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…

Giacomo Puccini honours his own code by bringing all those elements together in a single work, Il trittico, which is made up of three one-act operas. Finding the right librettos was not easy, but one month after the end of the First World War, his…

The concert prepared by Jakub Hruša and the world-famous pianist Daniil Trifonov starts with Scriabin’s brilliant Piano Concerto. For the second half of the concert they perform Josef Suk’s iconic Asrael Symphony. “In the case of the Piano Concerto…

When painter Gustav Klimt coated his famous paintings with gold leaf, Richard Strauss musically reveled in the opulence that was so typical of Vienna at the time. No fewer than five powerful Wagnerian voices are needed for his "Die Frau ohne Schatten…

The Italian composer Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) died before he could complete his final opera Turandot. Fortunately, his lesser-known colleague Franco Alfano managed to use the maestro's notes to complete the opera in time for its April 26, 1926…

Celebrating democracy, freedom and non-violence, the Czech Philharmonic’s concert to mark the Velvet Revolution was presented for the first time in 2020. Taking place every year on 17 November – both the day the then Czechoslovak riot police brutally…