Beethoven - Symphony No. 7

Robots live alongside mankind in a not too distant future, but are they really living?

Known for his mournful "Adagio for Strings," Samuel Barber was never quite fashionable. This acclaimed film is a probing exploration of his music and melancholia. Performance, oral history, musicology, and biography combine to explore the life and music of one of America’s greatest composers. Features Thomas Hampson, Leonard Slatkin, Marin Alsop and many more of the world's leading experts on Barber's music, with tributes from composers Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and William Schuman. The film was broadcast on PBS, and screened at nine film festivals internationally, with three best-of awards. It was named a Recording of the Year 2017 by MusicWeb International.

After the great success of his Beethoven cycle, Christian Thielemann now turns with his new orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, to the symphonic work of Johannes Brahms. Bonus features include: an extensive 52 minute interview with Christian Thielemann on Brahms' Symphonies and provides and in-depth look into his interpretation of Brahms.

The grand scale and magnificent acoustics of the Roman arena in Verona are ideally suited to the pageantry of Verdi's Egyptian opera, presented here in a staging that is true to the original 1913 production, framed by obelisks and sphinxes and filled with chorus and dancers. Chinese soprano Hui He has won international acclaim for her portrayal of the eponymous slave girl whose forbidden love for the war hero Radamés (Marco Berti, the experienced Verdi tenor) brings death to them both.

No doubt, Sir Georg Solti was one of the most auratic maestros of the past century. Being a real master of the orchestra he inevitably impressed his great visions of sound and interpretation upon the musicians and the audience. These rare black and white documentations produced in 1966 and 1968 show how Solti's amiable insistence in rehearsal with the Süddeutsche Rundfunk Sinfonie Orchester Stuttgart turns Wagner's Tannhäuser Overture and Berlioz' Hungarian March into sharpened and haunting performances.

The film covers a hundred years in the lives of the Ricordi family, the Milan publishing house of the title, and the various composers and other historic personalities, whose careers intersected with the growth of the Ricordi house. It beautifully draws the parallel between the great music of the composers, the historic and social upheavals of their times, as well as the "smaller stories" of the successive generations of Ricordi.

Lyrical biography of the classical composer, depicted as a romantic hero, an accursed artist.

Leonard Bernstein filmed Piano Concertos 3, 4, and 5 in 1989, but did not live to film the first two. He died in 1990. So Krystian Zimerman, the pianist, paid tribute to Bernstein and rounded out the set in 1991 by both playing and conducting Concertos 1 and 2.

For the first 18 years of her life, Mozart’s sister shared equal billing with her brother. Musical partners and collaborators, Wolfgang Mozart and Maria-Anna Mozart played together before Kings and Queens, and were the talk of Europe. What happened to her? Forced into retirement by age 16 because she was a woman, a stunning new investigation explores why she was retired against her will and the explosive theory: did Maria-Anna Mozart continue to compose in secret?

The renowned orchestra presents the world's biggest annual classical open air concert live from their hometown Vienna, Austria on Thursday, May 29th, 2014. The Summer Night Concert with the Vienna Philharmonic is an annual open-air event that takes place in the magical setting of the Schönbrunn Palace Park in Vienna with the palace as a magnificent backdrop. Everyone is invited to come to this unique occasion with free admission. Each year up to 100,000 people can take up the invitation, or enjoy on radio and TV in over 60 countries.

Utterly astounding, iridescent sand animation from Aleksandra Korejwo based around Bizet's Carmen.

Distinguished Bach specialist Sir András Schiff returned to the BBC Proms in 2018 to present Book II of The Well-Tempered Clavier. Bach's effortless brilliance and new-found sonorities push harmony and counterpoint further than ever with a combination of ancient and modern styles, church austerity and galant lightness. Schiff has said that no-one combines the sacred and the secular as Bach does, and this is comprehensively demonstrated in Bach's fascinating and challenging sequence. This performance in the Royal Albert Hall was described as a musical meditation for our troubled times by the Independent.

The Triple Concerto is one of Beethoven's less frequently performed works - probably also because it requires three soloists and makes considerable demands on them. ARTE presents the Concerto for Violin, Violoncello, Piano and Orchestra in C major at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, performed by an excellent trio of soloists. It is accompanied by the Gewandhaus Orchestra under the direction of Herbert Blomstedt.

Beethoven’s only opera is a masterpiece, an uplifting story of risk and triumph. In this new production, conducted by Antonio Pappano, Jonas Kaufmann plays the political prisoner Florestan, and Lise Davidsen his wife Leonore (disguised as ‘Fidelio’) who daringly sets out to rescue him. Set in strong counterpoint are the ingredients of domestic intrigue, determined love and the cruelty of an oppressive regime. The music is transcendent throughout and includes the famous Act I Quartet, the Prisoners’ Chorus and Florestan’s impassioned Act II cry in the darkness and vision of hope. Tobias Kratzer’s new staging brings together the dark reality of the French Revolutionary ‘Terror’ and our own time to illuminate Fidelio’s inspiring message of shared humanity.

The film sketches the creative life of the protagonist Kapila. The film’s narrative is structured as one day in the life of a Koodiyattam performer.

Live action/animation special geared to educate young people about classical music.

Chip Chip : Chopin par Desjardins

Two years prior to the opening scene, the nobleman Florestan has exposed or attempted to expose certain crimes of the nobleman Pizarro. In revenge, Pizarro has secretly imprisoned Florestan in the prison over which Pizarro is governor. The jailer of the prison, Rocco, has a daughter, Marzelline, and a servant (or assistant), Jaquino. Florestan’s wife, Leonore, came to Rocco’s door dressed as a boy seeking employment, and Rocco hired her. On orders, Rocco has been giving Florestan diminishing rations until he is nearly starved to death. Place: A Spanish state prison, a few miles from Seville; Time: Late 18th century.

With this performance of the Missa solemnis Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Honorary Guest Conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, once more attained the status of a living legend, due mostly to his wide-ranging expertise of music from the Baroque and Classical era. The highly acclaimed soloists are Marlis Petersen (Soprano), twice the singer of the year by the renowned Opernwelt magazine, Elisabeth Kulman (Alto), Werner Güra (Tenor), winner of the BBC Music Magazine Award for the best vocal performance, and Gerald Finley (Bass), Grammy-Awardwinner for the best opera recording. They are accompanied by the famous Netherlands Radio Choir.

Beethoven spent three years composing the Eroica, an intimate journal of his emotional crises and his dramatic emergence as an original master. Michael Tilson Thomas and the musicians of the San Francisco Symphony help you make sense of this voyage into life as it really is.