Pictures Century

One of the pinnacles of nineteenth-century pianism, Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition broke new frontiers in its writing for the piano through its use of ringing bell-like sonorities, dramatic juxtaposition of registers and dynamics, its approach to resonance, percussive octaves and rapid hand-alternations, and sheer grandeur of sound. Introducing new ideas about virtuosity that owe much to orchestral thinking in the ways the full range of the piano’s tone-colours are explored, this work requires immense stamina through combining great finger dexterity with unbridled power.

The Elgar Cello Concerto and cellist Jacqueline du Pré are inextricably linked and this 1965 EMI recording of du Pré with John Barbirolli and the London Symphony Orchestra is the first great recoding of the work the ill-fated artist was to make. Barbirolli's invitation for the 21-year-old du Pré to perform the concerto thrust her into the international spotlight and remains one of her most cherished recordings.

No one can accuse Flying Steps of resting on their laurels. Hot off the heels of ‘Flying Bach’ and ‘Flying Illusion’, the Berlin-based troupe are back with their most ambitious project to date. ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ is seemingly a hundred things in one, a magical amalgamation of dance, music, live performance, art, history and all the rest, highlighted by the instantly recognisable visible art of Brazilian brothers OSGEMEOS. This is an exhibition come to life, a spiritual successor to Modest Mussorgsky’s 1874 work of the same name. As exciting for adults as it is invigorating for children, we can’t wait to see what Flying Steps come up with next.

Recorded with the Paris Mozart Orchestra and 2 Jazz Musicians, this is Natalie Dessay’s exciting first album release for Sony Classical.

Cinema is quite simply a unique book from one of the most influential film-makers in the history of cinema. Here, Jean-Luc Godard looks back on a century of film as well as his own work and career in the industry. Born with the twentieth century, cinema became not just the century's dominant art form but its best historian. Godard argues that - after the century of Chaplin and Pol Pot, Monroe and Hitler, Stalin and Mae West, Mao and the Marx Brothers - film and history are inextricably intertwined. …

English Tone Pictures by Sir John Barbirolli - Side One features two very gifted composers in John Ireland and Arnold Bax, Band 1 features John Ireland (1879-1962) who is described as one of the most gifted composers of the English 'Renaissance'. Arnold Bax confessed himself a brazen romantic; yet his romanticism was as much intellectual as purely emotional, and though his music is full of personal feeling he was not an emotionally self indulgent composer.