“Tom Beghin belongs to the very few concert pianists with a professional musicological background who can turn his discoveries of rhetoric and other intellectual features in classical scores into fascinating new and impressive interpretations.”

—László Somfai, author of The Keyboard Sonatas of Joseph Haydn,

University of Chicago Press, 1995.

On October 27, 2009, Naxos of America released a groundbreaking project—and its first Blu-ray production— from McGill University’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology, entitled The Virtual Haydn: Complete Works for Solo Keyboard. The brainchild of performer and musicologist Tom Beghin, Tonmeister and producer Martha de Francisco, and recording engineer Wieslaw Woszczyk, The Virtual Haydn employs virtual acoustics for the first time in a recording of this magnitude.

The set features four double-layer Blu-ray discs containing 15 hours of music, offered in both 5.0 surround (DTS-HD) and high-resolution stereo (PCM), as well as three hours of HD video, including a “making of” documentary Playing the Room, with subtitles in Dutch, French, German, and Japanese. Additionally, the user may navigate from one “virtual room” to the next—or from one instrument to another—mixing, matching, and comparing the performance of a short piece for musical clock, for a total of 7 x 9 possible combinations. A beautifully designed 64-page booklet contains richly illustrated program information as well as three informative and imaginative essays by the producers. Smart Blu-ray pop-up menus allow for efficient navigation through a wealth of material.

The music of Haydn has been a longtime passion and area of study for keyboardist Tom Beghin, whose innovative scholarship, especially in the domain of musical rhetoric, has been widely recognized, most recently in his editorship of Haydn and the Performance of Rhetoric (University of Chicago Press, 2007). The Virtual Haydn, as Beghin explains, “is still very much about Haydn, but has become about so much more. These discs challenge all conventions of performing, recording, and listening, and introduce new paradigms.”

Listeners experience the complete works for solo keyboard in nine virtual rooms—that is, replications of actual rooms where Haydn, or a typical player of his keyboard music, would have performed. They have been acoustically sampled, electronically mapped, and precisely recreated in the recording studio. Featured rooms range from the most private to the most public, from Haydn’s own study in his Eisenstadt home to the famous Holywell Music Room in Oxford, England.

Further enhancing this unique experience of the Haydn repertoire are the seven historical keyboards on which the music is performed. All seven instruments, from a 1760s clavichord to a 1798 English grand piano, were built for this project by today’s leading artisans. This release captures the first performances on three of the instruments: a 1755 harpsichord with an idiomatic “Viennese short octave,” a 1788 Tafelklavier, and a 1780 fortepiano with an early-Viennese “stoss”-action. Modern audiences are able to experience these instruments in the acoustical environments for which they were originally designed.

Surrounded by a semi-sphere of 24 speakers, Tom Beghin plays as if in the historical room. The sounds of his performance are captured, mixed with reverberation responses identical to those of the actual room, and retransmitted almost instantaneously through the sphere, allowing him to engage “the room”—that is, to “play” with it, then and there. It is as if it is 1774 and the listener is seated next to Prince Nicolaus Esterházy in the grand Ceremonial Room of his Eszterháza Palace while the artist—possibly Haydn himself—is playing on the Prince’s newly-acquired double-manual harpsichord. By contrast, we experience Haydn’s sonatas for Princess Marie Esterházy, played on a Kober square piano, in the intimate setting of a Prunkraum of Vienna’s Albertina. Or we embrace the more public eighteenth-century concert experience of the acoustically accurate yet virtual English concert hall for a performance on a Longman, Clementi & Co. piano of the two concert sonatas that Haydn wrote for the celebrated Therese Jansen.

Musicking happens through instruments, in rooms, by people. No repertoire celebrates this experience more than Haydn’s keyboard works. This revolutionary recording project stands as a tribute to the timeless appeal of a composer whose life and career revolved around similarly experimental interactions with technologies and audiences.

Tom Beghin is at the forefront of a new generation of interpreters of eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century music. His discography includes 10 CDs on the Bridge, Claves, Eufoda, and Et’cetera labels. As a scholar he has published in major musicological journals and volumes, and has co-edited Haydn and the Performance of Rhetoric (University of Chicago Press, 2007). His mentors include Malcolm Bilson, James Webster, Rudolf Buchbinder, Jean Goverts, and Alan Weiss. He is currently Associate Professor at McGill University.

Martha de Francisco is an internationally acknowledged leader in the field of sound recording and record production, and has credits on over 300 recordings, most of them for worldwide release on the main record labels. She has worked in the best concert halls and has collaborated with some of the greatest classical musicians of our time. Her research topics include the latest surround-sound techniques, music recording with virtual acoustics, and the aesthetics of recorded music. At present she is Associate Professor at McGill University.

Wieslaw Woszczyk holds the James McGill Professorship in Sound Recording at McGill University. Internationally recognized as a researcher and 
educator in audio technology, he is the founding director of CIRMMT and McGill’s Graduate Program in Sound Recording. He was President of the Audio Engineering Society, Chair of the AES Technical Council, and is currently AES Governor. His current research addresses virtual acoustics, high-resolution audio, and remote real-time communication of multisensory content using broadband networks.

The historic concert in North Korea on February 26, 2008 is the first performing arts production released simultaneously on DVD and Blu-ray Disc.

“Those lucky enough to be present will never forget that historic evening, when people from two long-divided nations were united through the beauty and power of music. By the end of the final encore, both the audience and the musicians onstage stood waving to each other in a new-found spirit of understanding. We are honored and pleased that through this DVD we can share this transformative experience with new audiences for years to come.” -Zarin Mehta, President and Executive Director, New York Philharmonic

The New York Philharmonic’s historic February 2008 trip to Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, at the invitation of its government, was an unprecedented event that garnered worldwide media attention and was broadcast on PBS’ Great Performances series. The concert, which took place on February 26 in the East Pyongyang Grand Theater, was led by the Philharmonic’s Music Director Lorin Maazel and featured music by Wagner, Dvořák, Gershwin, Bizet, and Bernstein-along with the national anthems of both countries.

On September 16, Medici Arts, distributed by Naxos of America, released this remarkable concert on both DVD and Blu-ray disc. This is the first time a performing arts new release has been offered simultaneously in both formats on street-date.

The New York Philharmonic in Pyongyang (Medici Arts 2056948 and BD2056944) includes, in addition to footage of the historic performance, the never before seen documentary film Americans in Pyongyang: The New York Philharmonic Trip to North Korea, directed by Ayelet Heller. Heller’s film features footage of orchestra members giving master classes, as well as other memorable moments from the trip.

“The piccolo played a long, plaintive melody. Cymbals crashed, harp runs flew up, the violins soared. And tears began forming in the eyes of the staid audience … And right there, the Philharmonic had them. The full-throated performance of a piece deeply resonant for both North and South Koreans ended the historic concert in this isolated nation … in triumph.”
-Daniel J. Wakin, The New York Times

PROGRAM
National Anthem of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Aegukka
National Anthem of the United States of America The Star-Spangled Banner
Richard Wagner Lohengrin: Prelude to Act III
Antonín Dvořák Symphony No.9 in E minor, From the New World
George Gershwin An American in Paris
Georges Bizet Farandole from L’Arlésienne Suite No.2
Leonard Bernstein Candide: Overture
Traditional Arirang

Documentary: “Americans in Pyongyang”
The New York Philharmonic’s Trip to North Korea
Directed by Ayelet Heller

The New York Philharmonic is the oldest symphony orchestra in the United States and one of the oldest in the world. Lorin Maazel became Music Director in 2002, succeeding Kurt Masur in a distinguished line of 20th-century musical giants that has included Bernstein, Zubin Mehta, and Pierre Boulez; Mahler, Walter, and Toscanini. Since the Orchestra was founded in 1842 it has championed the new music of its time, commissioning or premiering many important works, from Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, From the New World (1893) and Gershwin’s An American in Paris (1928) to John Adams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning On the Transmigration of Souls (2002, the CD of which received three Grammy Awards), and Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Piano Concerto (2007).

The Philharmonic has long played a leading role in American musical life, and over the last century has become renowned around the globe, having appeared in 420 cities in 58 countries on 5 continents, in capitals such as London and Paris, São Paulo and Buenos Aires, and Hong Kong and Tokyo. Long a media pioneer, the Philharmonic began radio ew York Philharmonic To Perform in Democratic People’s Republic of Korea/4 broadcasts in 1922, and is currently represented by The New York Philharmonic This Week; the program is syndicated nationally 52 weeks per year, streamed on the Orchestra’s Website, nyphil.org, and carried on XM Satellite Radio. In addition, the Orchestra’s concerts are now broadcast throughout Europe on BBC Radio 3. On television, in the 1950s and ’60s the Philharmonic inspired a generation of music lovers through Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts, telecast on CBS; its presence on television has continued with annual appearances on PBS’s Live From Lincoln Center, which began with that series’ inaugural episode in 1976. In 2003 the Philharmonic made television history as the first Orchestra ever to perform live on the Grammy Awards telecast, one of the most-watched television events worldwide.

The New York Philharmonic may be the most recorded orchestra in history, with more than 1,500 authorized releases to its credit, starting with its first pressing in 1917. The Internet has expanded the Orchestra’s reach, and in 2006 the Philharmonic became the first major American orchestra to offer downloadable concerts, recorded live, which are available on the DG Concerts label, exclusively on iTunes.

Lorin Maazel, who has led more than 150 orchestras in more than 5,000 opera and concert performances, became Music Director of the New York Philharmonic in September 2002. His appointment came 60 years after his debut with the Orchestra at Lewisohn Stadium, then the Orchestra’s summer venue. As Music Director he has conducted seven World Premiere-New York Philharmonic Commissions, including the Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award-winning On the Transmigration of Souls by John Adams; Stephen Hartke’s Symphony No. 3; and Melinda Wagner’s Trombone Concerto. He has led cycles of works by Brahms and Beethoven, and in 2007 led a Philharmonic festival devoted to Tchaikovsky. He also conducted the Orchestra’s inaugural performances in the DG Concerts series – a groundbreaking initiative to offer downloadable New York Philharmonic concerts exclusively on iTunes.

Mr. Maazel has taken the Orchestra on numerous international tours, including the May 2007 Tour of Europe; the November 2006 visit to Japan and Korea; the June 2006 Tour of Italy, sponsored by Generali; and in autumn 2005, the two-part 75th Anniversary European Tour to thirteen cities in five countries. In addition to the New York Philharmonic, Mr. Maazel is music director of the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, Spain, and Italy’s Symphonica Toscanini. He has served as music director of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (1993-2002), and has held positions as music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (1988-96); general manager and chief conductor of the Vienna Staatsoper (1982-84) – the first American to hold that position; music director of The Cleveland Orchestra (1972-82); and artistic director and chief conductor of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (1965-71).