CD & Audio for Musicians

Fryderyk Chopin was born in 1810 at Zelazowa Wola, near Warsaw. His father Nicolas Chopin was French by birth but had moved to Poland to work as an accounting clerk, later serving as tutor to the Lacz...

In childhood, Mendelssohn had written thirteen string symphonies between the ages of twelve and fourteen. In what must pass for maturity, starting at the age of fifteen, he wrote five more symphonies...

Vivaldi was prolific, composing vast quantities of instrumental and vocal music and nearly fifty operas. Of the 500 concertos he wrote the most popular in his life-time as today were the four known as...

The first performance of the Symphony in D minor, Opus 125, took place at the Karntnertor Theatre on 7th May, 1824, after a great deal of wrangling over the whole matter, and was a tremendous success...

Franz Liszt's influence on the nineteenth century was overwhelming and through his numerous students, his strong musical presence influenced piano performance and composition into the twentieth centur...

Romeo and Juliet Suite No. 2, Op. 64 includes: Montagues and Capulets * Juliet as a Young Girl * Friar Laurence * Dance * Romeo and Juliet Before Parting * Dance of the Maids with Lillies * Romeo at J...

Beethoven wrote nine symphonies, the first heralding the new century, in 1800, and the last completed in 1824. Although he made few changes to the composition of the orchestra itself, adding, when occ...

Peter and the Wolf, Op. 67 includes: Introduction * The Story Begins * The Cat * Grandpapa * The Wolf * And Now, This is How Things Stood * In The Meantime * The Hunters * The Procession. L'histoire d...

Holst's The Planets received its first public performance in 1919, and with it Holst achieved the first real success of his career. It is a remarkably effective work, very varied and brilliantly score...

Born near Tallinn in Estonia in 1935, Arvo Pärt emigrated in 1980 and settled in Berlin. Soon afteremigrating, Pärt completed the St John Passionwhich he based on his new- found tintinnabuli principle...

One of the leading English composers of his generation, Vaughan Williams' work went some way towards creating a specifically English musical idiom. He was highly influenced by folk-song, as represente...

Erik Satie, born in France in 1866, was a lazy pupil at the Paris Conservatoire, and he only came to public attention after Debussy made orchestrations of two of his piano pieces, Gymnopédies. Satie b...

The TINTNER MEMORIAL EDITION has been produced to celebrate the life and work of the late Georg Tintner (1917-1999). Through his musicianship, Georg Tintner touched audience and musicians on five cont...

'I dedicate my Seventh Symphony to our struggle against fascism, to our coming victory over the enemy, to my native city, Leningrad.'Few symphonies written in modern times have attracted the degree of...

May whoever listens to this music never experience the insult to which it was subjected and of which I was the witness in the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, Paris, Spring 1913,' wrote Stravinsky in 1968,...

Leopold Stokowski was not only one of the twentieth century's greatest conductors, he was also an inveterate transcriber of music for the symphony orchestra, making some two hundred orchestral arrange...

Few opera houses outside Germany have produced as much Wagner as the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm and few have nurtured so many great Wagner artists. This recording celebrates, with some of Wagner...

Samuel Barber's lyrical Cello Concerto is here offered together with a suite from the ballet music of Medea, originally written for Martha Graham. Best known of all Barber's music is his evocative Ada...

Although Scott Joplin's musical interests were considerably broader than what could be expressed in ragtime - he composed two operas (Treemonisha is considered by many to be his masterpiece), a ballet...

Philip Glass has enjoyed a degree of popularity unusual among contemporary composers. A pupil of Nadia Boulanger, he was also influenced by the Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar and has won a reputatio...

These two hugely contrasting symphonies come from the opposite ends of Shostakovich's life and career. The Second Symphony was written to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Bolshevik October Revo...

'Da-da-da-DAAAAH, Da-da-da-DAAAAH': the start of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is really famous. See if you recognise it! It's just one of many popular pieces here. There are some animals, too - an eleph...

If you listen carefully to this CD, you will get to know one of the best composers in the world. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart lived 250 years ago but he carries on being famous - so he must have been speci...

A bird dancing, an ox on a roof, flowers doing a waltz, a swan twirling about...what world is this? This is the magical world of ballet. The stage is full of people in colorful costumes, but nobody sp...

Beethoven was a musical giant. He wasn't taller or fatter than everyone else, but his music is big and his name is important. Beethoven is like the Olympic champion of classical music. Some of the mus...