Franz Liszt described the art of conducting as less than a task to be in evidence but rather a feat in disappearing behind the function itself. Conductors are pilots, not servants. Looking back at the past two centuries, we have been blessed with the…

The Berliner Philharmoniker’s season-end concert at Waldbühne Berlin is the highlight of every concert season due to the extraordinary atmosphere of the amphitheatre. It has become a veritable Berlin summer institution, with its own traditions…

Following young pianist Leonie Karatas’ debut CD "La Vita", her second album “Suspense” is dedicated to the great composers of the Romantic period: Franz Schubert and Franz Liszt. Schubert's last piano sonata is considered to have paved the way to…

The Danish National Symphony Orchestra rolls out the red carpet for a sparkling Hollywood Gala with a musical firework display from the best Hollywood films such as Bodyguard, Titanic, Pirates of the Caribbean, Moulin Rouge, and The Hunger Games…

In the historic Weimar Herder Church Sir John Eliot Gardiner finds the perfect setting for his recording of the Bach Christmas Oratorio. Against the backdrop of the dramatic altar and Lucas Granach paintings, the Monteverdi Choir and the English…

Daniel Barenboim, the universally admired interpreter of Beethoven’s music, is both - pianist and conductor - in these celebrated performances of the Beethoven Piano Concertos. At the Ruhr Piano Festival, Daniel Barenboim performed these…

Fostering young musical talents was particularly dear to Claudio Abbado’s heart. Abbado founded the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in 2003. In this orchestra, he united the world’s best young musicians from youth orchestras. The Lucerne Festival…

Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro is an unforgettable opera about love, desire and the primal force of uncontrollable passion. Concluding the Salzburg Festival’s highly successful Mozart / Da Ponte cycle, director Sven-Eric Bechtolf sets this emotional…

When he wrote Le Nozze di Figaro, Mozart created an unforgettable work about love and desire, about the primal force of uncontrollable passion. Director Sven-Eric Bechtolf presents this storm of emotions to the Salzburg Festival in the very model of…

“A fresh, charming and perceptive production, magical and irresistible!” (New York Times) “All narrative and poetry is nothing but the key to true dreams” (Hans Sachs). Spontaneously emerging from just such a truthful dream by the cobbler-poet on…