The earth on which we live silently remembers the catastrophies of our history but if we listen to the silence of the earth it will remind us of the fate of others who lived before us and from whose suffering we may yet learn. A television film by…

Waltz, a revolutionary thing? Historically, it was the first dance having couples clasping each other, men and women hugging, whirling to the rhythm of its music to the point of giddiness and rapture. A dance with a triple time rhythm both simple and…

German composer Richard Wagner was notoriously anti-Semitic, and his writings on Jews were later embraced by Hitler and the Nazis. But there is another, lesser-known side to this story. For years, many of Wagner‘s closest associates were Jews - young…

Waltraud Meier‘s talent, perfectionism, charisma, unmatched stage presence, text studies and complete devotion to the art of singing have not only made her one of the greatest opera singers of our time, but also one of the most significant performers…

«Voyage to Cythera» is a documentary about Luciano Berio's composition Sinfonia. The film concentrates on the third part of the composition, which consists of a number of musical quotes from composers like Mahler, Stravinsky, Boulez, Schönberg and…

Following the success of King Arthur, which was presented at major European festivals, Vox Luminis is discovering Henry Purcell's "The Fairy Queen", a semi-opera in five acts written for the Dorset Garden in 1692. The dramatic plot of the work is…

Beautiful Renaissance music comes to life through your screen. Vox Luminis perform a selection of renaissance motets. Besides Latin works by, among others, the two greatest composers of the second half of the 16th century -Tallis and Byrd-, there are…

Haendel composed only episodically for the church: the Dixit Dominus is a psalm written during his stay in Rome, based on the Venetian models with borrowed Gregorian singing. We are stroke by the wealth of the words we hear: emotion pierces the mind…

Charpentier’s most famous Te Deum – he wrote four – overawes in exultant D Major, with an eight-part ensemble and show-stealing trumpets and timpani. It is no great surprise then that this work – and especially its instrumental prelude – became a hit…

On the 8th of June 1968 Vladimir Ashkenazy, with his Icelandic wife and their two children, arrived at their new home in Reykjavik in Iceland. It was a crucial moment in their lives. They had left the Soviet Union, with the help of Nikita Kruschev…