Your Festive Season on STAGE+

STAGE+ was launched by Deutsche Grammophon a year ago. The innovative streaming service offers the best of classical music worldwide – live streams from the most renowned concert halls and opera houses, exclusive premieres and documentaries, performances and interviews with important artists. New audio and video productions are published on STAGE+ every week. A collection of over 1200 curated albums is available, as well as an extensive archive of over 500 videos.

STAGE+ is celebrating the festive season with four very special screenings. On 20 December, the spectacular Basilique Notre-Dame in Montréal is the setting for a performance of Handel’s Messiah featuring a team of superb Canadian soloists, a hand-picked professional chorus and the Orchestre Métropolitain, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The concert will be streamed live and promises to be the perfect start to the holidays.

Two days later, on 22 December, we join Lise Davidsen at Oslo’s Folketeateret as she presents Christmas from Norway, in company with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra and conductor Christian Eggen. Davidsen, one of the world’s most sought-after sopranos, will perform a personal and wide-ranging selection of Christmas songs and carols by Adam, Bach, Humperdinck, Sibelius and more.

As 2023 draws to an end, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter rounds off her 60th-birthday year in unmissable style, presenting music by Beethoven and Williams from Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh. Premiered on 30 December, the concert sees Mutter perform Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with fellow soloists Yefim Bronfmann and Pablo Ferrández, and Susanna Mälkki at the helm of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. In the second half, Mutter is reunited with film music legend John Williams, who takes over conducting duties for a programme of his own movie themes.

Finally, on New Year’s Day STAGE+ will resound to the primitive rhythms of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. As part of her first season as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Berlin Konzerthausorchester, Joana Mallwitz has established a series of “Expedition Concerts” in which she gives a detailed and illustrated introduction to a work before the full performance. Here she explores why Stravinsky’s music was so shocking that The Rite caused a riot at its premiere in Paris in 1913. Then there’ll be an opportunity to hear this iconic score interpreted by one of the most exciting conductors of her generation.

We hope these details will inspire music-lovers to explore STAGE+ further. And for anyone looking for the perfect present for themselves, friends or family at this time of year, we have a seasonal promotion running at the moment. Take out a new annual subscription to STAGE+ or renew an existing one by 3 January 2024 and get a special holiday gift – the exclusive deluxe edition of pianist Daniil Trifonov’s Bach – The Art of Life album (2 CDs + 1 DVD), a project centred around Johann Sebastian Bach’s late masterpiece The Art of Fugue.