Both hailing from Buenos Aires, Argentina, pianists Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim are not only fellow countrymen; as child prodigies they both began to give concerts in their youth, as soloists and with an orchestra, and both have gone on to establish long, distinguished global careers as virtuoso pianists in addition to branching out to other equally distinguished …
The Shostakovich Cycle- Complete Syphonies & Concertos [Box Set] [Blu-ray]
Nobody is better suited to undertake such a challenge than Valery Gergiev and his Mariinsky Orchestra. Over a period of a year all 15 Symphonies and 6 Concertos have been recorded at Salle Pleyel in Paris. What an adventure for the artists and the big production team! Never before in the history of television has something like this …
In 2014 the World Orchestra for Peace returned with its conductor Valery Gergiev for its fourth appearance to the BBC Proms to play a special concert, marking the centennial of the outbreak of World War 1. The concert included Roxanna Panufniks Three Paths to Peace, commissioned by the orchestra, Mahlers Sixth Symphony, and it celebrated the 150th anniversary …
This C Major Entertainment release of Gustav Mahlers Ninth Symphony and the Adagio from the unfinished 10th Symphony concludes the issuance of the complete, acclaimed Mahler cycle with Paavo Järvi and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, which since the 1980s and the release of Eliahu Inbals FRSO Mahler cycle has come to be known as a powerful Mahler …
The evening was one of rare collaboration between music, movement and even audience. There were times when the dazzling virtuosity of Lang Lang, which is as prodigious as touted, took your breath away with the nuanced shading of the sheer technical facility, which seems quite out of this world. He and the dancers held us spellbound and breathless. …
Il Farnace is the most re-written and re-proposed of Vivaldi’s operas, it’s like a beloved child who worries his father, and to whom the parent always wants to give the best. Versions of Farnace, two in 1727 and one each in 1730, 1731 and 1732, had been conceived and adapted to the different circumstances for Venice, Prague, Pavia …
On December 19, 1968 Václav Neumann conducted his first Czech Philharmonic concert as Chief Conductor, a relationship that successfully continued for 22 years, ending in September 1990. In this Prague concert from 1986, Neumann and the Czech Philharmonic present symphonic works by their compatriots Antonín Dvoák and Leo Janáek, both composers part of the orchestras longstanding tradition, …
Mahler: Symphony No. 4 at Concertgebouw Amsterdam, 1982 [Blu-ray]
This live concert of Gustav Mahlers Fourth Symphony finds the revered and sought-after conductor Bernard Haitink at the podium leading an orchestra with nearly a century of distinguished performance history and dedication to Mahler, beginning with Willem Mengelberg, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. The American soprano Maria Ewing is featured in the works glorious Das himmlische Leben finale. …
Carl Maria von Weber: Missa Sancta No. 1 in E flat; Joseph Haydn: Missa Sanctae Caeciliae [Blu-ray]
Thanks to its creation at the very same time as his famous opera Der Freischütz Carl Maria von Webers Missa Sancta No. 1 (1818) is also known as the Freischutzmesse. In 1986, Horst Stein, longtime principal conductor of the Bamberg Symphony, revived this rarely performed work in concert with soloists Krisztina Laki, Marga Schiml, Josef Protschka and …
“An adorable Mozart” (La Stampa). Staged by Sven-Eric Bechtolf, this Così Fan Tutte is true to text, humorous and precise, its classically aesthetic interpretation is good for “a whole lot of laughs” (Münchner Merkur) The fresh ensemble gives its all on stage : Gerald Finley as Don Alfonso, exercising his “noble, supple baritone” (Salzburger Nachrichten); the New York …