Mieczysław Weinberg’s IdiotAwe-inspiring Masterpiece Unearthed in Mannheim

Click excerpts to see entire picture.

All pictures above and below courtesy Mannheim National Theater, © Hans Jörg Michel

A transfixing experience and the discovery of one of the major operas of the second half of the 20^th century

Just a decade ago the name “Mieczysław Weinberg” drew a blank from music lovers. In record stores, which still existed then, you weren’t likely to find an index card with his name, or else five differently spelled ones, as every publisher seems to have had different ideas as to how his name should be written. On offer were: Vainberg, Vaynberg, Vajnberg, Wajnberg, and Weinberg for last names; Moishei, Moishe, Moissei, Moisey (Samuilovich), and Mieczysław for first names. Among the combined 25 possibilities only one is correct: the Polish “Mieczysław Weinberg” that the composer used and preferred. His friends called him Mietek.

Weinberg’s time hadn’t come then, but it is fast approaching now, almost 20 years after his death in 1996. At last count, there are at least sixty releases dedicated to his music available. His Symphonies and chamber music are well under way now, with a heartening number of releases and performances, but his six, seven, eight, nine operas (depending on how you count) are only now being rediscovered. The finally-famous Passenger (op.97, 1968) has shot to fame thanks to the production and subsequent DVD/Bluray from Bregenz which has since travelled successfully. (See Best of 2011, Interview with Michelle Breedt.) Now The Idiot, op.144, written in the mid-80s and premiered in a reduced chamber version in 1991, was at last given its first full performance in Mannheim on May 9^th.

And what an opera it is! Even with my high expectations of Weinberg, who I first encountered thanks to Bob Reilly’s Surprised by Beauty (then still as “Vainberg”) and have sought out and tried, in whatever small ways, to champion since, this was astonishingly good—indeed great—music, well over three hours of it, and nary the temptation to nod off during any of it. Just as incredulous is the ingenious libretto, in which Alexander Medvedev (he already wrote the text for Weinberg’s Passenger) miraculously managed to tame Dostoyevsky’s sprawling Idiot and turn it into a cohesive story suited for the stage.

But since even equipped with the best music and a great story, inept hands can snatch missed opportunity from the jaws of triumph, it was upon the artists to make sure this would be an operatic experience of the absolutely first order. And indeed, on July 17^th, with three performances already under their belt, every participant looked, sounded, played, and conducted, as if they had all waited their entire careers for this moment.

Thomas Sanderling (a Weinberg champion like his father Kurt) and the orchestra of the National Theater Mannheim sounded as though had they practiced all year long. The production by director Regula Gerber paid great attention to details, told the story economically and efficiently, conveyed all the emotions, and vividly portrayed all the characters. It was my first time at the Mannheim opera, but it sure seemed as though she made the very most of the house’s abilities and the undoubtedly limited budget. And then there was the matter of the cast of singers, an assembly of strengths and delights.

Co-First among equals in this cast were Dmitry Golovnin as Prince Myshkin—perfectly secure, strong, clear while convincingly performing all stages of innocence, reticence, and intimidation, and always at total ease with the demanding part and the text. And Myshkin’s dark alter ego Rogozhin, portrayed by Steven Scheschareg as intense and dark and lustrous and animalistic both in offense and retreat. Right with them were Lars Møller as the amended Lebedev and Ludmila Slepneva as the ravishing and ravished Nastassya Filippovna.

The relatively small rôle of the rogue Lebedev was fashioned into a (literally) intriguing composite character by librettist Medvedev. Regula Gerber took the cue and turned him fully into a devilishly delightful Mephistophelean presence who comments on, and manipulates, and drives the action—out of his own lowly, here pecuniary, there voyeuristic motives. A discarded red glove that he snatches greedily from Filippovna along the way is his only prop, and it went such a long way in visualizing perfectly his newfound rôle.

Both Lars Møller and the darkly, lusciously seductivex Ludmila Slepneva are Mannheim Opera ensemble-members which I found astounding at first. Being spoiled by performances in Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, Berlin, London, New York, and even Frankfurt or Paris, one is tempted to think of places like Mannheim as the opera boondocks. I might not have been surprised that the opera had such a strong cast to provide from its ensemble if I had recalled then and there the history of the house, and that its ensemble has included, at various times and early stages in their careers, singers like

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The Cello Suites, Bach III (Gastinel, Queyras, Lipkind)

Over a few months in 2008 (republished now) I’ve looked at recordings of Bach’s Cello Suites including Mischa Maisky on DVD in February and the classic Harnoncourt, Fournier, Rostropovich as well as Steven Isserlis’ new account. Still missing from my little survey are three recent recordings: Anne Gastinel’s, Jean-Guihen Queyras’, and that of Gavriel Lipkind... to which I turn now. (I will spare you dissecting recent marimba and harp versions in this review, but may cruelly delight in doing so when I write more about transcriptions.)

Gastinel’s account on naïve, the latest of that batch, offers a forward, comparatively lean cello sound; not as happily booming as Schiff / EMI, not as resonant as Lipkind and Queyras, yet in a more subtly reverberant acoustic, with more air around her cello and at a greater distance to the listener. She sounds busier than those two, without actually being faster. She uses less ornamentation than her male colleagues and is, especially compared to Lipkind, less free-wheeling. In the Sarabande of Suite No.4 she doesn’t slur through most of the opening. Like Harnoncourt, she taps the first double stop, but doesn’t ‘hold’ it all the way to the next.

She can’t be said to be un-involving, but she is more matter-of-fact (something that is put into perspective when compared to the truly somber Isserlis). Details are very audible in this combination of clean playing and clean sound, but so is – unfortunately – her very pointed inhaling. It is notable to the point where I can detect her recording out of all the others within seconds, just on the account of those breaths. Less impressive than her male colleagues at first, Gastinel becomes dearer and dearer upon second and third hearing. The extraneous noises, though, might be enough to turn me

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Gorgeous 'Fanciulla del West' at Castleton

The high point of this summer's Castleton Festival, edging out a fine double-bill of La Voix Humaine, was a rather spectacular production of Puccini's La Fanciulla del West, heard in the final performance on Sunday afternoon. Made for the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where it was premiered in 1910, Fanciulla would get my vote for the most beautiful, most accomplished score that Puccini composed -- reportedly Puccini's favorite, too, as well as of scholar Mary Jane Phillips-Matz, author of an excellent biography on the composer -- and yet it is rarely performed. In fact, this was the first time the opera has ever been under review here at Ionarts, although I have been publicly calling for Washington National Opera to stage it instead of another Butterfly or Turandot. So much the better that it should come under Lorin Maazel, who has a way with the stretch and pull of Puccini's scores, the shameless emotionalism, the breadth of nobility in the sentiments.

It is an over-sized opera in many ways, "a work that is not small," as Puccini wrote to a friend (Mary Jane Phillips-Matz, Puccini: A Biography). In a sense, the story could only work in opera. It revolves around Minnie, the eponymous girl, who has raised herself up out of poverty to become the beloved central figure of a California Gold Rush town, where she serves drinks to the boys, has them all wrapped around her little finger, and teaches them a daily Bible lesson to boot. The local sheriff, Jack Rance, is one of several who plan to marry her, but she falls in love instead with a man who passes through town, Dick Johnson. She does not discover until later that he is actually Ramirez, a wanted bandit, with a heart of gold. Along the way, Puccini doles out one gorgeous set piece after another, weaving the whole into three continuously running acts, with hints of Wagner, Strauss, Debussy -- all of the big composers Puccini obviously heard in the several years between his last opera, Madama Butterfly, and this one.

Puccini, La Fanciulla del West, M. Zampieri, P. Domingo, La Scala, L. Maazel

Maazel and his musicians and cast gave the musical side exceptional beauty, the surge and gush of the lush orchestration adding vivid narration to the story, supporting and even sometimes engulfing the singers in a thrilling way. Soprano Ekaterina Metlova was a capable Minnie, with plenty of zing in the upper register if sometimes little in the lower passages, pretty and flirtatious, if just a little awkward in her movements. The vocal power she could summon up carried over most of the emotional climaxes of the role, as in the Bible lesson in Act I, on the great penitential psalm (Psalm 51), a lesson that shows itself well learned at the end of the opera. Tenor Jonathan Burton had a confident, ringing tone as Dick Johnson, while the Jack Rance of baritone Paul LaRosa was physically rakish but lacking some snarl in the voice. The supporting cast, made up of Castleton young artists, made a fine ensemble, especially in the many male chorus scenes, none more moving than the nostalgic folk song about home in Act I, which is a truly beautiful moment, and the reconciliation ensemble at the conclusion, a moment imbued with mercy in a way that reminds me of the forgiveness shown to the Count at the end of Le Nozze di Figaro.

Maazel made some waves last month when he lashed out against what he called the "Philistinism of some present day opera staging concepts." His target was opera directors who make changes that he disagrees with, distorting the story, although the negative examples he used were all ridiculous ("casting Butterfly as a hash-slinger in a San Diego diner" or turning "Falstaff into a retired sumo wrestler at a Caracas brothel"), rather than specific. Opera-goers, he concluded, had to protest against theater directors who give "the manipulators, axe-grinders and mafiosi" the upper hand and vote with their pocketbooks. Maazel, with his own summer festival, has done that one better, and Castleton's productions should perhaps be judged by the criteria that he himself set out.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, ‘Girl of the Golden West’ gives audiences sound and sight to revel in (Washington Post, July 18)

For the last few years, Maazel entrusted the entire festival to a resident stage director, William Kerley, a position he held until last year. For Fanciulla, Giandomenico Vaccari's direction did not stay slavishly close to the libretto -- Minnie's entrance on horseback in Act III was soft-pedaled, for example (Puccini wanted "eight to ten horses" in this scene at the Met in 1910 and got eight) -- but the staging was clearly set in the 19th century. Vaccari took his inspiration from Western movies, complete with a video backdrop that brought some of the colors of the American West into the stage. The two-level set clearly evoked the Polka Saloon, Minnie's (rather large) mountain hut, and a gold mine for the final scene, and the costumes added to the setting quite convincingly (sets and costumes designed by Davide Gilioli). It was beautiful and it drew you into the story, rather than deconstructing the libretto and its themes in a postmodern way that encouraged ironic distance. Backing up the storytelling in the pit, it made for a solid emotional punch in the gut that exalted the profound, almost spiritual moments in this beautiful score.

'La Voix Humaine' at Castleton

Dietlinde Turban-Maazel, La voix humaine, Castleton Festival, 2013 (photo by E. Raymond Boc)

The Castleton Festival was inaugurated with the chamber operas of Britten, an auspicious choice to make a new summer opera destination stand out from the crowd. Lorin Maazel, a Puccini specialist, soon was turning instead to more standard fare for his summer vacation, chestnut operas that may have more mass appeal but that one can hear lots of places. This summer has Verdi -- Otello, a difficult choice when you are relying mostly on young singers -- and Puccini, but the third offering goes back to the festival's roots in chamber opera, with Francis Poulenc's one-woman, one-act La voix humaine, heard on Saturday afternoon in the festival's original venue, the small theater in the Maazels' old house. Rather than a double-bill with another 20th-century one-act opera, as is often done, the Poulenc was introduced by the performance of an English translation of Jean Cocteau's original play version, from which Poulenc's libretto was derived.

The spoken monologue was delivered by Dietlinde Turban-Maazel, the festival director's wife, in charming German-accented English. In a silken red dress on a set evoking a well-appointed Parisian apartment (scene and costume design by François-Pierre Couture -- a suspiciously appropriate name for a costume designer), she brought the character of the femme délaissée to pathetic life. Gripping the receiver of an old-fashioned black telephone like a lifeline, she wheedled and lied her way through a final phone conversation with the man who has abandoned her, on the eve of his marriage to another woman. Cocteau identifies the character simply as Elle (She), but the coincidence of Cocteau's writing of this play, in 1930, with the publication of Le livre blanc, in 1928, makes one wonder if the monologue is based on something more autobiographical. Le livre blanc, the confession of a man's homosexual attractions, was published anonymously, but it is now generally accepted as Cocteau's work, not least because he later provided a set of illustrations for it. Many of the lines in the play receive interesting twists if the speaker were instead a man, speaking to a lover about to marry a woman.

Other Articles: Karren L. Alenier, The Human Voice: Poulenc via Cocteau (The Dressing, July 21) Joan Reinthaler, Castleton Festival’s ‘La Voix Humaine’ and ‘Otello’ (Washington Post, June 21) Tim Smith, Castleton Festival delivers strong lineup of opera, theater (Baltimore Sun, July 17) Eve Barnett, Castleton Festival: A Musical Meeting of the Minds (The Georgetowner, July 17) Roger Piantadosi, The Castleton Festival: right turn, no red (Rappahannock News, July 11)

When Francis Poulenc adapted the play into a short opera, premiered in 1959 at the Opéra-Comique by Denise Duval (watch the film version on YouTube), Cocteau reportedly said that he now knew exactly how the lines of his play were to be delivered (written in a letter to Poulenc -- "Mon cher Francis, tu as fixé, une fois pour toutes, la façon de dire mon texte"). Cocteau's reaction is understandable because seeing the two versions side by side revealed Poulenc's melodramatic opera as the more powerful of the two. Jennifer Black, who was a memorable Micaëla in the 2006 Carmen in Santa Fe and has impressed us many times, was a knockout vocally in the role, with a velvety tone from bottom up to a ringing, fully assured top. Antonio Mendez led the musicians crammed into the small pit, with the harpist relegated to one side of the house, and did some nice things with many details in this beautiful score. Poulenc alternates among many types of sounds -- the jangling xylophone for the phone's ring, jarring dissonances when Elle is upset, suave Romantic sweep when she recalls happier days of the relationship, even a bit of swing for the music she hears in the background of the phone call at one point.

This production will be repeated once more, this coming Saturday (July 27, 3 pm) at the Castleton Festival.

Ionarts Turns 10

Image by jfl
Ionarts was launched on this day in 2003, in an era when one had to explain what a blog was when you said you were writing one. The Age of the Blog (2005-2008, R.I.P.) has come and gone since. Most of the blogs we enjoyed reading every day are now defunct or intermittent, and these days we usually describe Ionarts as an online magazine.

In the last ten years, we have published 5,950 articles, at the rate of at least one per day and often more than that. On those articles we have published over 4,624 comments -- and that is only since 2005, when we switched comment systems -- some insipid, others brilliant, some congratulatory, some cursing me and my family (yes, literally placing a hex -- oh, boy, do we get letters). Most of our articles are read by all or most of our hardy regulars, but some blow up and become Internet sensations. Why this happens has nothing to do with quality or interest and everything to do with the all-powerful connections made by search engines. I know editors at reputable publications who make more and more content decisions on the basis of this kind of data, which I think is just stupid -- business-smart, perhaps (by a stretch), but stupid.

What are the most-read articles in the ten-year history of Ionarts? I did some data mining to find out, and it turns out that a few articles have been read in vast numbers, mostly because of an image or topic that makes it big in the algorithms of search engines. If we were to tailor what we write about only to what is most popular -- the list on the left below has the ten most often accessed articles, with the lowest at around 8,000 individual hits -- we would have a rather different site. To give a better idea of what this site is about, Jens and I have both chosen ten articles we have particularly enjoyed -- one from each year in the existence of Ionarts -- as a way to look back.

Most Read Articles on Ionarts: 10. Vuillard Painting Will Return to France (Charles T. Downey, January 12, 2004) 9. Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre (Charles T. Downey, April 25, 2005) 8. Save the Butterflies! (Mark Barry, February 14, 2007) 7. Washington Ballet 'Nutcracker' (Charles T. Downey, December 16, 2008) 6. Ionarts at Large: Bavarian State Orchestra in Gubaidulina and Strauss (Jens F. Laurson, November 3, 2010) 5. Painting on the Walls in Nice (Charles T. Downey, September 16, 2004) 4. Yuja Wang @ Terrace Theater (Michael Lodico, January 28, 2008) 3. Ionarts in Siena: Duccio's Maestà (Charles T. Downey, July 21, 2007) 2. Le Corbusier's Chapel at Fifty (Charles T. Downey, May 11, 2005) 1. Visionary Art: Séraphine de Senlis (Charles T. Downey, June 17, 2009)

Ten Posts by Charles T. Downey: 28.2.13 'Hedda Gabler' in Modern Oslo 28.1.12 Cage 100, Part 2: 'Freeman Etudes' 25.3.11 La Brewer, Diva of Divas 24.10.10 'Magic Flute' Revived, Restored, Re-Imagined 2.9.09 The Mess of 'Mass': Du bing, du bang, du bong 30.7.08 Ionarts in Santa Fe: 'Adriana Mater' 30.6.07 Ionarts in Florence: 'La Valchiria' 15.8.06 'Don Quixote' and Music 9.4.05 Massenet's 'Esclarmonde' with Washington Concert Opera 9.12.04 Thomas Hampson at the library of Congress 15.12.03 'La Juive' and, Once Again, Proust

Ten Posts by jfl: 20.1.13 Schubert, Schumann, Ives: Not Beautiful, Courageous! 26.10.12 Concert Program Synesthesia 8.12.11 Original and Happy Freaks: Alexandre Tharaud's Scarlatti 27.3.10 A Trophy Wife for the Munich Philharmonic: Maazel Signs His Contract 5.2.09 Grażyna Bacewicz – 100th Anniversary 24.10.08 Ionarts at Large: Widmann World Premiere with Mariss Jansons and the BRSO 30.3.07 Do You Notice the Symmetry? 7.3.06 Maestra Talks a Little: Ionarts Interview with Marin Alsop 6.8.05 New York Soundtrack 5.7.04 Dip Your Ears, No. 1 24.12.03 Happy Birthday, Menahem!

At the same time, we also recognize all of the guest contributors who have each placed a brick in the structure you see around you, all without any remuneration: Mark Barry, Michael Lodico, Robert R. Reilly, Todd Babcock, Noah Mlotek, Sophia Vastek, Janet Peachey, Richard Rice, George Pieler, Rachel Conrad, Karren Alenier, Anne Marie McMahon, Richard Fitzgerald, and likely others I am missing. Thanks also to the whole gang here at Ionarts Central -- Mrs. Ionarts, Miss Ionarts, and Master Ionarts -- all of whom have put up with and even shared my obsessions over the last ten years.

And, finally, thanks to all of you for reading!

Lloyd Webber's Requiem Lives Again

Charles T. Downey, At Castleton Festival, a take on 2 composers
Washington Post, July 22, 2013

Barber, Violin Concerto (inter alia), J. Ehnes, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, B. Tovey

Somewhere in between the operas at the Castleton Festival, Lorin Maazel takes his Festival Orchestra out for a spin. At a concert on Saturday night in the Festival Theater, Maazel led his young musicians, most of them talented conservatory students, in a comparison of two 20th-century composers, whose careers showed that accomplishment and acclaim do not necessarily coincide.

The program opened with Samuel Barber’s overture to “The School for Scandal,” the comedy of manners by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. It was Barber’s first piece for orchestra, composed in 1931, when he was about the same age as most of Maazel’s players and still a student at the Curtis Institute of Music. This solid, fun performance captured the piece’s bubbly joy and its youthful brashness, with some pretty oboe and English horn solos for good measure. [Continue reading]

Castleton Festival Orchestra
Dmitri Berlinsky, violin
Lorin Maazel, conductor
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Requiem Mass

Through Labor and Love: Weinberg, War and PersecutionInterview with Julia Rebekka Adler

[July 2010] An article about violist Julia Rebekka Adler could easily, rewardingly turn into an article on Mieczysław Weinberg instead. For one, it is Weinberg to whom she has pinned her hat, whose viola sonatas she has now torn from obscurity into the (narrowly focused) spot-light of well-regarded niche repertoire, and to whose music she very obviously responds. Further, she is genuinely diffident and prefers to talk just about anything but herself. And even her engaging husband and de-facto manager (an immunologist at the National Research Center for Environment and Health during daylight hours), who is supposed to make up for his wife’s self-effacing reluctance, feels so passionately about Weinberg’s music—and music in general—that he can’t praise her achievements at the exclusion of others’, or without getting side-tracked by his excitement for this or that composition or musical discovery. Thank goodness—because there is nothing more tedious than having to sit through the professionally deluded, tunnel-visioned ravings of a mother-manager, parent-publicist, or spousal spinmeister.

Happily I don’t even have to do the raving about her Weinberg CD—although I enjoy and admire it very much—because Jerry Dubins has already done that in his review for Fanfare. He also repeats, with hyperbolic enthusiasm, the basic information on Weinberg and the press-kit ready quotes (if she had one) about Mme. Adler, including very kind ones from Hartmut Rohde, her onetime teacher. She’s won lots of competitions, of course, and has studied with Kim Kashkashian and Yuri Bashmet. But what does that count for, if you are only a violist? She’s the assistant concert master of the Munich Philharmonic and that seals her reputation. Being an orchestra violist must necessarily—?—define the way audiences, critics, colleagues look at her and her playing. After all, back-benching in an orchestra, even if it is in the ‘assistant solo viola’ position, and not actually in the back, is the safe way out for those who don’t dare strive for more. For those who think good is good enough. For those who prefer the comfort of a 9-5 job (unfireable, at that) over the adventure that is music.

None of that is actually true in the case of Julia Rebekka Adler, but such convenient stereotypes—all of them exist for a reason—can only be overcome by better getting to know the person behind the symbolism of position, instrument, and career. Julia Mai, then still performing under her maiden name, was into competitions, and successfully. But eventually she saw herself faced with the choice between the alluring opportunity of the job at the Munich Philharmonic or taking out substantial loans to be able to afford to…

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In Brief: Weekend at Castleton Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to online audio, online video, and other good things in Blogville and Beyond. (After clicking to an audio or video stream, press the "Play" button to start the broadcast.) Good luck finding the time to listen to and watch all of them!

• Christian Thielemann leads the Staatskapelle Dresden, Dresdner Kammerchor, MDR Rundfunkchor, and Sächsischer Staatsopernchor Dresden in music of Wagner (Das Liebesmahl der Apostel) and Mendelssohn's "Reformation" Symphony. [ORF]


• John Eliot Gardiner performs music of Bach with the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir, at the Aldeburgh Festival. [ORF]


• More from this year's Aldeburgh Festival, with the Britten Sinfonia under Ryan Wigglesworth, with soprano Sophie Bevan, in music of Michael Tippett, Britten, and Bartók. [ORF]


• A rare performance of André Tchaikowsky's The Merchant of Venice, with Erik Nielsen conducting the Prague Philharmonic Chorus and the Vienna Symphony, at the Bregenz Festival, starring Richard Angas, Christopher Ainslie, and Charles Workman. [ORF]


• The London Symphony Orchestra and Gianandrea Noseda at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, performing Britten (with Ian Bostridge) and Shostakovich's sixth symphony. [France Musique]


• The Verbier Festival got under way this weekend, and you can watch many of the concerts online, starting with Charles Dutoit leading the Verbier Festival Orchestra in Lera Auerbach's In Praise of Peace and Beethoven's ninth symphony, with tenor Joseph Desmarest, soprano Lisa Milne, mezzo soprano Lilli Paasikivi, tenor Pavel Černoch, and bass Matthew Rose as soloists, plus the Collegiate Chorale. [Medici.tv]


• Gerd Kühr leads Ensemble 19, the Arnold Schoenberg Chor, and soprano Marie-Friederike Schöder in music by Hans Werner Henze at the Styriarte Festival. [ORF]


• Antonio Pappano and the Orchestra of the Academy of St. Cecilia Rome celebrate Verdi at the Proms, with soprano Maria Agresta. [Part 1 |Part 2]


• A performance of Rossini's Guillaume Tell from last February, at the Nederlands Opera in Amsterdam, with Nicola Alaimo (Guillaume Tell), Helena Rasker (Hedwige), Eugénie Warnier (Jemmy), Marina Rebeka (Mathilde), and John Osborn (Arnold Melchtal), under the baton of Paolo Carignani. [ORF]


• Renaud Capuçon joins Tugan Sokhiev and the Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse at the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon, for Max Bruch's first violin concerto, plus music by Berlioz and Rimsky-Korsakov. [France Musique]


• The Quatuor Ebène and cellist Nicolas Altstaedt perform music by Haydn, Bartók, and Schubert (the C major string quintet) at the Schwarzenberg Festival. [ORF]


• Thomas Adès conducts music by Britten, Lutoslawski, and himself, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Proms. [Part 1 | Part 2]


• Jordi Savall and his ensemble Hespèrion XXI celebrate the centenary of the kingdom of Granada, founded in 1013, with a concert at the Abbaye de Fontfroide. That concert is preceded by a 2011 concert by the Wrocław Philharmonic Orchestra, as part of the Chopin Festival. [France Musique]


• Violinist Vilde Frang and pianist Michail Lifits play music by Ravel, Mozart, and Lutoslawski. [BBC Proms]


• Richard Egarr leads the Academy of Ancient Music in performances of music by Handel, Corelli, and Valentini, a remembrance of Handel's time in Rome, with soprano Sophie Bevan. [BBC Proms]


• Conductor Gábor Takács-Nagy and pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja join the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra for Haydn (Symphony No. 104), Schumann (piano concerto), and Dvořák (Symphony No. 8). [Medici.tv]


• The Bamberg Symphony Orchestra performs at the Proms, with conductor Jonathan Nott leading Mahler's fifth symphony and music of Lachenmann. [Part 1 | Part 2]


• Ex Cathedra and Jeffrey Skidmore perform music by Karlheinz Stockhausen, the Gesang der Jünglinge and, from Mittwoch aus 'Licht', the Welt-Parlament. [BBC Proms]


• Watch pianist Yevgeny Sudbin in recital at the Verbier Festival, playing music by Liszt, Scarlatti, Debussy, and Scriabin. [Medici.tv]


• At the Proms, Antonio Pappano and the Orchestra of the Academy of Santa Cecilia, Rome perform Mozart's Symphony 35, Schumann's Piano Concerto (with Jan Lisiecki as soloist), and Rachmaninoff's 2nd Symphony. [Part 1 | Part 2]


• At the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon, violinist Aisha Orazbayeva and pianist Matthew Schellhorn perform music by Beethoven, Schoenberg, Johannes Maria Staud, and Debussy. [France Musique]


• Pianist Frank Braley and musicians from the Orchestre National de France perform music by Franz Alexandre Pössinger and Beethoven. [France Musique]


• Charles Dutoit leads performances of Beethoen's first three piano concertos at the Verbier Festival, with pianists Louis Schwizgebel, David Kadouch, and Adam Laloum. [Medici.tv]


• Music by Rameau, Leclair, and others arranged for flute (Karl-Heinz Schütz), viola (Gerhard Marschner), and harp (Charlotte Balzereit), at the Styriarte Festival in Graz. [ORF]


• Harpsichordist Jean Rondeau performs music by Domenico Scarlatti, Padre Antonio Soler, and himself, at the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon. [France Musique]


• From the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon, a concert performance of Giordano's Madame Sans-Gêne, with the Orchestre National de Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon, the chorus of the Opéra National de Montpellier and Latvian Radio Chorus, live in the Opéra Berlioz in Montpellier. [France Musique]


• The BBC National Orchestra of Wales at the Proms performs Strauss (Alpine Symphony) and Szymanowski, under conductor Søndergård at the Proms. [Part 1 | Part 2]


• From the church of St. Magdalena im Moos, as part of the Musik Sommer Pustertal festival, Evangelina Mascardi plays music for guitar and lute by Leopold Weiss, Charles Mouton, and others. [ORF]


• From the Internationaler Beethoven Klavierwettbewerb, in Vienna earlier this month, listen to a recital by the winner of the first prize, Maria Mazo, with music by Beethoven, Stravinsky, and Scriabin. [ORF]


• James Gaffigan conducts American or America-inspired music by Adams, Copland, and Dvořák with the Orchestre National de France, at the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon. [France Musique]


• The BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Juanjo Mena, performs Nielsen's fourth symphony, plus Rachmaninoff's second piano concert, with Nobuyuki Tsujii as soloist. [BBC Proms]


• Also from the Festival Radio France et Montpellier, young singers from the Centre National d'Artistes Lyriques perform music by Verdi, Mozart, Donizetti, Lionel Ginoux, and others. [France Musique]


• Herbert Blomstedt conducts a performance of Beethoven's Leonora, the first version of Fidelio, with the Staatskapelle Dresden, recorded in 1976, starring Edda Moser (Leonore), Helen Donath (Marzelline), and Richard Cassilly (Florestan). [ORF]


• A recital by pianist Tamila Salimdjanova, with music by Bach, Debussy, Schumann, Liszt, and Khurshida Hasanova. [France Musique]


• Violist Adrien Boisseau and pianist Gaspard Dehaene perform music by Schubert, Charlotte Bray, and Brahms. [France Musique]