Classical music in a unique atmosphere, with top-class ensembles, conductors and soloists on one of the most magnificent squares in Europe are the ingredients for the success story of "Klassik am Odeonsplatz". Since its founding in 2000, the open-air concert has become an established highlight of Munich's cultural life, attracting 16,000 music fans every year. This edition features piano superstar Lang Lang and charismatic Colombian conductor Andrés Orozco-Estrada. Their can't-miss program is made up exclusively of high Romantic classics, from Wagner's famous Tannhäuser Overture and Grieg's Piano Concerto to Richard Strauss's exquisite tone poem Don Juan and, finally, Tchaikovsky's sweeping Romeo and Juliet, whose rapturous main theme instantly calls to mind the greatest love stories ever told. An evening to revel in, to dream about and to thrill.
In this delightfully upbeat all-Brahms program, the London Symphony Orchestra with Conductor Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas and virtuoso Christian Tetzlaff -- called "the finest violinist performing before the public today" by The New Yorker -- prove that in the hands of our greatest artists, the music always comes first: "It's the composers who change the world," says Tetzlaff, "who show us the soul in a new light." Tetzlaff starts off the show in high style with Brahms's sole Violin Concerto in D major, capturing the sunny beauty of the Wörthersee in Austria where the composer spent the summer of 1878 writing this beloved masterpiece. MTT and the LSO then move on to the Serenade No. 1 -- also in the bright key of D major -- the product of a 25-year-old genius at the dawn of his career, filled with warmth and humor, whose rapturous reception overshadowed even that of its illustrious contemporary, the Piano Concerto No. 1.
The dream couple of opera, Sonya Yoncheva and Vittorio Grigolo, returns to the breathtaking open-air stage, to perform Giacomo Puccini's Tosca -- a dramatic and tragic story of passion and jealousy set in Rome during a time of political unrest in 1800. The plot centers around three main characters: Rome's opera diva Floria Tosca, her lover Mario Cavaradossi, and the corrupt police chief, Baron Scarpia, who has long lusted after Tosca. Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva is "one of the best Toscas currently singing" and tenor Vittorio Grigolo "the most Italian Cavaradossi we know." (Online Merker). The captivating staging by Argentine director Hugo de Ana, who masterfully exploits the amphitheatre's vast space by placing huge elements on the stage that are reminiscent of or borrowed from the locations of the action, makes the opera a "spectacle of monumental opulence"