El Sistema is a network of children’s and youth orchestras, music centres and workshops in Venezuela, in which more than 250,000 children and young people are currently learning to play an instrument. It was set up over thirty years ago by José…

For more than six decades, Pierre Boulez has had greater influence on the development of contemporary music than anyone else. Already in younger days, he gained a reputation as a doughty champion of the avant-garde. With his compositions…

Renowned throughout the world for his passionately committed performances of Western classical masterpieces, Lang Lang now returns to his Eastern roots with this ground-breaking album of Chinese music recorded in Beijing Lang Lang performs piano…

In retrospect, the solo version of Strawinsky’s Sacre du Printemps can be interpreted as a bleak, oppressive dance about his own life. The ballet is one of the late works by Uwe Scholz, one of the most important choreographers of the twentieth…

In his late years, Sergiu Celibidache (1912-1996) focused his attention on one particular composer: Anton Bruckner. In March 1991 he rehearsed Bruckner´s Ninth in unusually long and intense sessions with the Munich Philharmonics. Using unpublished…

This series of TV programmes presents the very best of the 16th Verbier Festival with worldwide renowned artists such as Martha Argerich, Mischa Maisky, René Pape, Joshua Bell and Philippe Jaroussky. Together with Malcom Martineau on the piano, the…

An unmatchable highlight of the Mozart year is the Festkonzert from Salzburg. A Gala concert with the Wiener Philharmoniker under Riccardo Muti and stars of the highest calibre such as Thomas Hampson (baritone), Gidon Kremer (violin), Yuri Bashmet…

Performed in the grandeur of Berlin's foremost opera house, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, the Mozart Celebration is dedicated to the life's work of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This one-time-only gala concert features exuberant Mozart pieces…

In October and November 2010, Valery Sokolov recorded the Tchaikovsky Concerto and the Bartok second Concerto for Virgin Classics with the Tonhalle-Orchester-Zürich conducted by David Zinman, in the Tonhalle Great Hall. On this occasion, Bruno…

The composer of Hansel and Gretel, Engelbert Humperdinck, was born in Germany in 1854. In the 1890s, his sister, Adelheid Wette, had written a libretto based on the Grimm fairy tale, and asked her brother to set it to music as a Christmas…