Jacqueline du Pré caught the public imagination when she was still in her teens. That happened not only because she was one the finest performing musicians that Britain has ever produced - one of the very finest - but because she had a quality that…

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…

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…

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…

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…