A Tribute to Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013)
Henri Dutilleux, the famous contemporary composer, died today at the age of 97.
Henri Dutilleux‘s family has announced today the death of one of the most frequently played contemporary composers.
There is no doubt that his works will remain after his death… Henri Dutilleux has notably composed the cello concerto Tout un monde lointain… (1970), which received the public enthusiasm at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and the concerto for violin and orchestra L’Arbre des Songes (1985). More recently, he has composed Le Temps l’horloge (2009) and his last creation, Correspondances (January 2013), premiered for his 97th birthday.
Available today only!Renaud Capuçon plays L’ Arbre des songes with the Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse, directed by Tugan Sokhiev:
Learn more:
- View Henri Dutilleux’s biography on medici.tv;
- Watch exclusive portraits of Henri Dutilleux by Guy Vivien
- Watch Renaud Capuçon play Dutilleux: L’Arbre des Songes (today only!)
Europa Konzert in Prague with Sir Simon Rattle and Madgalena Kožená: Pictures of the concert
Remember: two weeks ago, medici.tv announced that they would broadcast the anniversary concert of the Berliner Philharmoniker in Prague.
You can watch the 2013 Europa Konzert here. Starring the Berliner Philharmoniker’s music director Sir Simon Rattle and the Czech mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená, the concert took place in the wonderful Spanish Hall of the Prague Castle. Medici.tv invites you to relive this magical moment thanks to Monika Rittershaus’s pictures of the concert!
The Prague Castle an iconic building of the Czech Republic. The Spanish Hall, in which the concert took place, is known for its impressive size and its neo-roccoco style.
Together with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Sir Simon Rattle and Magdalena Kožená celebrate the orchestra’s anniversary.
Do not forget: The Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle will give their annual summer concert on June 22 at the Waldbühne in Berlin. An event not to be missed, broadcast live on medici.tv.
Pictures © Monika Rittershaus
The Cannes Film Festival is on! Listen to the most beautiful movie soundtracks on medici.tv
The Cannes Film Festival is on! Medici.tv celebrates in music this important event which will take place from May 15 to 26.
It is hard to separate a movie from its soundtrack because music and cinema, more than any other arts maybe, share a world together. The link that connects them is so strong that at the very beginning, the musicians used to play in the dark rooms of the movie theaters to help the audience forget that cinema was still silent. Because of its strong evocative power and its capacity to increase emotions, classical music has always contributed to make cinema a great and sensational art.
But enough of the talking: we invite you to listen to the “Classical music and cinema” playlist, created this week!
And why not watching again some of the most famous cinema scenes which include a great classical music score?
It is impossible to think of Apocalypse Now‘s helicopter scene without hearing the first epic notes from the “Ride of the Valkyries” by Wagner:
More recently Black Swan, a psychological thriller about Swan Lake, gave Tchaikovsky’s ballet a modern yet terrific dimension…
An embleme of A Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick, the Beethoven Ninth Symphony backfires on Alex during his treatment: as he can’t stand violence anymore, he can no longer listen to this music. This leads him to commit suicide…
From the same film director, who has used a lot of classical music scores in his movies, 2001: A Space Odyssey made famous one of Strauss’s works: Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra).
(the theme starts at the 17th second)
Discover others film scores on our Music and cinema special playlist.
Picture © P.Stirnweiss
(Français) Gagnez des places pour le concert d’Anne Sofie Von Otter le 14 mai à la Salle Gaveau !
© Ewa-Marie Rundquist
Anne Sofie Von Otter en concert le 14 mai à la Salle Gaveau !
La mezzo-soprano suédoise a choisi un répertoire qu’elle connait bien pour ce concert du mardi 14 mai à la Salle Gaveau, dans lequel elle sera accompagnée de l’Ensemble Cappella Mediterranea sous la direction de Leonardo Garcia Alarcon.
medici.tv et le label naïve classique s’unissent pour vous faire gagner des places !
et GAGNEZ 2 PLACES pour ce concert!
Dépêchez-vous, les premiers à répondre seront gagnants…!
Envoyez vos réponses par email à ctolot@medici.tv sans oublier d’indiquer votre nom et votre numéro de téléphone.
Bonne chance et à bientôt sur medici.tv !
- Un concert présenté par Gaveau Intime
- Découvrez les concerts d’Anne Sofie Von Otter disponibles sur medici.tv
- Découvrez l’album d’Anne Sofie Von Otter, sorti sous le label naïve classique, Sogno Barocco
Waiting for Blechacz…
Medici leads you behind the scenes at the Orchestra Hall at the Max M. Fisher Music Center in Detroit, during the video recording and broadcast of a Detroit Symphony Orchestra performance!
Beethoven is watching you!
Don’t miss today’s broadcast of the concert John Storgårds conducts Ligeti, Chopin and Holst – With Rafał Blechacz.
These pictures are courtesy of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. All pictures were shot by Michelle Andonian during the broadcast of the 100% Beethoven concert, available in free replay until May 31. Also available is the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Leonard Slatkin concert of April 28 (ft. cellist Lynn Harrell).
A tribute to Sir Colin Davis
The famous British conductor Sir Colin Davis passed away yesterday, Sunday April 14th 2013, at the age of 85.
Born in 1927, he starts his carreer in London as a clarinettist. His replacement of Otto Klemperer in 1959 for Don Giovanni and the one of Sir Thomas Beecham in 1960 for The Magic Flute make him famous. However, it is his recordings of the symphonic works by Hector Berlioz which makes him acquire a worldwide reputation.
On the international stage, he enjoyed high positions since he had been consecutively principal conductor of the BBC, Musical director at Covent Garden, principal conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.
Sir Colin Davis was particularly appreciated for his renditions of Mozart, Sibelius, and Britten, but he stayed always critical about serial school. His role in the British music was huge, and he was a great inspiration for musicians and music lovers.
To see again Sir Colin Davis, you can watch those two archives of the conductor:
- Sir Colin Davis conducts Beethoven: Concerto for violin (with Yehudi Menuhin and the London Symphony Orchestra)
- Sir Colin Davis conducts the Bach double concerto (with Igor and David Oistrakh)
Rolando Villazón celebrates Giuseppe Verdi.
Anyone considering opera always comes back to Giuseppe Verdi. And for anyone thinking of Verdi, Rolando Villazón immediately springs to mind. With his performances as Alfredo in La Traviata, the Duke in Rigoletto and the title role in Don Carlo, the tenor has glitteringly made his mark on recent interpretations of the operas by Giuseppe Verdi. So naturally, it goes without saying that Rolando Villazón is celebrating the great Italian opera maestro on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of his birth in 2013.
“Verdi is a master of melody. He can express the feelings of his characters through the language of the orchestra in a manner like virtually no other composer. Verdi’s music combines the special qualities of bel canto and Verismo in a way unlike any other” says Villazón. The great tenor will be performing his very personal tribute to Giuseppe Verdi at the Salle Pleyel (22nd April 2013), at the Victoria Hall of Geneva (29th April 2013), at the Grand Théâtre d’Aix-en-Provence (2nd May 2013) and at the Halle aux Grains of Toulouse (24th June 2013), where he will be singing dramatic operatic arias from I Lombardi, I due Foscari, Oberto, Il corsaro, Un Ballo in Maschera as well as other selected arias and songs. A world-class anniversary serenade, also recorded on CD, is a major contribution to the Verdi anniversary year.
Watch Rolando Villazón in Willy Decker’s production for Don Carlo:
Les Grandes Voix : 2013-2014 season
Les Grandes Voix. More than ever. All gathered here: Jonas Kaufmann will be back for two lieder concerts around the music of Schubert and Mahler; la Netrebko, who we didn’t expect in Paris before 2015, will appear here in the great verist repertoire. Rolando Villazón, as Edita Gruberova, will stop in Mozartian lands, Bryn Terfel will play the Wagnerian heros, Patricia Petibon will meet up with her baroque New World… The season will present all the artists who are and who make Les Grandes Voix every year: Roberto Alagna, Juan Diego Flórez, Angela Gheorghiu, Andreas Scholl and Natalie Dessay.
The series will continue its exploration of concert versions of operas, in order to be as close as possible to singing, to the voice in its very substance. A way also to be as close as possible to drama, to reach the heart of Music. We will do it for sure, with Juan Diego Flórez and Daniela Barcellona in Donizetti’s La Favorite, with Roberto Alagna as Otello or with Marie-Nicole Lemieux as one of the most sparkling Rossini’s Italiana.
Les Grandes Voix loves Puccini but next to the great arias we regularly present, we have chosen to present a rare Puccini, Le Villi, which will be performed by the Orchestre National de France and the Choeur de Radio France along with ones of the most essential singers of the international lyric stage who will stand up for it, like the rising soprano Ermonela Jaho.
The beginning of autumn will feature Puccini, with an astonishing duet: the tenor José Cura will make a come back to the series along with Camilla Nylund, who will lend her voice to La Fanciulla del West.
We love both of them in opera casts, les Grandes Voix will applause them together in a composite recital mixing Russian romance and opera duets: the tenor Ramón Vargas and the bass Ildar Abdrazakov will have, for sure, stories to share. At last, as the Wagner year is coming to an end, two giants of the well-known Bayreuth festival will make a stopover in Paris: Gary Lehman and Anja Kampe will offer us large excerpts from Tristan.
Next to the not to be missed regular artist, the essential ones of the today stage, the Grandes Voix will go into a new generation of talents which will add spice to the current season.
On the instrumental side, we would like to take you to the new piano of the British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor and the violin of Ray Chen, worthy pupil of Vengerov, who will play the Kreutzer Sonata but here, to everybody!
Perhaps you remember the counter-tenor Valer Barna-Sabadus who contributed to a smoothly enthousiasm in Artaserse, here he will sing the Haendel repertoire, just like Sonya Yoncheva under the direction of Nathalie Stutzmann. The young and promising Sabine Devieilhe will lend her voice to the Rameau year. All things said, we would like to draw your attention on two young tenors who will turn out to be for sure great ones in the futur: Atalla Ayan and Thiago Arancam, to be continued…
- More information on Les Grandes Voix‘s official website;
- Follow Les Grandes Voix on Facebook!
- Visit Rolando Villazón’s official website.
medici.tv’s women
Every year since 1977, the world celebrates its women, remembers their great fights for equality, and thinks about their actual situation. medici.tv thought it was the right day to pay tribute to all the heroins of classical music, from Maria Callas to Yuja Wang, who all contributed to make the image of the women change in our societies. Because they are women, and made their ways through a world which is still dominated by masculine musicians – even now. But things are changing very fast, and they all had and have an important role to play…
MARIA CALLAS, 1923-1977
The archetyp of the Diva assoluta, Maria Callas is at the origin of huge changes in the operatic world. No soprano had ever enjoy such popularity before her. With Callas, opera became as glamorous as Hollywood’s productions.
MARTHA ARGERICH, Born 1941
She is with no doubt the world’s best known pianist. She was in the spotlights at only 16, in the 1950s, when she won first prizes at prestigious international competitions in Geneva and Bolzano. In 1965, Martha Argerich won first prize at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw, a Graal for every pianist.
JACQUELINE DU PRE, 1945-1987
Her virtuosity, her musical instinct as well as her generous and smiley personality made her a golden girl and a real icon. Jacqueline Du Pré has remained the perfect cellist, the ideal performer for the Elgar Cello concerto.
RENÉE FLEMING, Born 1959
Renée Fleming is considered today one of the greatest voices in the world. She helped modernize the image of the operatic singer by premiering lots of contemporary works, and also by experiencing the interpretation of “non-serious” music.
YUJA WANG, Born 1987
Aged 26, Yuja Wang is already considered an exceptional pianist. Invited by the most prestigious festivals and orchestras, she performed with the greatest conductors and now enjoys an international fame.
And also…
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