“The boy with the Wig - Kids on Mozart” shows the fascination of the children for Mozart. In the 30-minute film children have the podium: boys and girls aged between eight and eleven recount Mozart’s life in their own words. In this way, an at times…

Traditional Jazz has never been associated with Europe. Miles, Dizzy and Charlie Parker stand for the great era in Jazz, but who knows Miroslav Vitous, Pierre Michelot, Krzysztof Komeda, Palle Mikkelborg, Tomasz Stanko, or René Urtreger? „Play Your…

Even a master like Mozart does not fall from the heavens. With all his divine genius, he was born into a particular environment and was decisively formed here from his childhood and youth. "Mozart in Salzburg" makes the Composer's Salzburg years…

The best way to get through the streets of the metropolis of Mexico City is with one of the famous green Volkswagen Beetle Taxis. In this city of 18 million people, Tenor Rolando Villazón was born. With a look somewhere between latin lover and Mr…

The Symphony No. 5 by Gustav Mahler is arguably the best known Mahler symphony. The musical canvas and emotional scope of the work are huge. Herbert von Karajan said once that when you hear Mahler's Fifth, “you forget that time has passed. A great…

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…

No composer before Mahler had ever devoted himself exclusively to two genres so apparently incompatible as the intimate lied and the grandiose symphony. Thus it is fascinating in “Das Lied von der Erde” to see him combining, at this late stage of his…

Debussy’s “La Mer” is a masterpiece of suggestion and subtlety in its rich depiction of the ocean. Several authors have claimed that “La Mer” sounds like nothing before it. As a specialist in French Impressionism, the British pianist and writer Paul…

The Surprise Symphony is the best known of the over 100 symphonies by Haydn. Its second movement is the most popular and gave the symphony its name: legend has it that the sudden beat of the timpani was meant to rouse members of the audience who had…

One of the world's finest and most-respected conductors, seventy-year-old Claudio Abbado is legendary in stature, having held the post of musical director with La Scala in Milan from 1968 to 1986, with the Vienna Opera from 1986 to 1991, and the…