With its recordings of Mozart’s string quartets Nos. 14 to 19, the Hagen Quartet exhibits some of the composer’s most refined compositional thinking and a remarkably wide range of emotions. These quartets were composed in the early 1780s and served…

When Korean composer Unsuk Chin’s opera was first performed by the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, it caused a sensation among music critics worldwide. Based on Lewis Carroll’s famous and fascinatingly enigmatic novel Alice in Wonderland, it is a…

“And the Beethoven! They played Beethoven differently from the way Beethoven had been played before!” Said the composer William Schuman, then president of New York’s Juilliard School of Music, who initiated the Juilliard String Quartet as a resident…

The Merry Widow (Die Lustige Witwe) had its premiere at Vienna's Theater an der Wien in 1905. The operetta, which tells the story of a wealthy widow in search of a new husband was a major success for its composer Franz Lehár (1870-1948) and quickly…

Riccardo Muti’s conducting of one of Mozart’s most beloved operas was hailed in the press for its “freshness, rapidity and wit” and for “its wonderfully balanced rollercoaster of emotions”. Muti’s authoritative approach to Mozart’s music and the…

A fascinating production of La Traviata formed this year’s opera highlight at one of Europe’s most important open-air festivals: the Opera Festival St. Margarethen. The dazzling production, set in a rustically romantic Roman quarry, already boasts…

Regarded as one of the world’s greatest living composers, Hans Werner Henze (born 1926) is ’particularly well known for his works for the stage. He composed one of his great successes, the comic opera Der junge Lord (The Young Lord) to a libretto by…

As a very young man, Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) wrote several humorous one-act operas. These so-called “farse giocose“ are full of saucy elegance, sizzling wittiness, cheeky orchestration and touching lyricism. Four of these gems, filmed at the…

This legendary quartet has been the authority on Russian string quartet repertoire for more than 60 years. Founded in 1945 and renamed in 1955 after Russian chamber music composer Alexander Borodin, the quartet was so sought after, already in their…

Richard Strauss (1864–1949) has, of course, always been a very special favourite at the Dresden Opera because many of his works were premiered there, most famously his Rosenkavalier in 1911. As if the world knew that this was to be the last important…