Risultati Editore "Naxos AudioBooks" in Compositori e musicisti

Frédéric Chopin is the pianist-composer par excellence. Here, his life - from his birth in Poland, his famous affair with the French writer George Sand, and his death at the age of 49 in Paris - is told with his music featuring prominently.

Claude Debussy is regarded by many as the quintessential French composer, with music that invited both warm applause and frosty criticism in his day. While our ears no longer hear him as controversial, his works heralded the dawn of an artistic period founded on innovation and experiment, and a desire to break with the past in search of new expressive means. With never a dull moment, Debussy went from being a musical misfit at the Paris Conservatoire to bohemian life amongst the Symbolist poets and some scandalous love affairs.

The Bayreuth Festspielhaus stands today as a testament to Richard Wagner’s ambition and self-importance—a theatre designed and built solely for the performances of his immersive ‘music dramas’. From the influence of Beethoven to the transcendental properties of his greatest music, Wagner’s work became a cornerstone of European musical culture, but what kind of journey took him towards this remarkable achievement?

When we think of Ludwig van Beethoven images of a stormy and passionate but tortured genius are brought to mind, alongside the transformative effect of his work on musical history. All of these things are true, but no artist lives in a vacuum, and even music that opens a portal onto 'the infinite realm of the spirit' has its wider context.

Bach ist ein Zentralgestirn der Musikgeschichte. Manche verehren ihn gar als den "Lieben Gott der Musik". Aber auch der Schöpfer der Matthäus-Passion war ein Mensch wie jeder andere, und sein Leben verlief nicht immer harmonisch. Die neue Hörbiografie erzählt seine ganze Geschichte.

Famous today for his Trois Gymnopédies, Erik Satie was an eccentric and solitary figure who was nevertheless viewed by some as a prophet of French musical modernism, his striking creativity championed by Ravel and Debussy.

Is there any music more instantly recognizable and beautifully scored than Tchaikovsky’s wildly popular ballet Swan Lake? These and other works have become enduring classics, yet they were not uncontroversial in Tchaikovsky’s day, and there are those that still wonder if his style is fundamentally European or ardently Russian. Find out more about Tchaikovsky’s childhood obsession with music, his turbulent relationships with friends and colleagues, and how he overcame the deepest of personal crises to transcend all with an ambition that has left us with some of the greatest music ever written.

Giuseppe Verdi, the son of an innkeeper from a poor village in the Po Valley, was a "self-made man". At the age of 26 he produced his first opera at La Scala in Milan, at 35 he became a landowner, and at 48 he was a member of parliament. This audio biography describes Verdi's life in the exciting worlds of the stage, agriculture, music and politics.

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 programs. 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 his music, letters and diaries, all of which play a major part in this intimate portrait-in-sound.

Dass in Franz Schubert, der aus seiner Geburtsstadt Wien nie weit hinauskam, gleichwohl die Sehnsucht nach der Ferne schlummerte, zeigen etliche seiner Kompositionen, die das Wandern besingen, die Natur im Lauf der Jahreszeiten ausdeuten. Im Geiste der Romantik sind dabei Trennung, Einsamkeit und Todesgedanken stets unterschwellig präsent.

Fanny and Felix, the two eldest children of the music-loving banker Abraham Mendelssohn and his wife Lea, were both highly musical. While Felix became a famous composer and conductor, Fanny had to subordinate her compositional talent—according to the customs of the time—to a role as wife and mother. This audio biography deliberately focuses not only on Felix Mendelssohn but also on his sister Fanny.

Erstmals widmet sich die erfolgreiche Reihe der BR-KLASSIK-Hörbiografien einem Komponisten des 20. Jahrhunderts: Dmitri Schostakowitsch. Seine Symphonien sind nach wie vor Highlights im Konzertsaal, sein Schicksal inspiriert großartige Romane. Doch was weiß man von seinem Leben wirklich? Er ließ sich nicht gern in die Karten schauen. Und er hatte Grund dafür...

The story of Richard Wagner's life–with its adventures and affairs, splendour and misery, delusions and visions–is almost like a novel. This audio biography conveys it brilliantly from all the material provided by music, original texts and contemporary documents. Colourful, polyphonic, and always authentic.

Ludwig van Beethoven's life story is that of a radical individualist in uncertain times. The music–effective and profound, quirky and poetic, sensual and philosophical, and constantly in search of the new–plays a leading role here.

Auch diese Hörbiographie wird das Rätsel Mozart nicht lösen. Aber Mozart soll, verkörpert von dem Wiener Schauspieler Florian Teichtmeister, lebendig werden in seinem Denken und Fühlen, seinem Alltag und seiner Epoche—streng nach den Originalquellen. Erzähler ist Udo Wachtveitl, Autor ist wiederum Jörg Handstein, der bereits in der Reihe BR-KLASSIK WISSEN das Leben von Mahler, Wagner und Verdi in Form von Hörbiografien nachzeichnete.

In this audio biography, Gustav Mahler's life story is told against the backdrop of an age full of tension–colourful and polyphonic, faithful to the facts, and close to the sources.

Polish by birth, Fryderyk Chopin made his name in post-Revolutionary Paris and is often depicted as the archetypal Romantic artist–blessed with extraordinary talent but consumed by the flame of genius, tormented by intense and tempestuous relationships and doomed to an early death. But how much of this story is based on fact? This account of Chopin’s life and times separates myth and reality and, illustrated with numerous musical examples, takes us from his youthful beginnings as ‘a second Mozart’ to the darkness and light of his life and the brilliance of his work.

Johann Sebastian Bach today has a reputation as the Godfather of Western European music, as a fountainhead of classical music theory and the creator of some of the greatest works the world has ever produced. Better known as a keyboard virtuoso, Bach was not regarded as a genius in his day, so how did this headstrong and belligerent but ambitious young musician become so extremely productive? What were his influences? How did he end up in jail and what did he get up to in Café Zimmerman?

Tchaikovsky declared that Mozart was 'full of divine beauty', and Schubert's wonder at the 'countless images of a brighter and better world' that Mozart was able to conjure up through his music knew no bounds. Many of us carry the image of Mozart as a transcendent genius, but what do we really know about his life and career, and indeed his music? This entertaining and informative biography takes us from Mozart's beginnings as a child prodigy to his greatest successes and cruellest setbacks.

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.