For its 14th edition, the Verbier Festival has once again brought together the most prestigious artists in classical music. This series of 12 TV programmes presents the highlights of Verbier 2007.

The Europa Concert 2008 took place in the Tchaikovsky Conservatory of Moscow. The Berliner Philharmoniker under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle have been heard with works by Stravinsky, Bruch and Beethoven. Soloist is the Russian Violin player Vadim…

Movies are the resolution of a conflict between light and shadows. Light reveals truth and shadows obscure it, with a broad base of tonality in between. These six Bach sonatas have been recorded in one of Germany’s most beautiful Baroque halls in…

The Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Claudio Abbado performed a Russian night at Lucerne. Tchaikovsky’s symphonic poem The Tempest is based on the famous play by Shakespeare and shares many similarities in musical structure with Tchaikowsky’s better…

Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 8 in C minor is the last Symphony the composer completed. When Bruckner sent it in 1897 to Hermann Levi, the conductor who had lead his 7th to great success, he did not understand this very different work at all and…

In August of 2007, Anne-Sophie Mutter performed the world premiere of Sofia Gubaidulina's 2nd violin concerto in Lucerne with conductor Sir Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker. This piece by the Russian composer (born in 1931) is an…

For its 14th edition, the Verbier Festival has once again brought together the most prestigious artists in classical music. This series of 12 TV programmes presents the highlights of Verbier 2007.

The Symphony No. 5 in E minor by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was composed between May and August 1888. It was first performed, under Tchaikovsky's own baton, in St Petersburg on November 6, 1888. While composing the symphony, Tchaikovsky constantly…

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…

“We are not a couple in the traditional sense. And that is exactly what is so paradoxical – a musical couple can become even more intimate with one another than a couple in love”. This is how Gidon Kremer describes his long partnership with Martha…