Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata has today become part of the cello repertoire but it was originally written for the arpeggione, a form of bowed guitar invented by the Viennese maker Johann Georg Staufer in 1823. With a unique ethereal sound, this instrument reveals the true beauty of Schubert’s initial conception. The Piano Trio No. 2 was performed at the Vienna Musikverein on the first anniversary of Beethoven’s death—its extremes of urgent drama and sublime bittersweet lyricism are characteristic of Schubert’s artistic surge during his final year.

Conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler already enjoyed a worldwide legendary standing during his lifetime - he was considered the German conductor and performances were greeted with rapturous applause. Today, more than 50 years after his death, Wilhelm Furtwangler is still an icon and his work has become an integral part ofthe music scene.

The ballet Le Pavillon d’Armide opened Diaghilev’s first Paris season. The ballet had been conceived by Alexandre Benois, whose niece, daughter of the painter Albert Benois, became Tcherepnin’s wife. Benois, who had in 1901 become artistic director of the Imperial Theatres, was inspired by the novella Omphale by Théophile Gautier to propose a ballet derived from the subject. In his original proposal the Vicomte de Beaugency sets out to visit his betrothed but is caught in a storm and compelled to take refuge in a mysterious chateau.

The wedding in 1568 of Renate of Lorraine to Wilhelm V, heir to the throne of the Duke of Bavaria, was a sumptuous, 18-day spectacular designed to rival those of the Italian courts. Orlande de Lassus had been the court’s maestro di cappella since 1556. Using an eye-witness account of the event, Ensemble Origo presents a hypothetical reconstruction of some of his musical contributions – a Te Deum, the moresca (a genre related to the villanella), and an improvised comedy – thereby shedding light on some of the various meanings that the music had for its 16th-century listeners.

Imagine that ten of the world's most well-known highly regarded filmmakers were given a free hand to make real any vision. Aria is that history-making film. Sexy, violent, thought-provoking and funny, here is the movie critics raved about, audiences flocked to see, and no one could stop talking about. Includes Bridget Fonda's electrifying film debut, a revealing and breathtaking performance from Elizabeth Hurley, and Theresa Russell as the trigger-happy King Zog of Albania.

The Austrian mezzo-soprano Klaudia Tandl, the acting legend Gabriele Jacoby and the Irish pianist Niall Kinsella present "Schubert's Women" with Schubert songs and recitations by contemporary poets with a strong connection to women and the subject "love". There are classics like Das Heidenröslein, You Don't Love Me, The Girl's Lament or Only Who Knows Longing, but also lesser known songs like Luisen's Answer, Thekla or Gretchen's Request. This is accompanied by texts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ludwig Rellstab, Friedrich Schiller, Ignaz Franz Castelli, and Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, which Gabriele Jacoby staged in a unique way.

German-born baritone Benjamin Appl studied with the legendary Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, whose voice his own resembles on the surface. But then he moved to England and has stayed on there. Heimat (Homeland) is not just an exploration of that German concept, but a personal statement and even a bit of an autobiography, with notes from the artist himself (find these if you listen via download or stream) explaining the resonances of each individual song. This kind of personal connection is what classical music in general needs right now, and all the more so in the rather closed tradition of the German Lied.

Swan Lake was the first of Tchaikovsky's three great ballets– works which added a new level of depth and sophistication to what had been a purely superficial art form. Today the music is so well-known and popular that it's impossible to comprehend the difficulties the composer experienced at early performances. Audiences found the music "too symphonic," and the dancers were put off by the prominence given to the orchestra which, they felt, distracted ballet fans from the action on stage. Of course, all of these supposed "defects" are precisely what we admire about the music today, and this elegant but exciting performance reveals the music in all of its glory.

Solti finds all the detail in the score not only in the very grand passages but brings tenderness to the more reflective sections which is a joy to listen too. The CSO are magnificent, the strings have that bloom that makes you think of the Vienna Philharmonic at their peak, the rest of the ensemble are no less perfect either. The Decca recording, which just predates digital sound, is full and opulent and puts you in the best seat in the concert hall and is as just as good, if not better, then many later recordings of these works.

K, a multicultural orchestra under the direction of the Italian-Brazilian conductor Simone Menezes, is bringing out its first album. Born out of the awareness that classical music was exported throughout the world and took on multiple influences in the last century, K’s project seeks to find the original accents of the works it performs. Their goal: to tell each story in its original language.

If, as Liszt himself dubbed it, Hexaméron is ‘a monster’, it’s a monster which certainly holds no terrors for Marc-André Hamelin, and the encounter between them makes for some thrilling pianism. The remainder of the recital—high-octane transformations of nineteenth-century operatic favourites—is every bit as electrifying, from a musician who never ceases to astonish whatever the repertoire.

Angela Hewitt has applied the same intense study to Chopin's Nocturnes and Impromptus as she does to any composer's keyboard works. The result is a set of pieces lovingly played and appreciated, with personally felt emotion. The most outwardly emotional displays, as in the Nocturnes, Op. 15, are never wildly loud and always return to an introverted state afterward. In the Nocturnes she uses little touches of rubato so frequently as to almost stretch the melodies out of shape, as in Op. 9/1, but she plays many of the Nocturnes a tick faster than other pianists so that they stand up to that kind of manipulation better, and she never slows down to fit in ornaments. Her ornaments always fit right into the melody, both in her timing and her phrasing, and are feathery soft.

The heroine dies. Not of a deadly disease, not of a broken heart, not in ecstasy nor by her own hand. There is no final aria, no perpetual drawing-out of the last breath, no resounding lament, no congregation of mourners. Only briefly does the music echo bygone happiness.’* This might sum up Janácek’s enchanting opera, recorded live in the usual top quality at Frankfurt Opera in April/May 2016.