The moving text of the “Stabat Mater” has been an inspiration to many composers from the Renaissance onwards. Luigi Boccherini, a virtuoso cellist and master of chamber music, composed this religious work with profound respect for the text and it’s…

The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra’s annual summer concert at the Waldbühne in Berlin is legendary. The Millenium concert, recorded live on 25 June 2000, gathered more than 22.000 people in one of the most appealing outdoor amphitheatres in Europe for…

The two films on this DVD combine some of the most demanding chamber works ever written. Recorded at the atmospheric Academy of Sciences in Budapest, the Keller Quartet plays a version of Bach’s unfinished masterpiece The Art of the Fugue for string…

Alfred Brendel is arguably the most outstanding modern exponent of Schubert's piano music currently before the public. He is capable of bringing not only the verve of this music but also its poetic intensity and intellectual depth to life with a…

Verdi first presented his Messa da Requiem in the Church of San Marco. It was his emotional response to the death of the Italian national poet Alessandro Manzoni. He poured his entire dramatic skill, the fruit of thirty years of theatrical work, into…

Waltraud Meier is “La Wagnerissima”, the queen of Wagner’s repertoire. In her very personal account “I follow a voice within me”, we enter her world and learn about her motivations, aspirations, and her joyful way of pursuing them. In addition to…

Conducting Mahler : The film documents the interpretations of Gustav Mahler's compositions by conductors Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Chailly, Riccardo Muti, Claudio Abbado and Simon Rattle, who detail the special relationship they have with Mahler's…

The Kuijken Ensemble, made up of the three Belgian Kuijken brothers on flute, violin and viola da gamba and the harpsichordist Robert Kohnen count among the most distinguished of all present-day early-music specialists. They have long since branched…

This recording presents the most important work of the baroque keyboard repertoire – The Well-Tempered Clavier - played by four world-class pianists. Each artist performs twelve Preludes and Fugues selected from this well-cherished collection of…

We live in a “renaissance of the piano”, as the New York Times so surprisingly put it in summer 2005. A new generation is reviving the piano’s popularity as pianists with a passion for virtuosity and a willingness to expand their repertoire take to…