They are one-of-a-kind and they are known all over the world: the 12 Cellisten der Berliner Philharmoniker (the Twelve Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic). Their concerts offer the audience the chance to experience the ensemble’s instrumental…

No-one did more to expand the audience for opera than the tenor Luciano Pavarotti. He reconnected an elite art-form with popular audiences throughout the world, through his unashamed enthusiasm for life and his unique ability to communicate to vast…

How did artists survive in the Soviet Union? How tricky did they have to be in the face of authorities? What kind of danger and difficulties did they have to fear? Sviatoslav Richter and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky talk about authorities, watchdogs and…

The mother through the daughter’s eyes - a family portrait blending intimate conversations, agreements and disagreements, and shred ties of sounds and blood. This intimate portrait of two musical giants by Martha Argerich’s daughter Stéphanie has…

From 1982 to 1992 Frank Scheffer worked with John Cage on many different occasions, which resulted in a unique archive of historical audio-visual material. Based on this unique archive, including interviews, musical performances and images of…

In 2003, after a career spanning nearly forty years, Julia Varady discreetly retired from the public stage. She now dedicates her time to teaching. While for most great singers the transition from performing to teaching generally follows signs of…

This film is about the life of a composer creating in the darkness of a tragic era. As we will see, like most Soviet citizens, Khachaturian hid a complex private life behind a mask of Communist loyalty. Khachaturian was the President of the powerful…

In the fifties, Pierre Henry provoked a scandal by inventing Musique Concrète with Pierre Schaeffer. Music was no longer written with notes on a score for instrumentalists but was based on sounds and noises from our environment., collected, edited…

Only rarely do musicians win fame as great interpreters of everything they touch. However, the Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau was one such virtuoso. Like his great predecessors Liszt and Busoni, Arrau was renowned for reaching to the stylistic core of…

This up-to-date documentary about Felix Mendelssohn is based on the original letters of the composer and his sister Fanny, combined with numerous evocative period images. Through a blend of music and words, the most distinguished Mendelssohn…