In 1947 “Concert Magic” was filmed in Hollywood making it the first ever concert filmed for movie audiences. Yehudi Menuhin and other internationally renowned interpreters played classical and romantic works and created a worldwide success for the…

Sergiu Celibidache (1912-1996) has been called a “musical giant”, a “magician” “a brilliant lion-tamer” and an enfant terrible of classical music. He was famous for refuting the commercial aspects of the music business, which makes his rare…

Following a highly successful small-group jazz concert at New York Town Hall on May 17, 1947, Armstrong's manager Joe Glaser dissolved the Armstrong big band on August 13, 1947 and established a six-piece small group. This group was called the All…

This film was shot in three days early in March 1966 and edited in three weeks. It was the first of its kind and there have been so many successors in the past thirty years that it can truthfully be described as epoch-making. It is probably still the…

Fritz Kreisler once said that the two greatest performing musicians of the twentieth century were Pablo Casals and Andrés Segovia. He had two prime ideas in mind, first, their extraordinary spirits and second, the fact that both elevated their chosen…

On the 8th of June 1968 Vladimir Ashkenazy, with his Icelandic wife and their two children, arrived at their new home in Reykjavik in Iceland. It was a crucial moment in their lives. They had left the Soviet Union, with the help of Nikita Kruschev…

On August 30th 1969 five young artists, all of whom were beginning to be established as international artists of the highest rank, came together to play Schubert's "Trout Quintet" in the new Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. Their names: Itzhak Perlman…

Hallelujah is full of dramatic contrasts, both visually and musically - from the grandeur of the full orchestra and chorus to the simplicity of two choir boys singing a prayer on the Nave steps.

1970 was the 200th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth and, to mark the occasion, Daniel Barenboim and Christopher Nupen collaborated on a thirteen-part series about the man and his music. Close friends at the time, Barenboim as artist and…

John Williams is almost certainly the most accomplished performer on the Spanish classical guitar that the world has ever seen. Guitar technique was considerably developed and extended in the early years of this century by Andrés Segovia, but he was…