After a particularly hard day’s work when I didn’t venture out of my house, I set to wondering how long one could survive without ever setting foot outdoors. Food and drink would clearly not be a problem with the plethora of home-delivery services, music is easily taken care of and if you craved the visual experience of a concert, that’s now getting easier by the day. The Berlin Philharmonic’s Digital Concert Hall has become a regular fixture in my musical diary – in fact, I seem to be spending more time in this stunningly presented cyber-concert hall than in the genuine items on my doorstep in London. Now a relaunched site, medici.tv, allows one to fill in the gaps when there’s no live event from Berlin (or if I feel like something that’s not an orchestral concert).

Medici.tv has recently had a face-lift and a change of ownership, and now, under the guidance of industry veteran Hervé Boissière, offers a feast of music and music-making from some of the more “luxe” venues: Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Paris’s Cité de la Musique, Vienna’s Musikverein, La Scala, the Verbier Festival, Glyndebourne and so on. And naturally, given the prestige of these spaces, the artists are pretty impressive too: Martha Argerich, Gustavo Dudamel, Lang Lang, Daniel Barenboim, Mariss Jansons et al.

The offering is a mixture of live performances, archived concerts and operas, and hundreds of hours of film available “on demand”. The quality is generally very good and the filming skilfully handled, though the on-demand material varies with its age. I found that I needed a fairly robust broadband connection for best effect but, once “airborne”, there were treasures aplenty.

Lang Lang is always a charismatic performer and, while you occasionally want to whisper quietly in his ear that “less is more”, there’s no denying the enthusiasm he exudes for the music he plays. The latest live event on Medici, as I write, is a recital-interview from Cité de la Musique which includes piano pieces by Chopin, Liszt, Debussy, Schumann and a couple of Chinese composers (of a decidedly “school of Debussy” bent). Lang Lang is interviewed onstage and his answers (in English) are translated into French.

Still with the piano, there’s a wonderful recital given by the seemingly indestructible Menahem Pressler (founding member of the Beaux Arts Trio). He plays Beethoven’s Op 110 Piano Sonata, some Chopin Mazurkas, Debussy’s Estampes and Schubert’s B flat Sonata – quite a programme for a man a couple of years short of his 90th birthday. And the twinkle in his eye is delightful – a real treat! Elsewhere on the site there’s a performance of Mozart’s K453 Piano Concerto with Pressler, the Verbier Festival Orchestra and Daniel Harding.

One of the ensembles which has partnered with Medici is the Philharmonic Orchestra of La Scala (ie the opera orchestra out of the pit). I watched a fascinating performance of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto with Robert Levin at the piano and Semyon Bychkov conducting. Levin, one of the most inspired and inspiring practitioners of classical repertoire on the fortepiano, here plays a modern Steinway but the insights he brings are wonderful. And Semyon Bychkov draws some thrilling playing from the orchestra.

In operatic mode, Medici offers a handful of productions from the Opéra National de Paris including a lovely performance of Janácek’s Cunning Little Vixen from the Bastille Opéra (the production is by André Engel and Don Kent films it all very sensitively). Dennis Russell Davies conducts and my only criticism with Medici’s presentation is that it’s virtually impossible to find out who’s singing. That said, the internal navigation is excellent and you can jump to individual numbers very easily.

In the movie section, I watched a wonderful concert from Lucerne with Abbado conducting and Renée Fleming singing Berg’s Altenberg-Lieder with lustrous tone. The concert also contains a reading of Mahler’s Seventh that has gone straight on to my “to listen to” list (it dates from 2005).

There’s quite a lot of the Medici site to watch and listen to for free. Pay a monthly fee of €7.90 (€79 annually) and you also get unlimited access to the back catalogue. Pay €12.90 (or €129 annually) and you get enhanced video and audio quality, and you can access everything from your mobile should you feel the need for Má vlast as you travel to work (there’s a fine Harnoncourt/Royal Concertgebouw performance available).

A wonderful and wonderfully ambitious project has just been launched by the young Elias Quartet, a truly in-depth approach to the complete Beethoven string quartets. The Elias are performing all 17 quartets over the course of the next few years and, via the wonders of the internet, are sharing the experience with anyone who wants to join them. Their website (thebeethovenproject.com) contains blogs, recordings, video footage, scholarly articles (such as the thorny question of Beethoven’s tempi), interviews and so on. I’ve never subscribed to the school of thought that you have to have a lifetime’s experience to play this music – after all, everyone has to start somewhere, and the earlier you start, the longer your journey will be. Judging by a lovely performance of the slow movement of Op 18 No 1 (courtesy of BBC Radio 3), they are wonderfully lyrical players. There are little video messages from the members of the quartet in which they talk about their individual responses to this music – and, in interactive mode, they offer visitors to the site the opportunity to add their thoughts about Beethoven. It’s a splendid venture, generously sponsored by the Borletti-Buitoni Trust, a great supporter of classical music to whom we’re all indebted.

The Essential Download Playlist No 42 - Igor Stravinsky

The Firebird Concertgebouw / Colin Davis (Philips) A, Am, iT

Petrushka LSO / Claudio Abbado (DG) A, Am, iT, DG, S

Le roi des étoiles Cleveland Chor and Orch / Pierre Boulez (DG) A, Am, iT, DG, S

The Rite of Spring Cleveland Orch / Riccardo Chailly (Decca) A, Am, iT, DG, S

Symphonies – Psalms; Three Movements; C BPO / Simon Rattle (EMI) A, Am, iT

Oedipus Rex Soloists; Swedish RSO / Esa-Pekka Salonen (Sony) A, Am, iT, S

Pulcinella Soloists; LSO / Claudio Abbado (DG) A, Am, iT, DG, S

Apollon musagète BPO / Herbert von Karajan (DG) A, Am, iT, DG, S

The Rake’s Progess London Sinf / Riccardo Chailly (Decca) A, Am, iT, DG, S

A = Ariama (US only) Am = Amazon DG = DG Webshop iT = iTunes S = Spotify (available in selected territories)

James Jolly