Gift to Bartók fans

The other day I blogged about the Bluebeard Castle, one of the most fascinating of all the operas.
I said that the Philharmonia was magnificent, even if Iván Fischer and  Budapest Festival Orchestra [BFO] remain unsurpassed as far as the music by Bartók is concerned.
Bartók is their home specialty, and they really bring it to a new level of skills and interpretation.

If you get a chance to listen to their live performance (Bartók or anything else), it's not to be missed.

I thought I'd share two `Bartóky' videos in this post that I found particularly interesting:

Tout en douceur... Gabriel Fauré

Do NOT tell me you didn't listen to the St. Matthew Passion I told you about a couple of weeks ago (as an alternative to the abysmal production of Aida)! Whether you're religious or not, a refined beauty of this music cannot leave you unmoved. Berlioz said: "Bach, c’est Bach, comme Dieu c’est Dieu."

I am normally not crazy about sacred music but recently, for whatever the reason, I found myself very often listening to Fauré's Requiem. I guess I got soothed in by the first track on my CD, which is Pavane, and then the Requiem unfolds pleasantly. So here is Pavane to make your day nice and easy:



and then two excerpts from the performance at La Salle Pleyel, earlier this year, by Orchestre de Paris under Paavo Järvi (Matthias Goerne is singing)

5 great opera-concerts at TCE: (3) Pelléas et Mélisande

Pelléas et Mélisande (in concert), Théâtre des Champs Elysées, April 17 2011

Simon Keenlyside, Marie-Nicole Lemieux, Natalie Dessay, Louis Langrée, and Laurent Naouri

Louis Langrée ..... Conductor 

Natalie Dessay ...... Mélisande
Simon Keenlyside .....  Pelléas
Marie-Nicole Lemieux ..... Geneviève
Laurent Naouri ..... Golaud
Alain Vernhes ..... Arkel
Khatouna Gadelia ..... Yniold
Nahuel di Pierro .....  Le Médecin

Chœur de l'Orchestre de Paris
Orchestre de Paris

Grand Officier Barenboim and Omer Meir Wellber in Paris

Orchestre de Paris, Salle Pleyel, March 1st 2011

Symphony No.4 - F. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy

Piano Concerto No.2 - F. Liszt

Siegfried Idyll - R. Wagner

Piano Concerto No.1 - F. Liszt 

Orchestre de Paris

Omer Meir Wellber, conductor

Daniel Barenboim, piano

Gil Shaham and Petrushka at Pleyel

Prokofiev-Stravinsky-Lyadov, Salle Pleyel, December 1st 2010

Gil Shaham

Interesting concert last night at Pleyel. It will be repeated tonight and for those who cannot go, there is a video of live broadcast available at Arte-Live-Web (this link), or on the site of Cité de la Musique (this link).

Anemic Strauss at Cité de la Musique

Andris Nelsons at Cité de la Musique, October 29 2010

Metamorphosen - R.Strauss
Piano Concerto #20 - Mozart
Also sprach Zarathustra - R.Strauss

Vadim Repin at Pleyel

Orchestre de Paris conducted by Paavo Järvi and Vadim Repin perform right now at Pleyel and arte LIVE-WEB provides live broadcast on this link (also embedded below)

This concert will be available on the same link during next 6 months for free.

Tout en douceur

Susan Graham, Orchestre de Paris & Bertrand de Billy, Salle Pleyel, September 23  2010

Susan Graham after Poème de l'amour et de la mer

Bonne chance maestro Järvi!

Paavo Järvi is a very good conductor who these days officially became the new music director of Orchestre de Paris. The inaugural concert at Pleyel will take place tonight [Wednesday, Sept. 15 @ 8 p.m. (CET)]. I have a ticket and I'll go but you (all of you!) can come with me too --if you want-- thanks to Arte Live Web. You can either follow this link or see the concert tonight in a video embedded below [at the end of this entry].

The program is available here.
Järvi evidently opted to present himself with a Nordic sound of Jean Sibelius [close to his native Estonia], and combine it with a fitting French sound which appears to be La Péri by Paul Dukas.
Two Finnish soloists will be singing: Soile Isokoski and our fave Juha Uusitalo.

Paavo Järvi

Orchestre de Paris is a strange bunch: they are like a treasury of top class musicians, but together they rarely perform at the level you'd expect them to. Last time I listened them reaching the level of any Top-10 world orchestra was at Pleyel, in a performance of the Britten's War Requiem, conducted by Ingo Metzmacher. That was a good illustration that they could be great and that a chemistry between them and their previous director, Christoph Eschenbach was lacking. Let's hope Järvi will be able to make the best of the orchestra's potential and help them regain the Top-10 level they deserve. 
Good luck maestro!