Jeremy Siepmann
Instruments of the orchestra, yes. But not just instruments in the orchestra. This is a set of portraits in depth, featuring individual instruments in many contexts (orchestral, chamber, folk, solo, operatic, cinematic, even jazz and avant-garde music) and in pieces from the Middle Ages to the present. Joining regular orchestra members are such exotic visitors as the eerie ondes martenot, the wind machine, banjos, bagpipes, coconuts,
...AUDIOFILE EARPHONES AWARD-WINNER!
For many people, Beethoven is the greatest composer who ever lived. In this portrait-in-sound, actors' readings combine with his music to reveal a titanic personality, vulnerable and belligerent, comic and tragic, and above all heroic, as he comes to grips with perhaps the greatest disability a musician can suffer. No man's music is more universal; few men's lives are more inspiring. In every sense but
...Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the most astonishing child prodigy in the history of music, is felt by many people to be the greatest composer who ever lived. Dominated and shaped by a highly intelligent but frustrated and ambitious father, his story sees the development of a unique genius, from precocious and often endearing childhood to liberated fulfillment, unexpected poverty, and a tragically early death. Generously illustrated by Mozart's music,
...Brahms is one of the best loved, yet most controversial of all the Romantics. Almost uniquely, his works have never suffered the slightest period of eclipse. Profoundly emotional yet governed by an iron discipline, the music, like the man, is a fascinating, entertaining, often deeply moving blend of opposites. He had a gift for friendship and a capacity for love far beyond the ordinary, yet no man could be ruder or more hurtful. Though humble,
...This series presents the life and work of major composers. The narrated recording is illustrated with quotations from the composer and his contemporaries, and enhanced by extended extracts from representative musical works. In the companion booklet are essays and notes on the composer and his times.
The Classics Explained series explores, in words and music, the major classical works of the concert hall. In an accessible and lively manner, Jeremy Siepmann looks at the history and the form of the great masterpieces of Western music.
Ever since the advent of the LP in the 1950s with its expanded capacity, the six Brandenburg Concertos have been Bach's runaway hit. They were not written as a set but form a collection. Nos. 4 and 5 are
...10) Franz Liszt
The life of Franz Liszt was as daring and spectacular as his music. Famed throughout Europe as the greatest pianist of the nineteenth century, he was one of the most original and prophetic composers who ever lived. Beautiful in youth, glowering in age, his high-profile love affairs were the talk of the town wherever he went and his generosity to young musicians was legendary. In this account of his epic life, actors' readings combine with plentiful
...Tchaikovsky is one of the most popular composers of all time. His melodies are known to many people who may never have heard his name. They crop up on mobile telephones, alarm clocks and answering machines as often as on records and concert programmes. Like his music, the man himself was widely loved, but his inner life was fraught with sufferings, confusions and a deep vein of self-doubt. The drama of his emotional life is vividly reflected in
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