Art of Interpretation and Expression

Last December 19, Emmanuele Haïm and her orchestra Le Concert d'Astrée celebrated 10 years of collaboration/activity, and for the occasion a Gala Concert took place at Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris.

Happily, for us who could not attend the concert, Arte concocted 1 hour of excerpts and broadcast it last week.

Christopher Purves (L) and Anne Sofie von Otter & Philippe Jarousky (R)

I will not comment on the concert that I didn't attend but I thought I could share a couple of excerpts that are good illustration of utmost importance of the interpretative skills in making the beautiful voices reaching the spectators' hearts.

Enjoy!

Arte's keeping it COOOOL! Jurowski

The World's best TV (Arte, of course!) continues with its wonderful web supplements. Not only can you still watch the K und K version of Werther for free,  you can also catch up with concerts you had to skip.

The other night a part of me wanted to be at the TCE (Théatre des Champs-Elysées) for the evening of Beethoven Symphonies with The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, lead by their ginormously talented young [37] conductor Vladimir Jurowski. But since there was Daniele Gatti and a Mahler night at the Théâtre du Châtelet it was obviously impossible for me to attend both concerts.

Suprise-surprise! Arte recorded the live webcast of the concert at TCE and it is available on their website. How COOL is that!? Makes you feel like a Schrödinger cat for one night. :)

Off night for Offenbach

The entire crew involved in  Marthaler/Niquet production of "La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein", premiered in Basle last December, came to Pleyel tonight to give us a concert version  of their show (in costumes).

From right to left: Norman Reinhardt, Anne Sofie von Otter, Agata Wilewska

Hervé Niquet : conductor
Anne Sofie von Otter : la Grande-Duchesse
Agata Wilewska : Wanda
Norman Reinhardt : Fritz
Rolf Romei : Prince Pauld
Karl-Heinz Brandt : Baron Puck
Christoph Homberger  : Général Boum

Anne Sofie von Otter is always kinda nice to see but she struggled through the show, with a few patches in which she was barely audible. And that in spite of Niquet taming the orchestra to play Offenbach pianissimo (how weird is that!?)

Agata Wilewska was OK, but I was only impressed by Norman Reinhardt (yet another good American tenor!). Bravo a Fritz! :)