The Japanese pianist Aki Takase is a veritable typhoon of power and clarity. Her playing shows what can happen when the European rules of melody, harmony and rhythm come face to face with a distinctly Asian way of thinking!

Junko Onishi is one of the most exciting new discoveries of 'Blue Note'. Her imaginative interpretations of music from Duke Ellington to Sonny Rollins, together with her own compositions, have shown her to be a virtuoso pianist and composer of…

Widely accepted as a leading authority on Baroque music, Ton Koopman conducts J.S. Bach's Magnificat BWV 243. Performed by the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir joined by soloists Deborah Yorck (soprano), Bogna Bartosz (alto), Jörg Dürmüller…

Little Red Riding Hood begins, like all fairy tales, with: "Once upon a time..." For children of all ages the composer Georges Aperghis imagined a tale in music and movement: he chose the very first version written by Charles Perrault almost 300…

René Pape is a star who represents like no other a new generation of opera singers: casual and up-to-date in appearance, hungry for new challenges and open to ambitious experiments. In the musical film My Heart Is Burning René Pape sings and plays…

A 45-minute feature on the subject "love", taking as an example the relationships between Clara and Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms. The film presents Hélène Grimaud playing excerpts from Schumann's Piano Concerto with the Staatskapelle Dresden…

Almost no musical work has had such a powerful influence or evoked as much controversy as Igor Stravinsky's ballet score “The Rite of Spring”. The work's premiere on May 29, 1913, at the Théatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, was scandalous. The…

Robert Schumann’s famous piano concerto is not a traditional virtuoso showpiece but a cooperative venture between the soloist and the orchestra. This new relationship transported the piano concerto into the realm of symphonic music. The German…

The Concerto for Orchestra by Bela Bartok is one of the most frequently performed works of the twentieth century. The French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez explains how he interpreted this composition with the Berlin Philharmonic. He also…

Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony has the character of an appeal. From the very start, the four-note “fate” motif casts a spell on listeners. The German Beethoven expert Wulf Konold illustrates the ingenious variations of this motif on piano…