Paul Smaczny

Riccardo Chailly & Alexander Malofeev Lucerne Festival 2024

On the shores of Lake Lucerne, Riccardo Chailly and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra continue their Rachmaninov odyssey with the Symphonic Movement, a rarely performed piece, as well as the Symphonic Dances and the Scherzo in D minor. The highlight of the evening is the Piano Concerto No. 1, performed by Alexander Malofeev, a rising star on the keyboard. Chapters : Sergueï Rachmaninov - Scherzo in D minor - Symphonic movement in D minor (youth symphony) - Piano Concerto No. 1 in F sharp minor, Op. 1 - Danses symphoniques, op. 45

Winterreise

Franz Schubert's "Winterreise" is considered the pinnacle of German art song. Hans Zender (1936 - 2019) arranged the cycle in 1993, and his version for tenor and small orchestra brings to light emotions that pulsate beneath the surface in Schubert. Similar to Hans Zender, the choreographer Christian Spuck is also concerned with a journey into the interior of the human being.

Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet

Shakespeare’s play “Romeo and Juliet” has inspired generations of artists to adaptations like scarcely any other work. In his colorful, passionate music, the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev brilliantly captured the clash of love and hatred, and the proximity of tenderness and violence. Inspired by Prokofiev’s vivid music and the timeless quality of Shakespeare’s tragedy, choreographer Christian Spuck and the Ballett Zürich narrate the most famous love story in world literature using strong images that are full of enthralling theatricality and touching emotion. Michail Jurowski, a true Prokofiev expert, is at the rostrum of the Philharmonia Zürich. Recorded live at Opernhaus Zürich June 2019.

Universe, Incomplete

Live performance from 2018 of the unfinished work by composer Charles Ives. Inspired by the potential of the work, director Christoph Marthaler, stage designer Anna Viebrock and conductor Titus Engel joined forces to stage a performance of Ives' incomplete project, originally intended for more than 4,000 musicians, at the arts festival Ruhrtriennale in 2018.

Taking Risks: Barbara Hannigan

Barbara Hannigan is a renowned soprano and exceptionally talented artist and musician from Canada, who recently has begun an international career as conductor. Making its North American premiere, Taking Risks shows Hannigan preparing to conduct her first opera, Stravinsky’s masterpiece The Rake’s Progress. From auditions to opening night, we follow the journey of a dedicated, passionate, and perceptive woman, taking a behind-the-scenes look at her creative process, with many moments of excitement and magic.

The Unanswered Ives: American Pioneer of Music

The Unanswered Ives is the first film about Charles Ives (1874-1954), an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown. The 60-minute documentary sheds light on Ives' life and work in all its facets and inconsistencies. American singer and composer Frank Zappa included Charles Ives in a list of influences that he presented in the liner notes of his debut album Freak Out! (1966). Ives continues to influence contemporary composers, arrangers and musicians. Planet Arts Records released Mists: Charles Ives for Jazz Orchestra. Ives befriended and encouraged a young Elliott Carter. In addition, Phil Lesh, bassist of the Grateful Dead, has described Ives as one of his two musical heroes.

Dvořák: From the New World

Recorded live at the Gewandhaus zu Leipzig in May 2017, this release features a delightful concert by the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and conductor Andris Nelsons. For the program, the conductor has chosen works by Antonin Dvorak, including the Othello Concert Overture, and his famous Symphony No. 9 in E minor- “From the New World.

Music and Power

Music is not "just" music. It can have immense power in good or evil. This documentary by Maria Stodtmeier and Isa Willinger highlights interesting and very current themes about the links between music and politics.

Maestras: The Long Journey of Women to the Podium

When a woman steps onto the conductor's podium, she is always one of the first: the first to lead a world-class orchestra, the first to conduct the closing night of London's Proms, the first to win the German Conductor Prize. It seems as though the world of orchestral conducting might finally be ready to change its attitudes toward female conductors.

The Lost Paradise

He is the most performed contemporary composer in the world. And yet he rarely ventures out in public, prefers to keep quiet about his music, feels at home in the forests of Estonia and generates therewith - perhaps involuntarily - the impression of a recluse, which is attributed to him again and again: Arvo Part. In The Lost Paradise, we follow him over a period of one year in his native Estonia, to Japan and the Vatican. The documentary is framed by the stage production of Adam's Passion, a music theater piece based on the Biblical story of the fall of Adam featuring three key works by Arvo Part. The world-renowned director Robert Wilson has brought this work to the stage in a former submarine factory in Tallinn. Tracing their creative process, the film offers rare and personal insights into the worlds of two of the most fascinating personalities in the international arts and music scene.

Adam's Passion

Adam’s Passion is the moving first collaboration between two “masters of slow motion who harmonize perfectly with each other” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). In the spectacular setting of a former submarine factory, American director and universal artist Robert Wilson creates a poetic visual world in which the mystical musical language of the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt can cast its meditative spell. Three of Pärt’s major works – Adam’s Lament, Tabula rasa, and Miserere, as well as Sequentia, a new work composed especially for this production – are brought together here using light, space, and movement to create a tightly-woven Gesamtkunstwerk in which the artistic visions of these two great artists mirror each other.

Mahler: Symphony No. 4 / Schoenberg: Pelleas and Melisande

Gustav Mahler's fourth symphony and Pelleas et Melisande by Arnold Schoenberg performed by the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, conducted by Claudio Abbado. Soprano Juliane Banse is featured on the Mahler symphony

Händel Celebration Concert

The 250th anniversary of George Frideric Handel’s death takes place on April 14th, 2009. This outstanding British-German performance in Handel’s baptistery, the Market Church in Halle, represents the media highlight of the Handel Year.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Brandenburg Concertos 1-6

Claudio Abbado conducts the Orchestra Mozart with Giuliano Carmignola, principal violinist, live at the Teatro Municipale Valli, Reggio Emilia, April 21, 2007

Americans in Pyongyang

In summer 2007 the New York Philharmonic received an invitation that was unprecedented in the orchestra's history. North Korea, the world's most isolated and secluded country and technically at war with the United States, invited the orchestra to play in the capital of Pyongyang. Just a few months later, two hundred orchestra members and more than one hundred journalists disembarked from a chartered plane at Pyongyang's deserted airport. They were about to experience a historic moment, the first-ever performance by an American orchestra in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Daniel Barenboim: Beethoven - Piano Concertos 1-5

If Daniel Barenboim is not the world's greatest living classical musician he is certainly the most versatile. In a career spanning more than 50 years, his name is attached to many of the celebrated recordings of opera, symphony, small ensemble and piano solo. With the later half of his career marked by distinction at the podium, one may forget that he is still an accomplished concert pianist. Here we are treated to both talents as Barenboim conducts the Staatskapelle Berlin and plays all five of Beethoven's piano concerti. From the accompanying booklet we find that Barenboim first recorded these works in 1967 at the age of 24 under Otto Klemperer. Now he is revisiting them 40 years later on the occasion of his 65th birthday.

A Night Of Rhythm & Dance (Waldbühne 2000)

The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra’s annual summer concert at the Waldbühne in Berlin is legendary. The Millennium concert, recorded live on 25 June 2000, gathered more than 22.000 people in one of the most appealing outdoor amphitheaters in Europe for one of the most popular classical music concerts in the world. Kent Nagano named his program of popular and rather unusual music from the 20th century “Rhythm and Dance”. It turned out to be an inspiring combination of classical pieces, show tunes, pops, and Far Eastern music, all brought together in a tasty musical stew and rightly labelled as one of the most exciting programmes ever performed at the Waldbühne. It featured Gershwin classics with an outstanding performance by the American mezzo soprano Susan Graham, music by Ravel and the soundtrack to the successful Chinese film “Farewell My Concubine.”

Un Ballo in Maschera

Live performance from Oper Leipzig, 26 November 2005.

Europakonzert 2001 from Istanbul

Mariss Jansons conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker in the 2001 edition of the Europakonzert, filmed live at the Hagia Eirene in Istanbul on 1 May 2001. The program features Haydn’s Symphony No. 24 in G Major “Surprise” Mozart’s Concerto No. 2 in D Major for Flute and Orchestra, Emmanuel Pahud soloist Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14.