As their personal tribute to Mozart in his anniversary year 2006, Gil & Orli Shaham performed a selection of violin sonatas by the Austrian master in the Palais Daun-Kinsky in Vienna. Brimming with energy and bravery, tempered only by a deep…

The Meistersaal Sessions are a 6-part series of chamber music theme concerts with the Freigeist Ensemble at the legendary Meistersaal Berlin, conducted by Joolz Gale. The series starts with arrangements of Schönberg, Strauss and Mahler. In…

Koroliov’s performances of Bach’s music usually arouse great excitement and his rendering of Bach’s famous 30 variations is no exception. Koroliov is a consummate artist and he captivates his listeners with an enormous spiritual understanding of the…

The Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival is renowned for an exceptional repertoire as well as unique meetings with first-ranking soloists who do not usually meet each other on one stage in other contexts. The Festival has achieved…

Sir Simon Rattle conducts the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra & State Opera Choir The French Baroque opera Hippolyte et Aricie carries its audience away into a world of wonder with magnificent dance and choir scenes and an astonishing variety of musical…

The Hagen Quartett is regarded internationally as one of the foremost string quartets. Their mentors included stars such as Harnoncourt and Kremer. Having played together since their childhood (the three siblings), the musicians combine exceptional…

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…

A dim light picks out the outlines of the hall. Suddenly a massive shadow appears and moves swiftly over to the keyboard. There follows the vaguest of unsmiling acknowledgements in the general direction of the audience, and then the music begins…

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…

Gidon Kremer is one of the most headstrong and original artists in the music business and has been hailed once by Herbert von Karajan as the world’s best violinist. His return to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partitas was a major event. Kremer’s first…