgardo, her family’s arch enemy. Lucia’s brother Enrico, however, forces her to marry a man she does not love instead, driving the young woman insane. Highpoint of the opera is Lucia’s famous ‘mad scene’, in which the technically demanding aria ‘Il dolce suono’ is heard. In this scene, Lucia’s voice is accompanied by a glass harmonica, adding to its eeriness. Among the soloists are Irina Lungu (Lucia), Massimo Cavalletti (Enrico Ashton), Piotr Beczała (Edgardo di Ravenswood), Andrew Owens (Lord Arturo Bucklaw), Oleg Tsibulko (Raimondo Bidebent), Roswitha Christina Müller (Alisa), and Iain Milne (Normanno). This performance was recorded at the Opernhaus Zürich, Switzerland, in 2021.

G01:50:002003HD

The Waldbühne in Berlin is one of the most attractive outdoor amphitheatres in Europe and home to the Berliner Philharmoniker's summer concerts. With a 20, 000-seat capacity, these events are some of the most popular classical music concerts in the world. In 2003, Seiji Ozawa and the Berliner Philharmoniker perform works by George Gershwin with the jazz pianist Marcus Roberts and his Trio as special guests. Their album “Gershwin For Lovers” stayed in the Top 10 on Billboard’s jazz chart for half a year. Together they created a magical fusion of classical music and jazz bringing an imaginative mix of styles into the swing of Gershwin’s music.

04:07
The Boy with the Wig: Kids on Mozart
G00:28:002006HD
The Boy with the Wig - Kids on Mozart explores children’s fascination with the composer. The 30-minute film by Claus Wischmann features boys and girls aged between eight and eleven recounting his life through humour and serious interpretations of Mozart’s biography. Discover Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart through the eyes of children.

G00:38:002020HD

Conductor Herbert Blomstedt and the Gewandhausorchester take us on a musical journey to the Czech Republic in this 2020 concert from Leipzig’s Gewandhaus. The program opens with Bohemian composer Jan Václav Hugo Voríšek’s Symphony in D major, Op. 23 (1821). Although the composition – Voríšek’s only symphony – was never performed during the composer’s lifetime, it has become one of his most-performed works today. Also on the program is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No. 38 in D major, K. 504. This work, which premiered while Mozart was visiting Prague in 1787, is often referred to as the ‘Prague Symphony’.

G00:44:002021HD

Soprano Sophia Burgos (USA, 1991) and pianist Daniel Gerzenberg (Germany, 1991) perform Bart Visman’s Vermeer’s Gold; ‘Nixe Binsefuss’ from Hugo Wolf’s Mörike-Lieder, and ‘Die Bekehrte’ from Goethe-Lieder; ‘C’est l’extase langoureuse’ from Claude Debussy’s Ariettes oubliées; ‘Crépuscule’ from Gabriel Fauré’s La chanson d'Ève; ‘Asturiana’ from Manuel de Falla’s Siete canciones populares españolas; and ‘The night in silence under many a star’ from George Crumb’s Apparition, during the semi-finals of the International Vocal Competition 2021 – Lied Duo. This performance was recorded at Het Noordbrabants Museum in ’s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands.

G01:00:002000HD

The German Brass ensemble delivers some of Bach's most popular tunes in breathtaking brass arrangements. Recorded live from the magnificent St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, this concert features timeless pieces by the legendary German composer, such as Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Adagio in G minor, and Jesus bleibet meine Freude. The German Brass is one of the most popular brass ensembles of our time and includes musicians from the best German orchestras, including the philharmonic orchestras of Berlin and Munich. Offering a complete view of the church for which Bach has designed most of his works and taking advantage of the room's exceptional acoustics, this cutting-edge recording is a veritable visual and aural feast, and a perfect celebration of Bach's work.

G00:22:002014HD

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. 4 in D major, K. 218. 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. Among his five concertos, Violin Concerto No. 4 is one of the best-known. This performance was recorded at Cité de la Musique, France, in 2014.

G01:37:002017HD

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.

G00:12:002016HD

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.

G00:21:002019HD

In the summer of 2019, the Utrecht Early Music Festival explored the musical legacy of Naples: a cultural metropolis of contradiction and solidarity. In the documentary 'Napoli – Music’s Forgotten Capital', festival co-curator Thomas Höft unearths riveting tales from this multi-faceted city.

G00:28:002023HD

Italian pianist Andrea Molteni (1998) performs Alban Berg’s Piano Sonata in B minor, Op. 1. Molteni began studying the piano at the age of six. He graduated with honors and honorable mention at the Conservatorio di musica Giuseppe Verdi di Como, and was awarded a master’s degree Magna cum Laude in Advanced Performance Studies by the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano. He has appeared at the Wiener Saal of the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, Scriabin Museum in Moscow, National Opera Center in New York, and several other international venues. This performance was recorded at the Verbrugghen Hall of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Australia, in 2023.

G00:53:002015HD

Olivier Latry is the current holder of the Great Organ of Notre Dame. Between its original religious function and the interest of composers of all times, the great organ Cavaillé-Coll reveals its absolute modernity. Latry is considered one of the greatest organists of his generation, both in France and internationally. He sees himself as an ambassador of French music from the 17th through the 20th centuries as well as an advocate for the art of improvisation. Pieces played in the film are: Pierre Cochereau’s Boléro, Louis Vierne’s Carillon of Westminster and Scherzo from Symphony No. 2, Alexandre Guilmant’s Sonata No. 1, Charles-Marie Widor’s Gothic Symphony, Marcel Dupre’s Cortège, Litanie and J. S. Bach’s Passacaille & Fugue.

G00:23:002018HD

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.

G00:46:002015HD

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. 6 in F major, Op. 68, also known as the Pastoral Symphony. Beethoven wrote the work upon completion of his Symphony No. 5. Both symphonies premiered at the same legendary, all-Beethoven concert on December 22, 1808. Symphony No. 6 consists of five movements, of which the last three are played without a break. Each movement carries a title that suggests a scene from life in the countryside. The joyful atmosphere of the first three movements is interrupted by the violent fourth movement ‘Thunder, Storm’, as expressed by the piccolos, brass, and timpani. As the storm recedes at the end of the movement, the tranquility returns in the final movement. This performance was recorded at Opéra Bastille in Paris, France, in 2015.

G01:08:002012HD

Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) composed nine books of madrigals in half a century, which helped transform the genre from the polyphonic, a cappella madrigals of the late Renaissance to the ‘concertato’ madrigals of the early Baroque, shifting the style’s focus to the ability of music to express emotions contained in a text. In 2011, British tenor Paul Agnew and renowned Baroque ensemble Les Arts Florissants started recording eight books of Monteverdi’s madrigals. In this program, Agnew leads Les Arts Florissants in the madrigals of Book III. Published in 1592, the book contains twenty madrigals for five voices. This performance was recorded at the Cité de la musique in Paris, France, in 2012.

G00:52:002015HD

The Italian pianist Roberto Prosseda (*1975) is particularly noted for his performances of newly discovered works by Felix Mendelssohn. Moreover, Prosseda is particularly praised for his interpretations of W. A. Mozart, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann and Frédéric Chopin. He won major prizes in several piano competitions and has frequently performed with some of the world’s most important orchestras, including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the New Japan Philharmonic, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. In this recital, Prosseda performs Alexander Scriabin’s Nocturne Op. 9, No. 2, Alan Berg’s Piano Sonata, Op. 1, and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32, Op. 111. This performance was recorded at Teatro alle Vigne in Lodi, Italy, in 2015.

G01:57:002023HD

English-French pianist David Levy performs Dmitri Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87. The work is a set of twenty-four pieces for piano, one in each of the major and minor keys of the chromatic scale. Each piece is in two parts: a prelude followed by a fugue. The composer was doubtlessly inspired by J. S. Bach’s famous The Well-Tempered Clavier (BWV 846-893), a collection of forty-eight preludes and fugues published in two books. A panel member at Leipzig’s Bach competition, Shostakovich was deeply inspired by Russian pianist Tatiana Nikolayeva’s performance of Bach’s 48 Preludes and Fugues. Shostakovich wrote these pieces between the autumn of 1950 and February 1951, dedicating them to Nikolayeva, who agreed to perform the Leningrad premiere in December 1952. David Levy’s performance was recorded at the Budapest Music Center, Hungary, in September 2023.

G00:25:002021HD

Mexican conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto leads the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería in a performance of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring Suite. Originally commissioned as a ballet for the legendary dancer Martha Graham, Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring (1944) has since become an American classic. While first scored for a thirteen-piece ensemble, Copland later arranged the work for a full orchestra. This performance was recorded at Auditorio Nacional in Mexico City, in 2021.

G01:33:002012HD

Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker is one of the best known and most beloved pieces from the composer. The music has inspired many choreographers to the tell the colourful Christmas fairy-tale of E. T. A. Hoffmann and Alexandre Dumas senior in the language of dance. Ben Stevenson is to this day considered one of the most important influencers of the American ballet art. For almost thirty years, he has been the art director of the Houston Ballet, and under his leadership the company has grown into an internationally acknowledged ballet theatre. Since the year 2003 he’s held the position of Artistic Director of the Texas Ballet. His stage productions have earned several awards and praise from the critics, and have been staged at Opéra de Paris, Canadian National Ballet, La Scala, Bavarian State Opera, London City Ballet etc. This performance of the Nutcracker is recorded at the Teatro La Fenice (Venice) in 2012. With the Estonian National Ballet and star dancers Vladislav Lantratov and Galina Laush.

G01:05:002011HD

Chamber music ensemble The Philharmonics pays tribute to the music of Vienna in this March 9, 2011 concert from Vienna's Café Sperl. The ensemble, which consists of musicians from the Vienna Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic, performs arrangements of five popular waltzes by Johann Straus II. Among them are Kaiser-Walzer, Op. 437, and Schatz-Walzer, Op. 418, from the operetta The Gypsy Baron. In May 1921, the likes of Arnold Schönberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern wrote these chamber music arrangements to raise funds for their Society for Private Musical Performances. Although both the concert and the auction of the scores were very successful, the Society eventually went under. In addition to these pieces by Strauss, The Philharmonics perform works by Fritz Kreisler, Leopold Godowsky, as well as The Philharmonics's first violinist, Tibor Kováč. The program comes to an end with Godowsky’s tribute to the city: Alt Wien.

G00:58:002020HD

Baritone Matthias Goerne teams up with violinist Vilde Frang, cellist Nicolas Altstaedt, flutist Stathis Karapanos, and harpsichordist Michaela Hasselt in this program dedicated to the music of J. S. Bach. They perform baritone arias from Bach’s most beautiful cantatas, as well as solo pieces and duets. On the program are Sonata No. 3 in C major for violin solo, BWV 1005; arias ‘Hier, in meines Vaters Stätte’, BWV 32 and ‘Die Welt mit allen Königreichen’, BWV 59; Suite No. 5 in C minor for cello solo, BWV 1011; ‘Wenn Trost und Hülf ermangeln muß’, BWV 117; ‘Ja, ja, ich halte Jesum fest’, BWV 157; Invention No. 7 in E minor, BWV 778; Invention in A major, BWV 783; and ‘Welt ade, ich bin dein müde’, BWV 158. This performance was recorded at St. Mary’s Church in Wittenberg, Germany.

G00:27:002020HD

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, Josef Edoardo Mossali (Italy, 2001) performs Franz Liszt’s Après une Lecture de Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata; Maurice Ravel’s Toccata from Le tombeau de Couperin; and Etude No. 3 “La Campanella” from Liszt’s Six Grandes études de Paganini. This performance was recorded at Teatro EDI Barrio’s in Milan, in February 2020.

G00:25:002019HD

Conrad van Alphen conducts Sinfonia Rotterdam in a performance of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Overture-Fantasy “Romeo and Juliet”. Van Alphen founded Sinfonia Rotterdam in 2000. Under his passionate leadership, this orchestra has developed into one of the Netherland’s best-known orchestras. Tchaikovsky based his composition on Shakespeare’s famous play “Romeo and Juliet”. After finishing a first version of Romeo and Juliet in 1870, Tchaikovsky rewrote sections of the composition twice, completing the third and final version ten years later. The Overture-Fantasy opens with a slow introduction, primarily led by the clarinets and bassoons. The composition is dominated by its famous love theme, representing the love between Romeo and Juliet. This beautiful theme is introduced in the first half of the piece, played by the English horn and violas, and recurs in different sections of the composition. At the end, the love theme is heard in minor mode, which emphasized the tragic element of the story of the two lovers.

14A02:05:002019HD

French composer Guillaume Connesson (*1970) is building an impressive musical oeuvre, to which he has recently added an opera: 'Les bains macabres'. For this romantic contemporary thriller opera he worked closely with librettist Olivier Bleys (*1970), a successful French author with dozens of novels to his credit. The result is an enigmatic narrative with a film noir soundtrack about the macabre 'Bains Terminus': ailing patrons who come to take the waters here never leave. When the Pool police investigates their mysterious deaths, the realms of life and death turn out to be not as separate as expected... In this February 2020 production, directed by Florent Siaud, soprano Sandrine Buendia plays the part of Célia and baritone Romain Dayez plays Mathéo. Conductor Arie van Beek conducts the Orchestre des Frivolités Parisiennes.

G00:25:002017HD

Mikhail Pletnev leads the Russian National Orchestra in a performance of Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major, featuring Lucas Debargue as the soloist. The composer completed this lively three-movement Piano Concerto in 1931. He incorporated several jazz elements in the work, especially in the two outer movements. This performance was recorded at Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow, Russia, in 2017, as part of the Ninth RNO Grand Festival.

G00:28:002020HD

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. This program features Quatuor Ébène performing Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 2 in G major, Op. 18, No. 2. This concert was recorded at Philharmonie de Paris on December 16, 2020.