00:00
Purcell - King Arthur
Hervé Niquet conducts the choir and orchestra of Le Concert Spirituel in a rendition of Henry Purcell's (1659-1695) King Arthur. The recording took place in the National Opera of Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon in March 2009. Soloists are Ana Marin Labin, Chantal Santon-Jeffery, Mélodie Ruvio, Mathias Vidal, Marc Mouillon and Joao Fernandes. King Arthur, or The British Worthy is a semi-opera in five acts. It was first performed at the Queen's Theatre, Dorset Garden, London in 1691. The plot is based on the battles between King Arthur's Britons and the Saxons, rather than the legends of Camelot. It is a semi-opera: the principal characters do not sing, except if they are supernatural or pastoral.
01:42
Mahler - Symphony No. 7
The Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink leads the Berliner Philharmoniker in the Seventh Symphony by Gustav Mahler, recorded at The Berliner Filharmonie in 1993. This symphony for a big orchestra premiered in 1908 in Prague under Mahler himself. In a few weeks, the composition was already performed in the Netherlands and Germany, but the audience did not immediately love it. The symphony, consisting of five movements, has a more complicated tonal scheme than Mahler’s earlier symphonies. Two first parts of the symphony, called ‘Nachtmusik,’ are inspired by the night and Rembrandt’s ‘The Night Watch’ painting. The finale of the symphony is the most outrageously exuberant of Mahler's symphonies and ends in a strange but beautiful way.
03:05
Who has stolen the Boléro by Maurice Ravel?
One of the world’s most popular pieces of classical music, Maurice Ravel’s Boléro (1928), was no longer copyrighted as of May 1, 2016. Up to then it had made Ravel and his heirs millions. Ravel died in 1937 and left all he owned to his brother Edouard. Edouard’s death in 1960 unleashed a complex legal battle over the rights, involving among others Edouard’s nurse and her husband. This 2017 documentary gives a fascinating account of what happened to one this iconic piece of music right under the nose of the public. Filmmaker Fabien Caux-Lahalle underpins this investigative story with clips of the Boléro in various guises.