Götterdämmerung, the final instalment of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, is a story of human passions. Two essentially benevolent creatures, involved with and possibly doomed by their traffic with the gods, find treachery and evil in the world of the humans, and are ruined by the dark side of humanity.
The La Scala Rheingold in May 2010 inaugurated Guy Cassiers Ring-Cycle and introduces a completely new paradigm to this work. While before him Patrice Chéreau had laid his focus on a historical analysis from 1870 to 1930 Germany, Guy Cassiers’ Ring unfolds “from our own present-day moment; it [takes] place in ‘the now’, the Jetztzeit (Walter Benjamin), placing our present and our future into the context of the promises and curses that we have inherited from history … The Cassiers Ring shows how the globalized moment of 2010 continues to build on the Wagnerian vocabularies of 1870.” (Michael Steinberg)
In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the greatest media event in classical music, Sony Classical released in 2015 a complete edition of all the works ever played at the Wiener Philharmoniker’s New Year’s Concerts. Performed in the “Golden Hall” of the Musikverein between 1941 and 2015, the iconic live performances were issued for the first time in a single box set of 23 CDs. Now, in 2020, this edition will be available as a 26-CD extended version, with all the new repertoire from the last five years compiled on three additional CDs.
Daniel Barenboim turns 75 in November 2017. Deutsche Grammophon celebrates his remarkable artistry as a pianist with an Anniversary Edition of his complete solo recordings on DG. This 38 CDs + 1 Bonus CD with rare first recordings from 1955 set presents a solo career spanning 60 years and shows his artistic development through very early recordings as a 13 year old to the present day. First CD release of over 300 minutes of re-mastered Westminster recordings. An original jackets collection.
The production of a new Ring at the Bayreuth Festival is an event that takes place every six years. Bayreuth recordings of the complete cycle are rare; this is only the third official audio recording and the second filmed version. The Kupfer/Barenboim Ring was performed over a five-year period and recorded at the conclusion when the "Bayreuth Workshop" had raised "the quality of the performance to an almost unsurpassable level".
Daniel Barenboim turns 75 in November 2017. Deutsche Grammophon celebrates his remarkable artistry as a pianist with an Anniversary Edition of his complete solo recordings on DG. This 38 CDs + 1 Bonus CD with rare first recordings from 1955 set presents a solo career spanning 60 years and shows his artistic development through very early recordings as a 13 year old to the present day. First CD release of over 300 minutes of re-mastered Westminster recordings. An original jackets collection.
The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a symbol of tolerance and understanding between people, opens with Jörg Widman’s Con brio and are then joined by the legendary Martha Argerich for Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1. The extraordinary concert is completed with popular excerpts from Wagner’s Tannhäuser, Meistersinger and Ring der Nibelungen.
The box set comprised 100 volumes featuring 72 pianists of the 20th century, each volume with two CDs and a booklet about the life and work of the featured pianist. The set contains a variety of composers from different eras, from Baroque to Contemporary classical.
May morning in Oxford, and the Berliner Philharmoniker join in the celebratory mood abroad in the university city’s medieval streets with this concert in Sir Christopher Wren’s glorious Sheldonian Theatre. For 20 years, the Philharmoniker have given a May Day concert in one of Europe’s great historic cities, and here, under the baton of Daniel Barenboim, the Berlin players thrill the Oxford audience with the sonorous Prelude to Act III of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, a deeply-felt account of Elgar’s autumnal Cello Concerto by the young American cellist Alisa Weilerstein, and a rousing performance of Brahms’s life-affi rming First Symphony.
Daniel Barenboim turns 75 in November 2017. Deutsche Grammophon celebrates his remarkable artistry as a pianist with an Anniversary Edition of his complete solo recordings on DG. This 38 CDs + 1 Bonus CD with rare first recordings from 1955 set presents a solo career spanning 60 years and shows his artistic development through very early recordings as a 13 year old to the present day. First CD release of over 300 minutes of re-mastered Westminster recordings. An original jackets collection.