The collection “Classic Archive” presents great performances by legendary artists, remastered using the latest digital technology and enhanced with commentary for today’s audiences. These jewels of music broadcasting have been salvaged from various…

David Fray’s sparkling talent is such that he is one of the few pianists of the new generation to have signed an exclusive recording contract recently with one of the current majors, Virgin Classics. In January 2008 he recorded a programme entirely…

Inspired by the Tea Ceremony, Tan Dun, the contemporary Chinese composer living in New York, wrote the opera “Tea”. Tea is a tragic love-story set against the background of Chanoyu, the Japanese tea ritual. In “Tea”, Tan Dun combines Eastern and…

A dim light picks out the outlines of the hall. Suddenly a massive shadow appears and moves swiftly over to the keyboard, the only brightly lit surface to stand out from the large coffin-like box in the centre of the stage. There follows the vaguest…

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s Master Class at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is one of the most famous lieder singers of his generation. He is greatly admired for his interpretive insight, note-perfect control of the tonal…

Little Red Riding Hood begins, like all fairy tales, with: "Once upon a time..." For children of all ages the composer Georges Aperghis imagined a tale in music and movement: he chose the very first version written by Charles Perrault almost 300…

Famous music filmmaker Bruno Monsaingeon devoted a whole cycle of concert films to David Oistrakhs musical legacy. He collected recordings from all over the world with him as a soloist with an orchestra and as a chamber musician. The concerts were…

In 1741 Johann Sebastian Bach published the fourth and last volume of his most extensive keyboard publication, the Clavier-Übung: an aria and thirty variations known universally as the ‘Goldberg’ Variations. This monumental work, which is about…

At the age of 20, Robert Schumann decided to dedicate himself to music. He became one of the greatest composers of the romanticism. This documentary covers Schumann’s life from 1828 until his early death in 1856. Excerpts of productions with Leonard…

“… it goes without saying that Franz Liszt cannot be a quiet piano player for quiet state burghers and cosy sleepyheads". This is how Heinrich Heine assesses Franz Liszt's public position. The Sonata in B minor, written in 1852/53 and considered one…