Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Thelonious Monk... these names are synonymous with the great Jazz Age. But how many people know Alfred Lion and Frank Wolff, to whom we owe the recorded memory of our Jazz legends? Two German…

A television film about a single work, Modest Mussorgski’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”. Written as a tribute to a lost friend, Victor Alexandrovich Hartmann, it is a strange and moving masterpiece which has become Mussorgski’s most popular work. It…

1970 was the 200th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth and, to mark the occasion, Daniel Barenboim and Christopher Nupen collaborated on a thirteen-part series about the man and his music. Close friends at the time, Barenboim as artist and…

A film about the pioneering career of Christopher Nupen, who founded one of the first independent production companies in the 1960s, at the dawn of the music documentary era. Seizing upon the emerging camera technology and his unique access to a…

In the historic Weimar Herder Church Sir John Eliot Gardiner finds the perfect setting for his recording of the Bach Christmas Oratorio. Against the backdrop of the dramatic altar and Lucas Granach paintings, the Monteverdi Choir and the English…

Herbert Blomstedt appears with the Gewandhaus Orchestra for the last time as the Gewandhaus Music Director in this recording. After seven successful years in Leipzig, the maestro performs a work in the Thomas Church that is especially dear to him…

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…

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…

The Nobel Prize Concert 2008 offers fantastic performers: Sir John Eliot Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir, together with Eric Ericson Chamber Choir and the Scandinavian singers Miah Persson, soprano, Ann Hallenberg, alto, Helge Rönning, tenor, and…

In this colourful documentary, East meets West at the Morgenland Festival Osnabrück 2009. Musicians from the Middle East encounter the Western tradition of music and showcase their own beautiful musical traditions, in a programme that interweaves…