Sony Classical Releases Summer Night Concert 2022, Featuring The Vienna Philharmonic with Andris Nelsons & Gautier Capuçon

Sony Classical has announced the release of this year’s Summer Night Concert 2022 with the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Andris Nelsons with cellist Gautier Capuçon as soloist.

The Summer Night Concert was performed this year on June 16, 2022. It is an annual open-air event, which has been held since 2008. The previous series was the “Concert for Europe,” which took place from 2004 until 2007. The park of Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna/Austria is the magical setting for the concert. The illustrious conductors who have previously led the orchestra at this event are Georges Prêtre, Daniel Barenboim, Franz Welser-Möst, Lorin Maazel, Christoph Eschenbach, Zubin Mehta, Semyon Bychkov, Gustavo Dudamel and Daniel Harding.

Thanks to its UNESCO World Heritage setting in the Baroque park of Schönbrunn with the palace as a backdrop, the Summer Night Concert adds great visual charm to its superb musical quality. This event is classical music at its very best. Millions of viewers and listeners in more than 80 countries can follow the concert online, on TV and radio. For the first time since the coronavirus pandemic, the Vienna Philharmonic’s 2022 Summer Night Concert was able to take place again with a full audience. The Vienna Philharmonic devoted this year’s concert to the theme of Musical Heritage of Europe with two premieres, the contemporary Latvian composer Arturs Maskats with his Tango for Symphony Orchestra as well as the Farewell Waltz by prominent Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko. The program further included favorites from Beethoven and Rossini to Smetana and Dvořák.

This year’s program featured star cellist Gautier Capuçon, who appeared at the Summer Night Concert for the very first time. With the Vienna Philharmonic, Gautier Capuçon has performed since 2015. Gautier Capuçon is a true 21st-century ambassador for the cello. He performing internationally with many of the world’s foremost conductors and instrumentalists. Committed to exploring and expanding the cello repertoire, Capuçon performs an extensive array of works each season and regularly premieres new commissions. In the 2021/22 season, Capuçon appeared with, amongst others, the philharmonic orchestras of Vienna/Alain Altinoglu, Munich/Giedre Šlekyte and New York/Yu Long; the Concertgebouworkest/Myung-whun Chung and Cleveland Orchestra/Michael Tilson Thomas. He is Artist-in-Residence at the Paris Philharmonie as well as the Wiener Konzerthaus. In addition, Capuçon plays at festivals worldwide, including the Enescu, Rostropovich, Prague Spring, St. Denis and Evian festivals.

Andris Nelsons first worked with the Vienna Philharmonic in October 2010 and has been a regular and invariably welcome guest since then, not only at the orchestra’s subscription concerts in the Vienna Musikverein and at the Salzburg Festival but also on tours of Asia, the United States and Europe. So far he has appeared more than eighty times on the podium of the Vienna Philharmonic. Lately, I have conducted the prestigious New Year’s Concert 2020. Andris Nelsons is Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. These two positions, in addition to his leadership of a pioneering alliance between both institutions, have firmly established Grammy Award-winning Nelsons as one of the most renowned and innovative conductors on the international scene today.

The 177-year old tradition of the Vienna Philharmonic goes back to 1842, when Otto Nicolai conducted a Grand Concert with all members of the imperial “Hof-Operntheater”. This event was originally called “Philharmonic Academy” and is regarded as the origin of the orchestra. Since its founding, the orchestra has been managed by the administrative committee – a democratically elected body – and works with artistic, organizational and financial autonomy. All decisions are reached on a democratic basis during the general meeting of all members.

Sony Classical will release the unique concert experience on CD, DVD, Blu-ray as well as digitally.