Richard Wagner A superb new translation of the libretto to Wagner's Ring cycle'Smiling in sorrowI sing of love'The Ring of the Nibelung, Wagner's epic cycle of four musical dramas about primal envy,...

Yuval Sharon From “the most imaginative director in the US” (New York Times) comes this generational work with a vision for transforming opera into a powerhouse cultural phenomenon.Visionary director Yuval...

Laura Turnbridge Ludwig van Beethoven: to some, simply the greatest ever composer of Western classical music. Yet his life remains shrouded in myths, and the image persists of him as...

Daniel R Melamed Of all the things we can know about J. S. Bach's Mass in B Minor and Christmas Oratorio, the most profound come from things we can hear. Listening to Bach explores musical...

Stephen Johnson The Eighth Symphony was going to be different from anything Mahler had ever done before. The intensely personal dramas of his earlier symphonies were a thing of the...

William Kinderman ”We do not understand music—it understands us.” This aphorism by Theodor W. Adorno expresses the quandary and the fascination many listeners have felt in approaching Beethoven's late quartets....

Pauline Fairclough Dmitry Shostakovich was one of the most successful composers of the twentieth century—a musician who adapted as no other to the unique pressures of his age. By turns...

Stephen Johnson Music broadcaster and composer Stephen Johnson explores how Shostakovich's music took shape under Stalin's reign of terror, and how it gave form to the hopes of an oppressed...

John Suchet The Sunday Times bestseller, revised and updated for the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth.As heard throughout 2020 on Classic FMYou know the music... but do you know the man?Ludwig...

Tina K Kamnarine Jean Sibelius's Violin Concerto is the story of Sibelius as performer and composer, of violin performing traditions, of histories of musical transmission, and of virtuosity itself. It...

David Hurwitz The fall of the Soviet empire has not diminished the popularity of Dmitri Shostakovich's great symphonies and concertos one bit, despite the fact that most literature on him...

John Bell Young (Unlocking the Masters). In this survey of Brahm's music, John Bell Young explores in depth the composer's private world of musical intimacies that infuriated Wagner, but inspired...