Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the most unfathomable composers in the history of music. How can such sublime work have been produced by a man who (when we can discern his personality at all) seems so ordinary, so opaque—and occasionally so intemperate?
John Eliot Gardiner grew up passing one of the only two authentic portraits of Bach every morning and evening on the stairs of his parents’ house, where it hung for safety during

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More than many other composers, Gustav Mahler's works are highly personal expressions of his inner world, a world of overwhelming alienation and loneliness - "thrice homeless," in his own words, "as a Bohemian in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, as a Jew throughout the world - everywhere an intruder, never welcomed." Incredibly, Mahler was able to draw upon the diversity of this world that offered him no true home, as well as his often tortured

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"Without Beethoven, music as we know it wouldn't exist. By examining one hundred of his compositions, a portrait emerges of the man behind the music. Lebrecht has immersed himself in the rich catalogue of Beethoven recordings and presents a unique picture of the man through his music. He selects the best recordings of one hundred key pieces, showing the composer as we've never seen him before. Who was the irascible, unpredictable, warped genius who...

Examines the life and works of Ludwig van Beethoven.

German composer Richard Wagner was notoriously anti-Semitic, and his writings on Jews were later embraced by Hitler and the Nazis. But there is another, lesser-known side to this story. For years, many of Wagner's closest associates were Jews, young musicians who became personally devoted to him, and provided crucial help to his work and career.