Claudio Abbado has realised a dream with his new Lucerne Festival Orchestra. The orchestra, an exclusive ensemble of handpicked orchestral musicians, opens up new dimensions in the interpretation of symphonic music with exceptional soloists such as…

In 2005, the Staatsoper Berlin and its orchestra, the Staatskapelle Berlin under musical director Daniel Barenboim, celebrated a series of events to celebrate the 80th birthday of French conductor and composer Pierre Boulez. Artistically associated…

The artists list on this DVD reads like a Who’s Who of the best international jazz musicians of all times. It features Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins – musicians whose names have become synonymous with…

A rehearsal under the Austrian conductor Karl Böhm (1894-1981) was a prospect that prompted distinctly mixed feelings among orchestral musicians in Vienna, Berlin, Bayreuth and New York. He was an uncompromising, expert orchestral trainer and an…

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…

Martha Argerich has long been hailed as one of the greatest and most uniquely imaginative pianists. She is most admired for the pure joy of her music-making and her individual approach to each work, each situation and each audience. A wild child and…

Zubin Mehta, at the age of only twenty-six, became the youngest person ever to head a major American orchestra, and in sixteen years as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic he elevated the orchestra to international top rank. These…

Who would have thought it? An American orchestra performing in North Korea! Hundreds of millions watched this historic New York Philharmonic concert on television in February 2008 and for a few hours the cold war hostilities seemed to be forgotten…

In November 2004 a new name caused listeners to prick up their ears on the international orchestral scene: under Claudio Abbado’s artistic guidance the Orchestra Mozart came into being. It combines both young instrumentalists on the threshold of a…

Claudio Abbado once remarked that, “With Beethoven, you never stop learning“ and indeed: the 75-year-old Milanese maestro has constantly reworked the symphonies of the master from Bonn (1770-1827). With this box containing all nine Beethoven…