A drummer-turned-composer, Steve Reich has produced some of the most vibrant, original and interesting music of our time, with influences as varied as Bach, Stravinsky, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Balinese and Ghanaian percussion. His technique…

Discover Larry Weinstein’s award-winning film “Shostakovich Against Stalin – The War Symphonies”. Described by Shostakovich as his “tombstones for the victims of Stalin”, Symphonies 4 to 9 represented the composer’s weapons against tyranny and remain…

The film "Shadows in Paradise" portrays the vibrant atmosphere of the Los Angeles German-speaking exile community during the 1930s and 1940s, revealing their struggles, frustrations and achievements. By 1939 tens of thousands of intellectuals and…

The setting of the opera Cavalleria Rusticana by the Italian composer Pietro Mascagni (based on the novella of the same name by Giovanni Verga), is regarded as the birth of a new style in Italian opera, "verismo", which gained great popularity…

In a little street in Brussels, two identical buildings stand together. In one of these buildings lives the famous concert pianist Martha Argerich. Next door we find the Tiempo – Lechner family, renowned by their lineage of piano prodigies. The…

Violinist, composer and conductor, living through two world wars, caught between east and west, capitalism and communism: The remarkable and glittering life of German artist Paul Dessau is more than a good story – it cries out for the medium of film…

This DVD is a documentary of Heinz Holliger, the leading oboist of our day. As a composer Holliger has become a classic exponent of musical modernism, while as an oboist and conductor he is one of the most inspirational figures on the contemporary…

Samba is more than dance and lascivious hip movements. Samba is also word, language, text, lyrics or simply said a certain way of life. The composer and singer Martinho da Vila is guiding us through today’s world of Samba and we meet with his Samba…

Nikolai Lugansky, already a major artist, has been hailed by his former teacher Tatiana Nikolajeva as the “next” in a line of great Russian pianists. He has been described as “a pianistic phenomenon of exceptional class” by the Netherlands’ NRC…

Songs of Love and Desire was the theme of the 1998 New Year's Eve concert of the Berlin Philharmonic under the musical direction of Claudio Abbado. Christine Schäfer, Simon Keenlyside, and Marcelo Àlvarez excelled in famous arias and scenes from…