Towards the end of 1976 Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman made a European tour together, playing duos for two violins and for violin and viola with Zukerman playing the viola part. The tour began with a concert in the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in…

A series of recitals by the master pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy at a new peak in his career. Both his audiences and the critics have been aware in recent years of new dimensions in Ashkenazy's playing. This may stem in part from his broadening…

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…

Vladimir Ashkenazy has had a particular affection for the music of Rachmaninoff throughout his professional life, and his performances have long had the ring both of authenticity and of deep commitment. This is not surprising in a Russian-born and…

On the 17th of June 1986 Nathan Milstein, who was 82 years old at the time, gave his last public recital. It was a historic occasion and it took place 72 years after his famous first appearance in Leopold Auer's violin class in St Petersburg in 1914…

“Trifonov has everything and more. What he does with his hands is both technically and musically unbelievable. And then there is his touch — so gifted with tenderness and at the same time he has the demonic element. I have never heard anything like…

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…

In her native Georgia, Lisa Batiashvili performs one of the most difficult and beloved works for her instrument, Brahms's Violin Concerto. Under the baton of Daniel Harding, the Berliner Philharmoniker close out this concert with Beethoven's Fifth…