Spending the New Year in Spain? Yes! But which one? Here are three, presented by Yutaka Sado and the National: the idealized one, of a Capriccio made to "shine with the virtuosity of its orchestral coloring," says Rimsky-Korsakov, that musician "of the starry night and the golden sun" admired by Vladimir Jankélévitch; the other, more earthy and bloody, of Bizet and Carmen ; finally, between the fragrances of magnolias, the song of birds and the trickling of fountains, that of Rodrigo and his Concerto under the fingers of Thibaut Garcia.

Aranjuez Concerto / Thibaut Garcia

Maison de la Radio et de la Musique

Louis XIV at twilight

Cortot Room

Under the direction of General Music Director Vladimir Jurowski, the Bavarian State Orchestra will perform three European works from the fin de siècle to the 1920s, which, in their contrasts, reflect the upheavals of the early 20th century. Sergei Rachmaninoff’s symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead , inspired by the haunting gloom of Arnold Böcklin’s painting of the same name, will be contrasted by Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major, with which Italian pianist Beatrice Rana will make her Bavarian State Opera debut. The concerto, perfectly formed in classicism, embodies the radiant optimism of the 1920s with elements of blues and jazz. Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra stands between the melancholy of the afterlife and the affirmation of life: first performed in 1896 at the end of the 19th century, this tone poem, rich in contrast and unresolved in its conflicts, already points the way to what is to come. The modernity of the composition, which was expected with suspicion and received with astonishment in its time, is demonstrated not least by its use in Stanley Kubrick's monumental film 2001: A Space Odyssey , which in turn points far into the future.

EPSG:4326

Guest concert of the Bavarian State Orchestra

Queen Elisabeth Hall

Philharmonie Luxembourg

Cité de la Musique

Mozart inaugurates: during the creation of this Quintet in which he plays the piano part, he brought together for the first time around the keyboard, certain of their alchemy, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon. And it is an understatement to say that the timbres are in harmony. Discussing vigorously, they balance each other with an Apollonian smile and then pour an angelic sweetness over the score. Indebted to Amadeus but also to Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann's Trio is distinguished by its elegiac song, bursts of ardor that take the upper hand over its depressive side: four movements that reaffirm the essential place of the composer.

Sundays at the National - Clara Schumann / Mozart

Podcast link: https://youtu.be/4hagYvrYbuM

The Artelize Podcast and Kasper Holten - Pedefining Opera for the modern world

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d36M5Hi6O80

The Artelize Podcast - A legacy of innovation in Opera: Celebrating Marc A. Scorca

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59E40S_EQSY

The Artelize Podcast: A love letter that was never sent

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THv6htilWtI

The Artelize Podcast and Adolfo Corrado: Mediterranean flavors, opera and social media

Massenet is the composer who did the most to establish the Opéra-Comique as a major performing arts center. Paradoxically, his adaptation of Goethe's first novel was rejected by the director at the time, who preferred to offer his bourgeois audiences happy love stories. The Viennese triumph of Werther quickly opened the doors to our institution, where it has become one of the most performed titles.

Werther

National Theatre of the Opera Comique

Isn't it fortunate for us that Schumann didn't have one with opera? How many lieder, expressions of his sensitivity and poetic affinities, were thus born in place of the conventions of theater? Le Paradis et la Péri, a miracle of Schumannian atypicality, is a secular oratorio, even if the term seems ill-suited to express the dazzling visions of angels, elves, and paradise lost that inspire this hour and forty minutes of music. Dreamlike music and a dreamlike set led by the future musical director of the National, Philippe Jordan.

Paradise and the Peri / Philippe Jordan

What is an orchestra if not a powerful and inexhaustible storytelling machine? Better still: composers and musicians are all adventurers who have shaped our world. From the Chevalier de Saint-Georges to the conquest of space, from Clara Schumann to Maurice Maréchal (the infantry cellist in the trenches), we will delve into some beautiful slices of History, through 5 centuries of music. All the stories of the world begin with a word or even a simple letter. We will start with a note. Starting with "la," well, come what may!

These little stories that make the big one

A choice trio closes this 36th edition of the Présences festival, where the Accordion Concerto by the Franco-Greek composer will resonate for the first time in France, "a history of the accordion through my music," where Georges Aperghis weaves links between harmonica, harmonium and organ in an open-air party atmosphere. A taste for variegation and surprises that the pens of Ondřej Adámek and Sofia Avramidou, singer and composer from Thessaloniki, enliven with full-bodied brilliance.

Closing Concert / Studies, Concerto for Accordion Tetzlaff / Sotty

An evening under the sign of Hungary: two pieces by Béla Bartók open and close the program, the modernist Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta , a distillation of his inner world, and the third and final piano concerto, written by a man in exile, almost ruined and knowing his days numbered. It was in homage to this great model that his compatriot Peter Eötvös wrote CAP-KO twenty years ago, a concerto in five movements whose furious virtuosity is not lacking in Bertrand Chamayou's ten fingers.

Music for strings, percussion and celesta - Chamayou / Viotti

The lion, the rooster, the elephant, the swan, the long-eared characters, and even the pianist, that "digitigrade concertivorous mammal..." Francis Blanche jokes, are all found pell-mell in The Carnival of the Animals , which Saint-Saëns refused to see performed during his lifetime, no doubt for fear of appearing unserious. Seeing the menagerie incomplete, Guillaume Connesson gave it a sequel and imagined grazing, in the musical zoo of Jurassic Trip , six historical miniatures ranging from the tyrannosaurus to the pterodactyl. Adults allowed.

National Sundays: The Carnival of the Animals / Lambert Wilson

Five acts, four rich duets: from the emotion of their first exchanges on enemy soil to their union in a foregone conclusion, Shakespeare's two heroes sing of their love in sun-drenched melodies, which Charles Gounod, a learned playwright, darkens as they descend into their destiny. The Orchestre National de France accompanies two exceptional singers, dreamlike voices and born actors, in a concert version of this masterpiece of our heritage, a moment of French sensitivity.

Romeo and Juliet / Oropesa / Castronovo

Théâtre des Champs-Élysées

In Brocéliande, the legendary forest, we enter through our ears as much as through our eyes. But also through the words of the Fairy Viviane. She knows all its twists and turns, all its spells. In six stories drawing as much from Arthurian legend as from Breton folklore, she will take us along its paths, leading us to the horses drinking near the pond, above a crystal palace. Visions that summon in turn a knight, an elf, ferocious beasts, a fairy, an Enchanter…

Tales and Wonders of Brocéliande

First, there is an abandoned woman, in a tragedy of rupture formulated by Cocteau that wrests painful accents of truth from Francis Poulenc. But this final stage of the crisis is not the last and does not end with the monologue: Thierry Escaich and Olivier Py have imagined a mirror sequel to this Voix humaine, their devastating Point d'orgue, a folie à trois capable of the paroxysms that only opera allows. Le National, Ariane Matiakh and Patricia Petibon take up the torch of this total spectacle.

The Human Voice / Culmination

Ascanio in Alba

Theater an der Wien, Vienna

Lausanne Opera

Just after conducting him in Rachmaninoff, Klaus Mäkelä reunites with Yunchan Lim to plunge, accompanied by soloists from the Orchestre de Paris, into the feverish adventure of Schumann's Quintet.

Schumann

In 1889, visitors to the Paris World's Fair were unsure what to admire most: the technical prowess of Eiffel, the designer of a gigantic iron tower, over 300 meters high, and criticized by a section of public opinion because of its ugliness? Or the small recording device, a few centimeters long, whose revolutionary scope was not yet fully understood? Mon Cher Gustave presents the extraordinary encounter between the French engineer and another genius inventor, the American Thomas Edison, set to simple and charming melodies, sometimes dreamy, sometimes catchy, by Lise Borel.

My Dear Gustave

The blend of sacred and profane, spirituality and passion, characterizes the aesthetics of the Baroque New World. Just follow the choral momentum and throw yourself wholeheartedly into the blaze!

Baroque fire

The magical song of the clarinet rises, a seemingly simple melody takes shape, the strings increase their intensity and soon a romance fills the space, with all its iridescence: this is how the Adagio of the Second Symphony goes , a pure concentrate of Rachmaninov's art. Born in a period of blossoming, contemporary with the famous Third Concerto , this epic symphony, quick to burst into flames, will respond to another clarinet: that of Tan Dun, in his new mosaic score written for Patrick Messina and the National.

Rachmaninov / Tan Dun / Messina / Măcelaru

Master and student can exchange strange secrets. "Don't be afraid to raise your head if you want attention," Tchaikovsky once said to the worried Taneyev. Did Taneyev, in turn, pass on this advice to the young Rachmaninov? Surely, if we are to believe the outbursts of the First Symphony of the young Sergei, whose career owes much to this rigorous teacher. We rediscover Taneyev through his cantata Saint John of Damascus , a fusion of Bach's style and the folkloric and religious roots of his country. Like a bridge between 19th- and 20th-century Russia.

Rachmaninov, Symphony No. 1 / Stanislav Kochanovsky

Halfway between a quartet and a chamber orchestra, the string sextet (i.e., two violins, two violas, two cellos) opens a sound field that Johannes Brahms and Richard Strauss play wonderfully. The former paints a wordless opera that earned him the nickname "Spring Sextet," carrying a flood of images that the filmmaker Louis Malle would later dress up in Les Amants ; the latter disguises the sextet as an operatic opening, to touch on the timeless character that floats over his final Capriccio .

Events in Paris

Aranjuez Concerto / Thiba...

Orchestre National de France

Louis XIV at twilight

Les Talens Lyriques

Guest concert of the Bava...

Bayerisches Staatsorchester

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Orchestre National de France

The Artelize Podcast and ...

Artelize

The Artelize Podcast - A ...

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The Artelize Podcast: A l...

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Werther

Opéra Comique

Paradise and the Peri / P...

Orchestre National de France

These little stories that...

Orchestre National de France

Closing Concert / Studies...

Orchestre National de France

Music for strings, percus...

Orchestre National de France

National Sundays: The Car...

Orchestre National de France

Romeo and Juliet / Oropes...

Orchestre National de France

Tales and Wonders of Broc...

Orchestre National de France

The Human Voice / Culmina...

Orchestre National de France

Ascanio in Alba

Les Talens Lyriques

Schumann

Orchestre de Paris

My Dear Gustave

Orchestre National de France

Baroque fire

Orchestre de Paris

Rachmaninov / Tan Dun / M...

Orchestre National de France

Rachmaninov, Symphony No....

Orchestre National de France

National Sundays / Adrien...

Orchestre National de France