ECHO Klassik Winner, Best Music Documentary – Featuring artists and contemporary witnesses like Helmut Schmidt, Peter Schreier, Kurt Masur, Theo Adam, Otmar Suitner, Jochen Kowalski, Christine Mielitz, Siegfried Matthus, Walter Felsenstein and many more. – Like all other areas of art, classical music it was instrumentalized for ideological purposes, and its protagonists provided they displayed the …
A towering monument to our world and to the appalling mess we have made of it, is how director Tony Palmer describes Henryk Górecki’s phenomenally successful Symphony No. 3. Palmer overlays a performance by the London Sinfonietta and soprano Dawn Upshaw, conducted by David Zinman, with harrowing footage of man’s crimes against his fellow man from …
The Shostakovich Cycle- Complete Syphonies & Concertos [Box Set] [Blu-ray]
Nobody is better suited to undertake such a challenge than Valery Gergiev and his Mariinsky Orchestra. Over a period of a year all 15 Symphonies and 6 Concertos have been recorded at Salle Pleyel in Paris. What an adventure for the artists and the big production team! Never before in the history of television has something like this …
On December 19, 1968 Václav Neumann conducted his first Czech Philharmonic concert as Chief Conductor, a relationship that successfully continued for 22 years, ending in September 1990. In this Prague concert from 1986, Neumann and the Czech Philharmonic present symphonic works by their compatriots Antonín Dvoák and Leo Janáek, both composers part of the orchestras longstanding tradition, …
Mahler: Symphony No. 4 at Concertgebouw Amsterdam, 1982 [Blu-ray]
This live concert of Gustav Mahlers Fourth Symphony finds the revered and sought-after conductor Bernard Haitink at the podium leading an orchestra with nearly a century of distinguished performance history and dedication to Mahler, beginning with Willem Mengelberg, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. The American soprano Maria Ewing is featured in the works glorious Das himmlische Leben finale. …
Carl Maria von Weber: Missa Sancta No. 1 in E flat; Joseph Haydn: Missa Sanctae Caeciliae [Blu-ray]
Thanks to its creation at the very same time as his famous opera Der Freischütz Carl Maria von Webers Missa Sancta No. 1 (1818) is also known as the Freischutzmesse. In 1986, Horst Stein, longtime principal conductor of the Bamberg Symphony, revived this rarely performed work in concert with soloists Krisztina Laki, Marga Schiml, Josef Protschka and …
The Dutch conductor and recorder player Frans Bruggen, who died in 2014, based the structure of his fifty-plus member Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, specialists in the music of that era, upon the famous luxury orchestras that flourished in Mannheim, Paris and Vienna in the 18th c. This rendition of Beethovens Third Symphony, the Eroica, recorded live …
This 1988 live recording of Gustav Mahlers Das Lied von der Erde features Sir Colin Davis conducting the BRSO. Mr. Davis was the orchestras principal conductor from 1983-93. Mezzo-soprano Doris Soffel has earned an international reputation as one of the finest interpreters of Mahlers works, while American tenor Kenneth Riegel has for decades been a regular …
The reputation of the outstandingly accomplished, two-time Grammy® Award winning Kings Singers ensemble is firmly established throughout Europe and America. They have become well-known for the excellence of their singing and for their unique and wide-ranging repertoire that encompasses all kinds of music from the Beatles to Bach. In this 6-part Madrigal History Tour the Kings …
William Walton: Gala Concert at Royal Festival Hall, London 1982 [Blu-ray]
Sir William Walton (1902-83) is of one of Britains best-loved and most important 20th c. composers. His work covers several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera. Recorded live at Londons Royal Festival Hall, in Waltons presence, the London Concert features three of Waltons most famous works: Coronation March: Orb and Sceptre, Concerto for Violin …