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clockwise from top right: Hamburg State Opera’s Falstaff, pianist Martha Argerich, La Monnaie’s Aida and th Budapest Festival Orchestra conducted by Iván Fischer.
Clockwise from top right ... Hamburg State Opera’s Falstaff, pianist Martha Argerich, La Monnaie’s Aida and the Budapest Festival Orchestra conducted by Iván Fischer. Composite: Monika Rittershaus, Getty Images, Stephan Rabold, Tom Howard/Barbican
Clockwise from top right ... Hamburg State Opera’s Falstaff, pianist Martha Argerich, La Monnaie’s Aida and the Budapest Festival Orchestra conducted by Iván Fischer. Composite: Monika Rittershaus, Getty Images, Stephan Rabold, Tom Howard/Barbican

Free opera and classical for watching at home: our critics' picks – week two

This article is more than 3 years old

Overwhelmed by all the content now available to stream? Our critics pick a daily highlight from the treasure trove of classical music to watch for free. Today, music to see you through from 30 March to 3 April

Berlin Philharmonic/Järvi live-streamed concert

It’s well worth negotiating the frustrations of the Berlin Philharmonic’s voucher system to gain free access to its digital concert hall, where there’s a huge archive of concerts going back to the orchestra’s vintage years under Herbert von Karajan. There’s a decent number of new works, too, especially among the programmes conducted by Simon Rattle, while the most recent of them is Hans Abrahamsen’s Horn Concerto, whose premiere, with the Berlin Phil’s principal horn Stefan Dohr as the immaculate soloist, is the centrepiece of a concert under Paavo Järvi. It’s framed by “fantastic” works – a rare outing for Stravinsky’s early, Rimsky-esque Scherzo Fantastique, and Berlioz’s famous symphony – and there’s an element of fantasy about the concerto, too. The horn, with its all its Romantic associations with the worlds of legend and magic, seems to be cast as the storyteller, leading the orchestra through a series of enchanted landscapes, all coloured by the fragile, intricate patterning that is a feature of Abrahamsen’s music. (Digital concert hall footage is free for 30 days after registering) Andrew Clements

‘Unnerving and mesmerising’ Dimitris Tiliakos as Amonasro, Adina Aaron as Aida and Enrico Iori (Il Re) in Verdi’s Aida, online at La Monnaie. Photograph: Monika Forster

Aida (La Monnaie, Brussels)

Stathis Livathinos’s 2017 staging of Verdi’s Aida jettisons Egyptological convention in favour of something altogether more abstract and timeless, to create an unnerving interpretation of a work often seen primarily in terms of orientalist spectacle. Using imagery that borders on surrealism, Livathinos probes the opera’s narrative to expose a decadent, imperialist society that maintains a veneer of civilisation while remaining in thrall to the theocratic values of Giacomo Prestia’s literally monstrous Ramfis and his dog-headed priests. Stylised gestures for chorus and dancers, meanwhile, choreographed by Otto Pichler, remind us of the opera’s often overlooked closeness to the rituals of classical tragedy. Conducted with reined-in intensity by Alain Altinoglu, it’s superbly acted if at times unevenly sung. Andrea Carè’s Radamès doesn’t settle until after Celeste Aida, which is a shame. Later on, however, you get a real sense of the conflict between desire and duty that he and Adina Aaron’s anguished Aida must face as Nora Gubisch’s imperious, tellingly repressed Amneris conspires against them. It’s sometimes flawed, often idiosyncratic, but always never less than mesmerising. (Available until 19 April) Tim Ashley

Budapest Festival Orchestra musicians’ chamber concerts

The musicians of the often quirkily brilliant Budapest Festival Orchestra were among the first to identify live-streaming during the crisis as both an opportunity and a necessity – their Quarantine Soirees, which began on 16 March (and from which we nicked the name of our page), are preceded by music director Iván Fischer pointing us to a donation page, since “at the moment this is their only possible income”. They offer a lucky dip of chamber music: Sunday night’s instalment included Chopin and Debussy piano works alongside Dvorák’s “American” string quartet, dashed off with the kind of relaxed, risk-taking flair you expect of the Hungarian fiddle tradition; Monday’s had Biber, Piazzolla, Elgar, and brass quartet versions of The Pink Panther and La Bamba. The sound is close-miked but clear, and there’s a rather endearing lack of atmosphere. Everything is broadcast from a bare rehearsal room, and presented with a minimum of fuss. At the end, they bow to a silent room; you supply the applause. (Every night from 7.45pm (CET), for around an hour) Erica Jeal

‘Strangely joyless’... Calixto Bieito’s staging of Verdi’s Falstaff at Hamburg Staatsoper. Photograph: Monika Rittershaus

Falstaff (Hamburg Staatsoper)

Verdi’s final masterpiece ought to provide the perfect comic refuge in these times, but there is something strangely joyless and unfunny about Calixto Bieito’s staging, unveiled in Hamburg in January. On the plus side, there’s real zest to Axel Kober’s conducting and some fine individual performances, especially from Ambrogio Maestri in the title role, lustrous-toned and immaculate in phrase and diction, but whose sense of faded nobility is undermined by a production that reduces too much to the sleaziest common denominator, and presents him as an out-and-out slob, shambling around in increasingly grubby vests. It’s all updated to a back-street pub somewhere in Britain today (far too shabby to be Windsor), while Falstaff’s humiliation in the final scene seems to take place at a well-populated dogging site. Bieito’s view of present-day Britain is a pitiless one and with his updating we lose the class distinctions that are so carefully defined in both Boito’s libretto and its Shakespearean sources. Original ideas are scant and hardly revelatory: Nannetta’s covert pregnancy test suggests that her relationship with Fenton is already well advanced; Meg Page and Mistress Quickly seem to be a bit more than good friends, while to judge from their venomous exchanges during the final fugue, the Fords at least won’t be living happily ever after. If in the end Verdi’s extraordinary score manages to sweep all before it, as it always does, it’s a close-run thing. (Available on ARTE until 18 April) Andrew Clements

Martha Argerich

Not a long-haul concert this, but any chance to celebrate the supreme artistry of Martha Argerich is welcome. Winning the Chopin competition at 24 was a milestone in her early career, and there is clearly a sentimental connection between soloist and audience as she plays Chopin’s E minor Piano Concerto in Warsaw’s Philharmonic Hall, with the Sinfonia Varsovia, back in 2010. Argerich combines her typically robust, no-nonsense approach with the most lyrical cantabile, with something intense and simply life-enhancing about her performance. This recording focuses less on the orchestra than Argerich herself, so one gets closer to the hands – surprisingly workwoman-like – and the almost nonchalantly virtuosic technique, but also to Argerich’s engagement with the music and the musicians. Her expressions can reflect Chopin anguish, but there are also moments of radiance that say it all. Two lovely encores are a great bonus. (Available on Youtube) Rian Evans

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