In 2011 the Berliner Philharmoniker and their musical director Sir Simon Rattle welcomed in the New Year with a gala concert entitled ‘Dances & Dreams’. Spinetingling and inspiring performances of music by Dvorˇák, Ravel, Richard Strauss, Stravinsky…

The Classic Archive collection presents two unreleased performances filmed by BBC television in 1977: celebrated pianist Martha Argerich plays Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3. and the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1. Both pieces are technically…

Baritone Matthias Goerne, soprano Chen Reiss, cellist Eric Picard and violinist Philippe Aïche come together at Paris’s renowned Salle Pleyel for a concert of Fauré’s works for chorus and orchestra. They are joined by the Orchestre de Paris under the…

The French pianist, Adam Laloum, winner of the 2009 Clara Haskilag competition, is quickly becoming an international star, described by Le Monde as ‘a young pianist, yet already a great artist and poet’. Age is certainly no barrier for Laloum, who…

The Argentine pianist Martha Argerich has been dazzling audiences for decades with what the New York Times has referred to as ‘prodigious technique with uncanny musicality.’ She is now a regular of the artistic family at the popular Verbier Festival…

Claudio Arrau was considered the complete pianist because he went beyond mere technique, and took listeners into the mind of the composer as if he were a medium through whom the composer was speaking. He was therefore known universally as ‘The…

Major stars of the international opera stage come together with the Chor und Orchester of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, under the baton of the illustrious Kent Nagano, in this opera gala in aid of the German AIDS Foundation. Highlights from operas by…

Gioacchino Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle was written in 1863, "the last", the composer called it, of my "péchés de vieillesse" (sins of old age). For its first performance (1864) Rossini arranged the work with only two pianos and harmonium…

The charismatic and inspiring Claudio Abbado and the magnificent mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená, with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, hold the audience spellbound in this live recording from Lucerne Festival in Summer. Mahler’s five Rückert-Lieder –…

Vladimir Ashkenazy directs the highly acclaimed Chamber Orchestra of Europe and virtuoso violinist Valeriy Sokolov in this remarkable programme of Finnish works combined with Schumann's uplifting Symphony No. 2. Ashkenazy has particularly been…