Alfred Brendel is arguably the most outstanding exponent of Schubert’s piano music currently before the public, a man capable of bringing to vibrant life both the verve of this music as well as its poetic intensity and intellectual depth. In this…

L´occasione fa il ladro is one of the five one-act operas - farsa giocosa - in which the teenage Rossini first demonstrated his operatic genius. This farce about arranged marriages, role reversals and other amorous confusions is, in musical terms, by…

Requiring 38 soloists, chorus and large orchestra, Hans Pfitzner’s Palestrina is a challenging opera to stage. In Munich, the city in which it was given its world premiere in 1917, director Christian Stückl and the Bavarian State Opera met those…

Il matrimonio segreto is Cimarosa's most famous opera buffa and it is one of the few comic operas to have maintained its place in the repertoire until today. At its first performance in 1792, Austrian emperor Leopold II is reputed to have liked this…

”Classic Archive“ is a new series featuring music DVDs of legendary artists, thus offering – at a sensational mid-range price - a unique view of our classical music heritage. Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997), who, without exaggeration, can easily be…

Composed when he was just twenty-four, Agrippina was Handel’s first theatrical success and is a sparkling example of his early work. It is full of his fresh, exuberantly inventive music and employs one of the finest librettos with which George…

Surely Bach’s French Suites, which he composed during his years at Cöthen (1717–1723), are among the finest inducements to practise that any teacher has ever made to a pupil. In this case Bach wrote them for his young wife, Anna Magdalena. The over…

In his position as the king’s composer, Jean Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) created the opera Persée for Louis XIV. The opera was considered the crowning achievement of 17th century French music theatre and was widely recognized as Lully’s greatest work…

Nikolai Lugansky, already a major artist, has been hailed by his former teacher Tatiana Nikolajeva as the “next” in a line of great Russian pianists. He has been described as “a pianistic phenomenon of exceptional class” by the Netherlands’ NRC…

Max Raabe and his Palast Orchester give dance and film Music from the 1920s and 1930s a rousing revival. They specialise in recreating the sound of the 1920s and 1930s, performing songs by the Comedian Harmonists, Robert Stolz, Friedrich Hollaender…