MA's Free Guide to (Mostly) Free Streams, August 31-September 7

We will be updating this list weekly. Please note that all times are given in U.S. Eastern Time (ET). To calculate in other time zones or counties, British Summer Time (BST) is currently five hours ahead of ET and Central European Time (CET) is currently six hours ahead. U.S. Central Daylight Time (CDT) is one hour behind ET. Mountain Time (MT) is two hours behind ET, while Pacific Time (PT) is three hours behind. Contact editor@musicalamerica.com.

Classical music coverage on Musical America is supported in part by a grant from the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation.  Musical America makes all editorial decisions.

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Monday, August 31

1 pm ET: Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall presents Igor Levit plays Beethoven 3. Levit juxtaposes sonatas from various periods of Beethoven’s life, creating pairs that have a contrast-rich relationship with each other to enhance the clarity of contours and, thus, the eloquence of Beethoven’s music. Program: Piano Sonata No. 5 in C minor, No. 19 in G minor, No. 20 in G, No. 22 in F, and No. 23 in F minor Appassionata. Register and view for free here.

7:30 pm ET: Met Opera Streams presents Strauss’s Elektra. Starring Nina Stemme, Adrianne Pieczonka, Waltraud Meier, Burkhard Ulrich, and Eric Owens, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. From April 30, 2016. View here and for 24 hours.

Tuesday, September 1

12 pm ET: Finnish National Opera and Ballet presents Covid fan tutte. Jussi Nikkilä directs leading Finnish opera soloists in Minna Lindgren's topical libretto set to the score of Mozart’s Così fan tutte. Featuring soprano Karita Mattila and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, Covid fan tutte is an unusual and timely reinterpretation combining elements of political satire and reality shows. View here (live stream available only in Finland).

1 pm ET: Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall presents Kirill Petrenko and Daniil Trifonov. Trifonov plays Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37 while Petrenko conducts the BPO in Mendelssohn’s youthful Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 11. View here (Euro 9.90 subscription required). LIVE

1 pm ET: OperaVision presents #OperaHarmony: Meet the Artists. Meet some of the artists from across the world who, during confinement, created #OperaHarmony, the series of digital operas streamed on OperaVision throughout August. Led by opera critic Hugo Shirley, the hour-long discussion will be illustrated with short extracts and the opportunity to send in questions via Facebook and YouTube chat. View here.

2 pm ET: NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester presents Season Opening Concert. Chief Conductor Alan Gilbert leads the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra’s return to the concert hall in Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in D, Op. 19 with violinist Lisa Batiashvili and Brahms’s Symphony No. 2 in D, Op. 73. View here. LIVE

2 pm ET: Rolex and Medici TV present Perpetual Music with Sonya Yoncheva. The Bulgarian diva leads a group of musicians from the stage of the Staatsoper Berlin in a selection of operatic favorites and more. Artists include Avi Avital (mandolin), Charles Castronovo (tenor), Veronica Eberle (violin), Ekaterina Siurina (soprano), and Michael Volle (bass). View here until October 31.

5:45 pm ET: International Music Foundation presents Rush Hour Concert: Nexus Chamber Music. Violinists Brian Hong and Rannveig Marta Sarc and cellist Alexander Hersh perform Isabella Leonarda’s Trio Sonata, Op. 16, No. 1, Viotti’s String Trio in G, Op. 17, G. 104, and Kodály’s Duo for Violin and Cello, Op. 7. View here and on demand. LIVE

7:30 pm ET: Nightly Met Opera Streams presents Britten’s Peter Grimes. Starring Patricia Racette, Anthony Dean Griffey, and Anthony Michaels-Moore, conducted by Donald Runnicles. From March 15, 2008. View here and for 24 hours.

Wednesday, September 2

1 pm ET: IDAGIO presents Classical (R)evolution with Rachel. Join soprano Rachel Fenlon as she explores what breaking the rules, embracing uncertainty, and thinking “outside the box” does for classical music-making. In this episode: mezzo-soprano Mireille Lebel. View here.

5 pm ET: Music from the Barn presents A Founders Recital. Token Creek Chamber Music Festival founders John Harbison (piano) and Rose Mary Harbison (violin) present a concert of works that composer Harbison has written for his wife, as well as music by Bach, Mozart, and Copland that has sustained them over a lifetime of concerts together. View here.  

7 pm ET: LA Opera presents Living Room Recital. Bass-baritone Nicholas Brownlee (an alumnus of LAO's young artist program), mezzo-soprano Jennifer Feinstein, tenor Chaz'men Williams-Ali, and pianist Aurelia Andrews (also a former LAO young artist) perform a program of arias, duets and trios. View here. LIVE

7:30 pm ET: Nightly Met Opera Streams presents John Adams’s Nixon In China. Starring Kathleen Kim, Janis Kelly, Robert Brubaker, Russell Braun, James Maddalena, and Richard Paul Fink, conducted by John Adams. From February 12, 2011. From April 14, 2018. View here and for 24 hours.

8 pm ET: Midsummer's Music presents Musical Mountains & Fjords: Part I. Grieg’s rare venture into the world of absolute music (without reference to stories or words) is paired with the Piano Quintet of Elfrida Andrée. Andrée was a pioneer in her native Sweden being among the first female church organists, conductors, and composers in her country. Here, Andrée's Piano Quintet in E Minor is played by David Perry and Ann Palen violins, Allyson Fleck viola, and Greg Sauer cello, and Jeannie Yu piano. Hosted by John Clare of SiriusXM. View here and repeated September 4 at 9 pm ET and September 6 at 4 pm ET. 

Thursday, September 3

1 pm ET: Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall presents Musikfest: Ensemble Modern. Ensemble Modern, celebrating its 40th anniversary, presents a concert with two familiar figures: composer George Benjamin, with whom the ensemble has enjoyed a long collaboration, conducts his At First Light for chamber orchestra, and Wolfgang Rihm, whose work in progress Jagden und Formen has developed into a gigantic landscape lasting an hour. View for free here. LIVE

1 pm ET: IDAGIO presents Thursdays with Thomas. Join Thomas Hampson in conversation with colleagues, friends, and other major personalities of the classical music world. Every week, Thomas invites a special guest for a discussion around their favorite piece of the classical repertoire. View here and later on demand. LIVE

1 pm ET: Dreamstage presents Boris Giltburg. During lockdown, the winner of the 2013 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels has been working extensively on Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas. Here he plays Piano Sonata No. 13, Op. 27, Piano Sonata No. 14, Op. 27 Moonlight, Piano Sonata No. 21 Waldstein, and Piano Sonata No. 32, Op. 111. Tickets $25, register and view here. LIVE

2 pm ET: Rolex and Medici TV present Perpetual Music with Rolando Villazón & Renaud Capuçon). The violin virtuoso and renowned tenor join forces to headline an evening of Baroque and Romantic arias and chamber music favorites. Artists include the Metral Trio, the Agate Quartet, countertenor Valer Sabadus, male soprano Samuel Mariño, tenor Zachary Wilder, with L'Arpeggiata conducted by Christina Pluhar. View here until October 31.

3 pm ET: San Francisco Symphony Orchestra presents CURRENTS Episode 4: From Scratch. Focusing on Hip Hop Musical Culture with Michael Morgan, curator and host, Kev Choice, AÏMA the DRMR, and Members of the San Francisco Symphony. View here.

5 pm ET: Music from the Barn presents Haydn Trios. Pianists Eli Kalman, Robert Levin, John Harbison, and Ya-Fei Chuang are joined by Rose Mary Harbison, violin and Parry Karp, cello. View here.  

7:30 pm ET: Nightly Met Opera Streams presents Berg’s Lulu. Starring Marlis Petersen, Susan Graham, Daniel Brenna, Paul Groves, Johan Reuter, and Franz Grundheber, conducted by Lothar Koenigs. From November 21, 2015. View here and for 24 hours.

8 pm ET: Midsummer's Music presents Musical Mountains & Fjords: Part II. Grieg’s rare venture into the world of absolute music (without reference to stories or words) is paired with the Piano Quintet of Elfrida Andrée. Andrée was a pioneer in her native Sweden being among the first female church organists, conductors, and composers in her country. Here, Grieg's String Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, Opus 27 is played by David Perry and Ann Palen violins, Allyson Fleck viola, and Greg Sauer cello. Hosted by John Clare of SiriusXM. View here and repeated September 5 at 9 pm ET and September 6 at 4 pm ET. 

Friday, September 4

9 am ET: Dreamstage presents Martin Stadtfield. Stadtfeld’s recording of the Goldberg Variations topped the German classical charts for more than half a year. Here he plays more Bach—the complete First Book of The Well-Tempered Clavier. Tickets $25, register and view here. LIVE

12:30 pm ET: Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall presents Musikfest: Klangforum Wien plays Saunders and Asperghis. Klangforum Wien’s Musikfest Berlin concert focuses on British composer (and winner of the 2019 Siemens Music Prize) Rebecca Saunders. Program: Saunder’s Flesh for solo accordion and recitation, Sole for accordion, percussion and piano, to an utterance for solo piano, and Scar for 15 soloists. They also perform the world premiere of Le Cours de la Vie (The Way of Life) for six voices and ensemble, a new work by Greek-French composer Georges Aperghis. View for free here. LIVE

1 pm ET: OperaVision presents Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice. Recorded at the Opéra Comique on October 18, 2018. Berlioz synthesized Gluck’s original Italian and French versions for Pauline Viardot, whose voice could revive the vanished art of the castrati for the Romantic public. Aurélien Bory's staging deploys the vertigo of the spaces through which Orpheus travels, mental, supernatural and beyond. Raphaël Pichon conducts Ensemble Pygmalion, with Marianne Crebassa, Hélène Guilmette, and Lea Desandre. View here and on demand for three months.

2:30 pm ET: Royal Opera House presents Live In Concert. The first of two events featuring eight soloists singing much-loved classics joined by current Jette Parker Young Artists, 67 members of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, and members of the Royal Opera Chorus, performing together in person for the first time since March. The concert is hosted by the BBC’s Katie Derham. With Antonio Pappano, Lisette Oropesa, Kristine Opolais, Aigul Akhmetshina, Charles Castronovo, Filipe Manu, Vito Priante, Gerald Finley, and Jeremy White. Tickets $17, register and view here.  

3:05 pm ET: Concertgebouworkest presents Herreweghe conducts Haydn & Schubert. Philippe Herreweghe leads the Concertgebouworkest in Haydn’s Symphony No. 96, The Miracle, and Schubert's Symphony No. 6. The livestream will start with an introduction by principal double bass player Dominic Seldis. View here. LIVE 

5 pm ET: Music from the Barn presents Bach Concerti. Soloists performing with the Token Creek Chamber Ensemble, under the direction of composer John Harbison, include keyboardists Christopher Taylor and Judith Gordon, violists Sally Chisholm and Larry Neuman, violinist Rose Mary Harbison, and, for Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, Adam Kuenzel, flute, Marc Fink, oboe, Bernard Scully, horn, and Kangwon Kim, violin. View here.  

7 pm ET: LA Opera presents Living Room Recital. Members of the company’s young artist program perform songs from Golden Age musicals like Show Boat, My Fair Lady and Kismet. View here. LIVE

7:30 pm ET: Nightly Met Opera Streams presents The Gershwins’ Porgy & Bess. Starring Angel Blue, Golda Schultz, Latonia Moore, Denyce Graves, Frederick Ballentine, Eric Owens, Alfred Walker, and Donovan Singletary, conducted by David Robertson. From February 1, 2020. View here and for 24 hours.

11 pm ET Redlands Bowl Summer Music Festival presents Take3. With a flair for the wild and unexpected, trio Take3, brings the refinement of a rigorous classical music background and infuses it with rock-star charisma. Program includes the group’s arrangements of top pop hits, Americana, and classical favorites. View here.

Saturday, September 5

11 am ET: Dreamstage presents Kevin Zhu. Nineteen-year-old violinist Kevin Zhu won the Paganini competition in Genova, Italy in 2018. Here he plays Bartók’s Sonata for Solo Violin, Sz. 117 and Richard Strauss’s Violin Sonata in E flat, Op. 18. Zhu’s Stradivarius is on loan from the Ryuji Ueno Foundation and Rare Violins of New York. Tickets $25, register and view here. LIVE

12:30 pm ET: Bayerische Staatsoper presents Marina Abramovic’s 7 Deaths of Maria Callas. Seven different arias in which Maria Callas shone are performed in concertante by seven singers. Callas’s voice comments from her own perspective, at which point the work’s central scene is then sung. At the same time, a film reveals Abramovic playing the operatic heroine’s death. To conclude, the queen of performance art appears as Callas accompanied by a 20-minute new composition by Serbian composer Marko Nikodijevic. View here and on demand for 30 days.

2 pm ET: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra presents 100th Birthday Celebration. Sir Simon Rattle conducts an exploration of a century of adventure and innovation in words, images, and music. Featuring specially-filmed live performances, interviews with CBSO conductors past and present, and music by Elgar, Stravinsky, Hannah Kendall, and A.R. Rahman – plus guest appearances from Sheku Kanneh-Mason and Roopa Panesar – it’s a toast to a great orchestra and a great city, made in Birmingham. View here until September 30. 

2 pm ET: VOCES8 Live From London presents VOCES8: Choral Dances. From chapels and courts to cinemas and clubs, VOCES8’s program rejoices in choral music inspired by dance juxtaposing Renaissance music with jazz and pop to create a mix of the ethereal and angelic. Tickets $16 and view here.

5 pm ET: Music from the Barn presents A Vocal Recital. Music for voice and piano by Liberson, Primosch, Athens, Debussy, Gershwin and Harbison. Singers include Krista River, Sarah Yanovitch, Lucy Fitz Gibbon, Janice Felty, Simon Barrad, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, and Marni Nixon. View here. 

5:30 pm ET: Bard Music Festival presents Out of the Silence: A Celebration of Music. The first of four concerts pairing works by Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Dvorák, and Bartók with music by ten prominent Black composers. The Orchestra Now, conducted by Leon Botstein and James Bagwell, plays William Grant Still’s Out of the Silence from Seven Traceries, Serenade, George Walker’s Lyric for Strings (1946), and Mendelssohn’s String Symphony No. 8 in D. View here.

7:30 pm ET: Nightly Met Opera Streams presents The Gershwins’ Porgy & Bess. Starring Angel Blue, Golda Schultz, Latonia Moore, Denyce Graves, Frederick Ballentine, Eric Owens, Alfred Walker, and Donovan Singletary, conducted by David Robertson. From February 1, 2020. View here and for 24 hours.

8 pm ET: LA Chamber Orchestra presents LACO SummerFest #5. LACA resumes gathering together for the last of five pre-recorded performances—with social distancing and no audience. Program: Rossini’s Sonatas for Two violins, cello and bass; Sonata No. 3 and Sonata No. 6, and Jazz Solo by David Grossman. With Carrie Kennedy and Joel Pargman, violins, Trevor Handy, cello, and David Grossman, bass. View here and on demand.

9 pm ET: Houston Symphony presents Live from Jones Hall: Best of Broadway. An evening of modern Broadway showstoppers performed by singers from Houston’s Theatre Under The Stars and musicians from the Houston Symphony. Program includes hit songs from Waitress, Les Misérables, Jekyll and Hyde, Frozen, Ragtime, and more. Tickets $10. Register for link and view here. LIVE

Sunday, September 6

1 pm ET: Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall presents Musikfest: Nicolas Altstaedt plays Bach. The Franco-German cellist plays Bach’s Six Suites for Solo Cello. View for free here. LIVE

2 pm ET: Dreamstage presents Anthony McGill plays the Great Clarinet Quintets. Clarinetist Anthony McGill, violinists Gil Shaham and Adele Anthony, violist Colin Jacobsen, and cellist Eric Jacobsen come together to play Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet K.581 and Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115. Tickets $25, register and view here. LIVE

5 pm ET: Music from the Barn presents An All-Beethoven Concert. Pianist Robert Levin leads a program that includes the Violin Sonata in G, Op. 96, the Piano Trio Op. 70/2, and the Piano Concerto No. 4, Op. 58. View here.

6 pm ET: South Shore Conservatory presents The Big Reveal. A 24-hour marathon to celebrate SSC’s 50th anniversary and its role as a community school for the arts. The program includes sing-alongs, performances by faculty and students, soothing dinner music, rock band hour, tango hour featuring bandoneon player Raul Jaurena, cello hour with Dawn Avery, a jazz conversation with trombonist Earl McIntyre and vocalist Renee Manning, and hourly brunch performances (Beethoven, the Beatles, jazz, classical and Broadway). View here with funds raised going toward SSC’s tuition assistance program.

7:30 pm ET: Nightly Met Opera Streams presents Thomas Adès’s The Tempest. Starring Audrey Luna, Isabel Leonard, Iestyn Davies, Alek Shrader, Alan Oke, William Burden, Toby Spence, and Simon Keenlyside, conducted by Thomas Adès. From November 10, 2012. View here and for 24 hours.

Monday, September 7

1 pm ET: Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall presents Musikfest: Christian Dierstein and Dirk Rothbrust. Over years of sound research with percussionists Dierstein and Rothbrust, composer Rebecca Saunders has developed a special vocabulary of sounds for percussion. In the second concert of her composer portrait, Dust and Void are presented in new expansive versions alongside a new work for percussion duo. View for free here. LIVE

7:30 pm ET: SalonEra presents Classical Salon. Join guests Aisslinn Nosky (violin), Thomas Carroll (clarinet), Allison Monroe (violin), and Yvonne Smith (viola), for music written to be enjoyed in one’s living room. Works by Druschetzky, Haydn, Weber, and Chevalier de Saint-Georges. Suggested donation $10, register and view here.

7:30 pm ET: Met Opera Streams presents Massenet’s Manon. Starring Anna Netrebko, Piotr Beczala, Paulo Szot, and David Pittsinger, conducted by Fabio Luisi. From April 7, 2012. View here and for 24 hours.

Artists and Organizations Offering Free Content

The following are all accessible during the coronavirus pandemic:

Academy of Ancient Music
The most listened-to period instrument ensemble, directed by Richard Egarr, has made a number of streams available on its website. Guest artists include Louise Alder, soprano, Nicola Benedetti, violin, Mary Bevan, soprano, David Blackadder, trumpet, Iestyn Davies, countertenor, Tim Mead, countertenor, Christopher Purvis, bass, and Tenebrae, directed by Nigel Short. Explore here.

NEW: American Composer’s Orchestra
Volume 3 of Connecting ACO Community (August 2 - October 4, 2020) commissioned seven short works for solo instrument or voice. Each composer was offered $500 to write the work, and each performer was offered $500 to perform the work, with the rights to stream for six months. Recorded sessions are available here.

American Opera Project
American Opera Project presents AOPTV: Opera Comes Home, three world premiere English-language productions. As One is a chamber opera by composer Laura Kaminsky, librettist Mark Campbell and librettist/filmmaker Kimberly Reed in which two voices trace a transgender protagonist from her youth in a small town to Norway. Three Way, with music by Robert Paterson and libretto by David Cote, is an opera on the present and future of sex and love comprised. Harriet Tubman, with music and libretto by Nkeiru Okoye, tells how a young girl born in slavery becomes Harriet Tubman, the legendary Underground Railroad conductor. View here.

American Symphony Orchestra
American Symphony Orchestra releases weekly recordings from its archives with content alternating between live video recordings of SummerScape operas and audio recordings from previous ASO concerts. Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers, Richard Strauss’s Die Liebe aus Danae, and Korngold’s Das Wunder der Heliane, all conducted by Leon Botstein, are all highly recommended and available now. **

Apollo’s Fire: Music for the Soul
The Cleveland-based baroque orchestra founded by Artistic Director Jeannette Sorrell is offering a series of video streams entitled “Music for the Soul.” New episodes are posted here.

Australian Chamber Orchestra
ACO HomeCasts are curated by Artistic Director Richard Tognetti with an emphasis on content that reflects the ACO’s artistry, dynamism, and sense of adventure. Musicians have been equipped with a mini in-home studio and training, enabling them to record, produce, and broadcast directly from their homes. This includes full-length ACO concerts broadcast as Facebook Watch Parties hosted by an ACO musician, intimate solo performances filmed live from musicians’ homes, and “Ask-Me-Anything” Instagram interviews. Each week’s schedule is announced Monday mornings here.

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
BSO musicians are putting live-streamed concerts on the orchestra’s Facebook page on Wednesday and Sunday nights “for the near future.”

Bard SummerScape & Fisher Center
Archival works highlight Bard’s wealth and breadth of programming, including performances from its SummerScape Opera and BMF archives. Recent include Bard SummerScape’s 2011 production of Strauss’s rarely performed Die Liebe der Danae and last year’s Daniel Fish directed staging of Michael Gordon’s Acquanetta. More details here.

Budapest Festival Orchestra Quarantine Soirées
Hungarian conductor Ivan Fischer has created a new concert series in response to the worldwide musical shutdown. The Quarantine Soirées are LIVE and free to view online. Visit here for details of upcoming concerts.

Carnegie Hall
Live with Carnegie Hall features live performances, storytelling, and conversations that offer deeper insights and behind-the-scenes personal perspectives while integrating historical or recent audio/video content drawn from concerts, master classes, and recordings. Explore here.

The Cleveland Orchestra
The Cleveland Orchestra is offering archival videos, daily Mindful Music Moments videos, and videos from musicians performing from home. Explore here.

Cliburn at Home
Cliburn Watch Party relives moments from the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, Cliburn Kids explores rhythm, storytelling, dance, and listening games in short educational journeys. Cliburn Amateur Spotlight are performance videos submitted by the 72 who were accepted as competitors for the 2020 Cliburn International Amateur Piano Competition (rescheduled to 2022). Explore here.

Daniel Hope
In Hope@Home on Tour, British violinist Daniel Hope took his livestreamed TV series out of his Berlin living room and on the road. The 27 half-hour episodes of live musical performance and conversation in English, all professionally produced for the German/French ARTE TV network, were filmed at a succession of visually compelling locations, many of which are not open to the public. All episodes have now been archived until October 31 in the ARTE Media Library here.

Detroit Symphony Orchestra
The Detroit Symphony Orchestra has made its webcast archive available for free. The collection features 200+ works going back three years, and highlights include Leonard Slatkin conducting John Luther Adams’s climate change-inspired Become Ocean from 2019, several world premieres, and a host of bite-sized encores. Explore here.

Deutsche Grammophon Yellow Lounge
The German classical music giant is streaming Yellow Lounge broadcasts from its archives. Recent additions include clarinetist Andreas Ottensamer, pianists Alice Sara Ott and Chihiro Yamanaka, and cellist Mischa Maisky. Performances are broadcast in rotation, one video at a time, adding a new performance every few days. DG communicates the start of each new performance by newsletter at the start of each week. To keep updated sign up here.

Finnish National Opera
Finnish National Opera presents Stage24, a series of streamed archived performances on its website, which are then available for the next six months. Recent content includes a staged version of Sibelius’s Kullervo, Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, Caspar Holten’s staging of Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer with Camilla Nylund, and Christoff Loy’s Tosca. An excellent company and some interesting and original work worth investigating ** Explore here.

Handel and Haydn Society
Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society has created the H+H Listening Room where you can hear and watch H+H performances including Mozart’s Requiem, Handel’s Messiah, and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas filmed at New York’s Met Museum. There are also more than a dozen videos of musicians performing from their homes, a special video of principal flutist Emi Ferguson teaching people how to make their own baroque flute, and a new podcast called “Tuning In”. In the first episode Principal Cellist Guy Fishman interviews Artistic Director Harry Christophers about Bach's St. Matthew Passion. Explore here.

International Keyboard Institute & Festival

IKIF 2020 is making archival content available for free. Among the performing artists are Jerome Rose, Marc-André Hamelin, Alessio Bax, Jeffrey Swann, Alon Goldstein, Arnaldo Cohen, and Alexander Kobrin. August celebrates the 22nd Season with the premiere of an archival video of IKIF Founder/Director Jerome Rose in concert at IKIF 2000 and 2002 from the stage of the Festival’s original home, Mannes School of Music. The repertoire includes works of Mozart, Liszt and Schubert. Explore here.

Kennedy Center
The Kennedy Center is offering a free, live digital performance initiative, Couch Concerts, to help inspire, uplift, heal, and bring the performing arts into homes across the country and around the world during these difficult times. Couch Concerts stream direct from artists’ homes on the Kennedy Center website. Audiences can discover a wide range of other at-home programming through the Kennedy Center at Home webpage.

La Scala/RAI
Italy’s RAI presents five productions from La Scala Milan including the world premiere of Kurtág’s Fin de Partie, Daniel Barenboim conducting Götterdämmerung, Lisette Oropesa in Verdi’s I Masnadieri, Montedervi’s Orfeo conducted by Rinaldo Alessandrini, and Les Vêpres Siciliennes conducted by Daniele Gatti. A wide range of concerts are also available. Explore and register here.

NEW: Les Arts Florissants

Les Arts Florissants’s annual Festival in Thiré, France included a series of 10- to 15-minute “Meditation” concerts recorded earlier this summer. Now available to enjoy online, the Meditations include performances by students of Juilliard’s Historical Performance program in the spirit of their annual participation in the Festival. View here.

Lincoln Center
From the archives of Lincoln Center’s resident organizations comes a trove of video, including rarely seen footage from decades of Live from Lincoln Center, more recent performances from across campus, and live streams wherever performances are still happening. Lincoln Center Pop-Up Classroom broadcasts on Facebook Live every weekday at 10 am ET and is led by some of the world’s best artists and educators. #ConcertsForKids teams up with top artists to bring world-class performances and diverse musical perspectives from their homes to yours. Explore here.

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra
LACO AT HOME offers streaming and on demand performances, including a full showing of the orchestra’s critically acclaimed West Coast premiere of Dark with Excessive Bright for double bass and strings by LACO Artist-in-Residence Missy Mazzoli. View streaming here and on demand here.

Los Angeles Master Chorale
Videos recorded as part of the “Offstage with the Los Angeles Master Chorale” series from April 24 to June 19 included interviews conducted by Artistic Director Grant Gershon and Associate Conductor Jenny Wong with notable performers—including special guests Reena Esmail, Morten Lauridsen, Anna Schubert, Peter Sellars, Derrick Spiva—as well as Master Chorale singers. Available on demand here.

NEW: Mark Morris Dance Group
The third and last collection of the MMDG online series—Solo Works, 1984-2000—includes four solo pieces choreographed between 1984 and 2000, two performed by Mark Morris and two by other company members. All the recordings are preceded by video introductions by Morris himself. The featured dances include Offertorium (1988, performed in 1988 at Get Down!),  Peccadillos (2000, performed by Joe Bowie at Jacob’s Pillow in 2006), Greek to Me (1998, performed by Mark Morris at the New Victory Theater in 2000), and O Rangasayee (1984, performed by Dallas McMurray at the Lincoln Center White Light Festival in 2016). Explore here until September 30.

Metropolitan Opera Free Student Streams
Students and teachers worldwide can draw from the Met’s online library of operas and curricular materials plus new conversations with Met artists and educators. Resource materials will be made available weekly via the Met website starting on Mondays at 10 am ET, including extensive background information; activities to help students engage before, during, and after the performance stream; illustrated synopses; coloring pages; and audio clips. On Wednesdays at 5 pm ET, each week’s performance will be made available for streaming on the Met website, where it will remain for 48 hours. An hour before each performance stream, students from around the world will have the opportunity to interact directly with a singer or member of the creative team on Zoom. More information here.

Minnesota Orchestra
Minnesota Orchestra at Home shares video, audio, and educational materials through the categories of Watch, Listen and Learn, including videos from the orchestra’s archives and newly created “mini-concerts” directly from the homes of Orchestra musicians. Explore and view here.

NEW: National Sawdust Digital Discovery Festival, Volume One

With more than 65 events, featuring over 100 artists premiering in a four-month span, National Sawdust Digital Discovery Festival: Volume One was a bright spot in NYC's post-COVID live music world. Featuring post-COVID performances from Robert Wilson, Julian Lage, Tyondai Braxton, Emel Mathlouthi, Matthew Whitaker, Dan Tepfer, Ashley Bathgate, Emily Wells, Brooklyn Rider, Joel Ross, Conrad Tao, Andrew Yee, and Lucy Dhegrae, and recently recorded Masterclasses with Tania León, Ted Hearne, Vijay Iyer, Jamie Barton, Lawrence Brownlee, Trimpin, and Lara St. John. Archival performances include David Byrne, Lara Downes and Rhiannon Giddens, and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Explore here.

New World Symphony
The New World Symphony presents a web-based series called NWS Archive+. Michael Tilson Thomas moderates discussions with NWS Fellows, alumni, guest artists, and visiting faculty about archived recordings. Performances will be available here. NWS Fellows also play live, informal chamber music concerts from their homes in Miami Beach and broadcast via Facebook Live. In addition, the NWS online archive contains master classes, tutorials and town halls, which can be found here. Finally, for the past 10 years, the Fellows have performed one-hour concerts for local school children. These concerts and preparatory material will be available free to students and parents. NWS Educational concerts can be found here.

Opera Australia
OA | TV: Opera Australia on Demand is the Sydney-based company’s new digital space. Alongside the world’s largest collection of Dame Joan Sutherland on video, OA will offer exclusive content from the OA back catalogue, productions from Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour, and a new series of chat show-style interviews conducted by AD Lyddon Terracini. The first posted full show is Sutherland in The Merry Widow, and the fileted aria’s in the section labelled “The Best of Dame Joan Sutherland” are even better. ** View here.

Opéra National de Paris
The Palais Garnier and Bastille Opera have made their digital stage, “The 3e Scène,” free. The platform is a pure place of artistic adventure and exploration, giving free rein to photographers, filmmakers, writers, illustrators, visual artists, composers, and choreographers to create original works. Visit here. Some of Opéra National de Paris’s productions are accessible on the company’s Facebook Page. In addition, Octave, the Paris Opera’s online magazine, is posting articles, videos, and interviews here.

Opera North
One of Britain’s most respected smaller opera companies, Opera North has put its acclaimed semi-staged concerts of Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle online. “Beg, borrow, or be like Wotan and steal a ticket for this show,” said the UK’s Times of Das Rheingold. “You’d be lucky to hear as good at Bayreuth,” said The Telegraph of Die Walküre. Richard Farnes proves a seriously impressive Wagner conductor. Watch here.

Opera Saratoga: Connect Daily
In place of its planned 2020 Summer Festival, June, July and August will see Opera Saratoga feature performances by Festival Artists, premiering every morning at 9 am ET. Each month is dedicated to a different theme with July featuring Beethoven art song including many of his settings of folk melodies from around the world and scenes Fidelio. August will feature songs and ensembles from musicals by Stephen Sondheim, who celebrated his 90th birthday this year. View here and on demand.

OperaVision
OperaVision offers livestreams of operas available for free and online for six months. Previous offerings include Barrie Kosky’s visually spectacular Moses und Aron, David McVicar’s superb Die Entführung aus dem Serail from Glyndebourne, and Deborah Warner’s thoughtful Death in Venice for English National Opera. View upcoming and past content here. **

The Philadelphia Orchestra
Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and The Philadelphia Orchestra are offering new ways to engage with the music and musicians of the Orchestra. Through WATCH, LISTEN, LEARN the Virtual Philadelphia Orchestra will fulfill its ongoing commitment to bring music, in video and audio forms, as well as interactive education and enrichment, to audiences. Content is available here.

Seattle Symphony
Seattle Symphony is rebroadcasting concerts on Thursday and Saturday evenings. In addition, Morning Notes on YouTube or Facebook features solo performances by individual musicians.

Orli Shaham Bach Yard Playdates
Pianist Orli Shaham brings her acclaimed interactive concert series for kids to the internet. Bach Yard Playdates introduces musical concepts, instruments, and the experience of concert-going to a global audience of children and their families. A number of 10-minute episodes are already available for on-demand streaming. Programs and performances range from Bach’s Two-Part Invention to Steve Reich’s Clapping Music. Explore here.

The Sixteen
The Sixteen and founder Harry Christophers launched Quarantine with The Sixteen, a regular schedule of digital content. The Sixteen Virtual Choir’s performance of Sheppard’s Libera nos involved each part being recorded at each singer’s home. Other features include: Choral Chihuahua, a podcast by The Sixteen and I Fagiolini; Stay at Home Choir performing Sir James MacMillan’s O Radiant Dawn; Archive performances, including MacMillan’s Stabat Mater performed in the Sistine Chapel and Bach’s St Matthew Passion with Streetwise Opera; Recipes for isolation; Video diaries providing insight into daily lives during lockdown; Weekly playlists. Explore here.

Trinity Wall Street
New York’s Trinity Church Wall Street introduces daily weekday “Comfort at One” (1 pm ET) streaming performances on Facebook with full videos posted here. Tune in for encore performances of favorite Trinity concerts, professionally filmed in HD, along with current at-home performances from Trinity’s extended artistic family.

Tulsa Opera
Tulsa Opera has launched its Staying Alive web series, which includes virtual performances of opera, popular music, and musical theater, directly from guest artists’ homes. Each week, the series features artists from around the world, including artists that have been recently heard on the Tulsa Opera stage or would have been heard in the company’s new production of Tobias Picker’s Emmeline, cancelled due to the pandemic. New content appears every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 2 pm CT. Explore here.

Voices of Ascension
New York choir Voices of Ascension, which celebrates its 30th anniversary next season, is posting a daily offering of choral beauty on its website. Music is chosen by staff, members of the chorus and orchestra, and listeners. View here.

Warsaw Philharmonic
The Warsaw Philharmonic has made a selection of video recordings available on its YouTube channel. Recent offerings include Saint-Saëns’s Organ Symphony and Arvo Pärt’s Swansong conducted by Artistic Director Andrzej Boreyko, as well as rarities by Polish composers like Grazyna Bacewicz. It’s an excellent orchestra very much in the Eastern European tradition and concerts have been master edited for posting online.

Paid Digital Arts Services

Berlin Philharmonic Digital Concert Hall
The BPO Digital Concert Hall contains over 600 orchestra concerts covering more than ten years, including 15 concerts with the orchestra’s new Chief Conductor Kirill Petrenko, interviews, backstage footage.

Medici TV
Thousands of classical music videos are available by subscription, as well as hundreds of events that are broadcast live for free each year, available for 90 days. Subscriptions cost $83.85 per year. www.medici.tv

Archived Recent Performances

The following broadcast events have occurred since the start of the COVID-19 crisis and are still available for viewing:

March 12

The Philadelphia Orchestra and Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin performed BeethovenNOW: Symphonies 5 & 6 as well as Iman Habibi’s Jeder Baum Spricht to an empty Verizon Hall for live broadcast. An outstanding concert captured in excellent visuals and sound. www.philorch.org/live

Miller Theater’s Bach Collection was performed live for a virtual audience. The program included Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring (arr. Hess), Concerto for Violin and Oboe in C minor, BWV 1060 (arr. Fischer), Chorale Prelude Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639 (arr. Busoni), and Cantata Ich habe genug, BWV 82, with Kady Evanyshyn, mezzo-soprano, Rebecca Fischer, violin, Alecia Lawyer, oboe, Simone Dinnerstein, piano, Baroklyn. View here.

March 14

Canadian pianist Garrick Ohlsson played an impressive selection of works by Beethoven, Prokofiev (the Sixth Sonata), and Chopin to an empty house at New York’s 92nd Street Y. View here.

March 16

In front of an empty auditorium (very visible thanks to excellent camerawork) Melbourne Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Forth Worth Symphony Music Director Miguel Harth Bedoya in dynamic performances of Bloch's Schelomo with soloist Timo-Veikko Valve, and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. Available here.

March 26

92nd St. Y presents Jonathan Biss playing Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas. Written, as Beethoven said, “in a single breath,” these pieces represent the apotheosis of his piano writing, showing his mastery of the variation form (in Op. 109), his expertise in the forms of the musical past (the fugue, in Op. 110), and an ability to be cutting-edge (considering Op. 111 as a whole, but especially the famous ‘boogie woogie’ moments in the second movement). Available here.

April 10

Handel’s Messiah with The Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square and soloists Amanda Woodbury, Tamara Mumford, Tyler Nelson, and Tyler Simpson. Recorded in 2018 but archived for a rainy day such as this. Available here.

April 10

Bach's St. John Passion, performed by Bach Collegium Japan conducted by Masaaki Suzuki from the Cologne Philharmonic. View here.

April 14

92^nd St Y presents Marc-André Hamelin who streamed a characteristically elegant program from his home, with the timely inclusion of Liszt's Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude. The repertoire also included C. P. E. Bach, Enescu, Fauré, Scriabin, and six selections from Debussy's Preludes, Book II. View here.

May 8

The Berliner Philharmoniker’s European Concert. In order to comply with social distancing rules and hygiene requirements Kirill Petrenko conducts the orchestra in chamber music formation from the empty Philharmonie Berlin. Federal President Steinmeier to deliver opening address. Program: Pärt’s Fratres, Ligeti’s Ramifications, Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 (arrangement for chamber ensemble by Erwin Stein) with Christiane Karg, soprano. Subscribe or trial for free and view in the Digital Concert Hall.

June 28

San Francisco Symphony Orchestra presented MTT25: An Online Tribute for Michael Tilson Thomas. Hosted by famed vocalists Audra McDonald and Susan Graham, the event featured contributions and tributes by musicians of the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus, an array of distinguished guest artists, and many surprises. View here.

June 30

Live At Carnegie Hall presented Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov discussing his career with fellow pianists Emanuel Ax and Sergei Babayan and the venue’s Executive and Artistic Director Sir Clive Gillinson. Interspersed with excerpts from Trifonov’s performances, one newly recorded at home and others previously captured at Carnegie Hall. On demand here.

 

**Highly recommended

Pictured: Thomas Hampson