An archived broadcast of Lionel Bringuier’s season-opening concert with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich is available for viewing via medici.tv through December 30. Watch the complete video at the following link.
Concert description from medici.tv:
Join the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich under the direction of its music director Lionel Bringuier for their season-opening concert weekend in the Tonhalle’s Maag Concert Hall! The celebration features Brett Dean’s Viola Concerto, performed by the composer himself, and Beethoven’s monumental Symphony No. 9, featuring a stellar cast of soloists and the Zürcher Sing-Akademie.
The season opens with a musical introduction to Australian composer-violist Brett Dean, who begins his tenure as the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich’s new Creative Chair with a personal performance of his Viola Concerto. Commissioned in 2004 by multiple world-renowned orchestras and premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 2005, the concerto hangs between warm melancholy and edgy virtuosity. As Brett Dean puts it, the work sounds like what would happen if, “Paul Hindemith had played in a band with Tom Waits.”
The concert’s second half features one of the most monumentally-festive works of the 19th century: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. For the celebrated final movement, the Tonhalle-Orchester is joined by the renowned Zürcher Singakademie and the great Christiane Karg (soprano), Wiebke Lehmkuhl (alto), Maximilian Schmitt (tenor), and Tareq Nazmi (bass).