Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra / Manfred Honeck

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and its Music Director Manfred Honeck celebrate the orchestra’s 125^th anniversary with the release of a new recording with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with Reference Recordings. The recording features soloists Christina Landshamer, Jennifer Johnson Cano, Werner Güra and Shenyang, and the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh.

On 27 February, the 125^th anniversary to the day of the very first concert of the Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony will present a digital 125^th Anniversary Celebration, with a variety of solo and chamber music performances by the Pittsburgh Symphony musicians, highlights of its 125-year history, and more. More information is available at www.pittsburghsymphony.org.

Midori

To mark Beethoven Year 2020, Warner Classics released a recording with Midori and the Festival Strings Lucerne performing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and his two Romances for Violin and Orchestra. The recording was originally planned around a concert in Lucerne and subsequent concerts in the UK, Singapore, China and Korea – but due to the COVID-19 pandemic  all public events had to be cancelled. The concert in Lucerne was also affected by this, although rehearsals had already begun. Fortunately, the recording could still take place.

Midori also wishes a Happy New Year. She looks back on the past year in a child-friendly way and says thank you to everyone who made special contributions in 2020:

In recognition of her lifetime of artistic achievement, Midori will be honored as a Kennedy Center Honoree 2021. The award ceremony will be recorded in May and broadcast on the American network CBS on June 6 in a two-hour primetime special. For more information about the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., click here.

Met Stars Live in Concert

As part of the Met Stars Live in Concert series, soprano Sondra Radvanovsky and tenor Piotr Beczała will give a live stream concert from the historic Stadthalle in Wuppertal on Saturday, January 23, at 19:00 CET. The program of the evening, which was specially compiled by the two Met stars, will include well-known arias and duets, including works from operas they have sung on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, such as Giordano’s Andrea Chénier, Verdi’s La Forza del Destino and Luisa Miller, as well as Dvořák’s Rusalka.

Leonidas Kavakos

Leonidas Kavakos also contributed to the Beethoven Year 2020. From December 2020, the complete Beethoven violin sonata cycle, which he recorded together with pianist Enrico Pace at the Salzburg Mozarteum in 2013, will be shown on Arte Concert.

See Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 1, op. 12.1 right here:

On Saturday, January 23, from 7 p.m. MEZ the concert with the Munich Philharmonic under Valery Gergiev and Leonidas Kavakos with Gautier Capuçon will be available as a stream at www.mphil.de/stream until January 30. The program includes Brahms’ Concerto for Violin, Violoncello and Orchestra in A minor, op. 102, and Bahms’ Symphony No. 3 in F major, op. 90.

Kent Nagano

After more tha n a decade as Music Director of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, two recordings with Kent Nagano and the OSM were released last year. Krzysztof Penderecki’s St. Luke Passion, which was recorded on the opening night of the prestigious Salzburg Festival at the Felsenreitschule Salzburg in July 2018, on BIS-Records and the album Ginastera – Bernstein – Moussa: Works for Violin and Orchestra with Andrew Wan, concertmaster of the OSM on Analekta.

Sondra Radvanovsky and Piotr Beczala at the Stadthalle Wuppertal with Met Stars Live in Concert (January 2021)

Soprano Sondra Radvanovsky and tenor Piotr Beczała will perform a live concert on Saturday, January 23, at 7:00pm CET/1:00pm ET, from the historic Stadthalle in Wuppertal, Germany, as part of the Met Stars Live in Concert series. The program features popular arias and duets from some of the many classic operas they’ve performed at the Met and other world stages, including Giordano’s Andrea Chénier, Verdi’s La Forza del Destino and Luisa Miller, and Dvořák’s Rusalka. The singers will be accompanied by Vincenzo Scalera on piano. The recital will be streamed live via the Met website and will then be available on demand for 14 days.

More information can be found here.

Karin Kei Nagano’s new CD (January 2021)

In November 2020, Analekta will release a new CD by pianist Karin Kei Nagano. The CD Reincarnation: Schubert – Messiaen includes Franz Schubert’s Sonata in B flat major and Oliver Messiaen’s Première communion de la vierge from Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésu.

The CD will also be available in Europe from January 2021. As a stream, the album is available on the usual channels.

Jens Düppe via Livestreamkonzert on Dreamstage (January 2021)

On 16 January  10 pm CET, Jens Düppe will play a show which has has never been seen before on Dreamstage.live! Creative drummer sensation Jens Düppe will compose and create soundscapes performing live and simultaneously on the drums, piano and synthesizer. As a native of Cologne, Germany, his career started early in New York and Amsterdam. As a drummer, Düppe is grounded in jazz and improvised music by absorbing the essence of various musical styles and turning them into an intuitive and authentic way of drumming. He enriches all of his performances by self-designed percussion instruments. Fans can now join Düppe in ultra high resolution, studio quality audio livestream on Dreamstage. Buy your tickets now!

Program, all compositions by Jens Düppe:

• the beat
• birds
• dance I
• to the skies
• storm
• wave
• dance II
• dont’ stop
• come with me

More information can be found here.

Peter Gelb in conversation at the Musikjournal on Deutschlandfunk (January 2020)

“The impact is devastating”

The Metropolitan Opera has lost around 150 million dollars since the beginning of the corona pandemic, said its general manager Peter Gelb in the Dlf. Currently, the privately financed opera house has to rely almost exclusively on donations. “It is a struggle so that we can survive this crisis intact.”

Peter Gelb in conversation with Jochen Hubmacher, available to listen and read here.