Composer of the Month: Giuseppe Verdi
Italy's operatic sensation Giuseppe Verdi, at times could be just like the operas he penned: a character of enormous dramatic contrasts.
Italy's operatic sensation Giuseppe Verdi, at times could be just like the operas he penned: a character of enormous dramatic contrasts.
Joseph Haydn was always a lively listen but 200 years after the composer’s death, Haydn's fresh and innovatory spirit matters more than ever.
Charles Ives may have only written in his spare time but that didn’t stop the eccentric American composer from being one of the most astonishingly inventive and distinctive voices of his era.
Peter Maxwell Davies was the late composer the Mancunian wild child with the power to shock and awe, or was he the Orkney-dwelling establishment figure? As it turns out, the two are entirely compatible.
Striving for success in Nazi Germany, Carl Orff led a life of grim deceit. But, says director Tony Palmer who has documented that life on film, let’s not sell him short as a composer.
As arguably the most naturally gifted of Russia’s “Mighty Handful” and a scientist of international standing, Borodin possessed an astonishing talent.
Carl Maria von Weber his life and affairs may have been scattergun in the extreme but the German composer’s brilliantly conceived music rarely missed its target
Rosalind Appleby explores the work of Peggy Glanville-Hicks one of the 20th century’s most gregarious musical personalities.
Faced with what seemed a creative dead end, Arnold Schoenberg discovered a radical new way to compose. Its impact has inspired and infuriated in equal measure.
He may be the most fêted of French composer group Les Six but Poulenc was complex – half monk, half yob with a character full of self-doubt.
Berio managed that rare balance of pushing the boundaries of music while still remaining accessible to a wide audience. Explore the colourfully complex world of an avant-gardist who refused to follow the rules.
Daniel Jaffé explains how a ramble in the Essex countryside led Gustav Holst the composer of The Planets to a church with a charismatic vicar, who would go on to inspire several works.
He may be his country’s musical icon, but Carl Nielsen was no simple peddler of Danish folk. In fact, this was a composer of startling originality.