In Brief: In Like a Lion Edition

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

• This week, you can watch a series of performances with Bernard Haitink leading the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, starting with Beethoven's sixth symphony, Egmont Overture, and Triple Concerto (embedded here), and more of the Beethoven series. [ARTE Live Web]


• Christian Thielemann conducts the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden in Brahms's enigmatic Tragic Overture, Reger's Eine romantische Suite, op. 125 (which is something you simply must hear), and the first piano concerto of Brahms, with Maurizio Pollini as soloist. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• From the Opéra de Lyon's Festival Puccini, a performance of Suor Angelica, with Csilla Boross in the title role -- she will take the role of Abigaille in Nabucco this spring at Washington National Opera. [France Musique]


• Boross also sings Giorgetta in Lyon's performance of Il Tabarro. [France Musique]


• More news on Natalie Dessay's new Debussy recording, given a live outing at the Salle Pleyel with pianist Philippe Cassard: some online videos of a couple of the songs and comments by the performers go with this article. Dessay has also been saying that she will take a sabbatical year from performing next year. [Le Monde]


• Jérémie Rhorer leads his period instrument ensemble Le Cercle de l'Harmonie in a survey of the symphony and overture in the 18th century (music by Mondonville, Leduc, Gossec, Rigel, Hérold, Cherubini, plus the usual suspects). [France Musique]


• Speaking of recovering lost music, Austrian musicologist Hildegard Herrmann-Schneider, in the course of research for the RISM project, has identified an unknown piano work by Mozart. Austrian pianist Florian Birsak will play the piece on March 23, on Mozart's pianoforte in the Mozart house in Salzburg. The usual warnings about "discoveries of new pieces" apply here, but one has fewer doubts if the RISM project is involved. [Le Monde]


• From the Théâtre du Châtelet, Philippe Jordan leads the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta. [France Musique]


• Catalan viola da gambist Jordi Savall is releasing a disc of music in tribute to his late wife, soprano Montserrat Figueras. After forty-seven years of marriage, "Montserrat will remain my muse," he told Thierry Hillériteau in an interview about the project. "She understood things about singers from their behavior, their appearance, toward which repertories their taste could lead them. This was more than a musical gift: she was interested in other people, for their humanity above all. I was surprised by the number of people who shared their sadness with me after she died: musicians, yes, but also everyday people, taxi drivers or gardeners who had crossed paths with her." [Le Figaro]


• A pairing of Bartók's Sonata for two pianos and percussion with a recent work by Martin Matalon, La Makina, for two pianos, percussion, and electronics. [France Musique]


• Embarking on a new tour to celebrate the 25th year of his solo career, the rock musician Sting gave an interview to François Délétraz, in which he spoke of his love for classical music: "Deliberately, I listen only to classical music. Most recently, my friend Katia Labèque sent me her new CD of Ravel piano pieces. I have a weakness for French piano music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, like Ravel, Debussy, Théodore Dubois, Erik Satie... Working with a symphony orchestra opened up new territory for me as a singer. I had the impression of having more room to develop my voice, like another way of breathing. An orchestra is very organic, very powerful, and one must be dedicated to it. Oddly, with a rock band, you are much more limited, but I love them both. [Le Figaro]


• Susanna Mälkki leads the Ensemble Intercontemporain in new pieces by Sean Shepherd, Texu Kim, Unsuk Chin, and Michael Jarrell, at the Cité de la Musique. [France Musique]


• Sad news this week of the death of French trumpeter Maurice André. [Le Point]


• Brass and percussion players from the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France perform unusual pieces by Sibelius and other Finnish composers. [France Musique]


• French novelist Georges Perec, who loved incorporating puzzles, games, and math into his works, died 30 years ago this year. Guillaume Sbalchiero marks the event with an acrostic poem in Perec's honor. [L'Express]


• Speaking of Perec, an early novel written by him in the late 1950s, Le Condottière, has been discovered and published this year by Seuil (Gallimard). It is a sort of detective mystery, following Gaspard Winckler, a painting forger who is unable to make a copy of Antonello da Messina's 1475 portrait known as Il Condottiero and kills the client who ordered it. [Le Nouvel Observateur]


• Leon Fleisher, François-Frédéric Guy, and Alon Goldstein join the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France for Mozart's concerto for three pianos, K. 242, and other music by Mozart, from the Opéra Comique. [France Musique]