In Brief: Leap Day Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• For Leap Day this week, there will be online video of a performance of Camille Saint-Saëns's Le Carnaval des animaux by the group Solistes des Siècles. [Cité de la musique Live]


• Renee Fleming stars in a production of Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, from the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, conducted by Christian Thielemann, available in an online video. [Medici.tv]


• Vladimir Jurowski leads the London Philharmonic in a program of Szymanowski, Zemlinsky, Mozart, and the Brahms violin concerto, with Joshua Bell as soloist. [France Musique]


• Online video of Tugan Sokhiev leading the Orchestre National du Capitole, with violinist Renaud Capuçon as soloist, in music of Dutilleux and Tchaikovsky. [Medici.tv]


• From Barcelona, one of my favorite young string quartets, the Cuarteto Casals, plays music by Boccherini, Beethoven, Shostakovich, and a world premiere by Miquel Roger. [France Musique]


• From the Salzburg Mozartwoche, Ivor Bolton leads the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg in music of Mozart and Webern. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Listen to a recital by pianist Yevgeny Sudbin, from Bremen, with music by Scarlatti, Liszt, Chopin, and Ravel. [France Musique]


• From the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts the Rotterdam Philharmonic in Ravel's Shéhérazade, with Anna Caterina Antonacci, and Daphnis et Chloé, with the Wiener Singakademie. [France Musique]


• Gisèle Vienne has brought her choreographies of marionnettes to the Nouveau Festival at the Centre Pompidou, for an installation her puppets called Teenage Hallucination. Made in collaboration with American writer Dennis Cooper, Vienne's pieces can be very disturbing. [Le Monde]


• Rolf Lislevand performs Baroque music on theorbo, guitar, and related instruments, at the Théâtre des Abbesses in Paris. [France Musique]


• One last installment from the 5e Biennale de quatuors à cordes in Paris: the Arcanto Quartet in music of Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert, after Mozart's G minor piano quartet, K. 478, from Christian Zacharias (piano), Frank Peter Zimmermann (violin), Tabea Zimmermann (viola), and Tilmann Wick (cello). [France Musique]


• Natalie Dessay has released a new disc (Virgin Classics) of mélodies by Debussy, including some youthful works that have never been recorded before, with pianist Philippe Cassard. It probably never would have happened until Dessay undertook to learn the role of Mélisande, causing her to enter the Debussy sound world. As she put it, "I don't think any other ocmposer has written a score so sublime, each note, each second. Perhaps I would have learned this role only in order to hear that orchestra so close to me." [Le Monde]


• From the Grand Théâtre de Provence, Jean-François Zygel speaks about and plays Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under conductor Kirill Karabits. [France Musique]


• From the Présences Festival, the pairing of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, in a new orchestration by Oscar Strasnoy, and Strasnoy's new chamber opera El regreso.
  [France Musique]


• Hear the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France perform Pascal Dusapin's Uncut, Solo pour orchestre N° 7, from 2009, along with music by Debussy and Bartók, from the Auditorium de Lyon. [France Musique]


• A recital by pianist Vladislav Kozhukhin, from the Auditorium du Louvre, with music by Haydn, Franck, Liszt, and others. [France Musique]


• Les Victoires de la Musique classique 2012, from the Palais des Congrès in Paris, with the Orchestre National d'Ile de France. [France Musique]


• The Quatuor Girard, formed by four siblings from Avignon, performs music by Haydn, Schubert, and Schumann. [France Musique]