Rundfunkchor Leipzig

Christoph Willibald Gluck is one of the great reformers of opera, departing from the tried and tested genres of opera seria in the 18th century: Metastasio's drama per musica and Rameau's tragédie lyrique. Gluck sought to restore dramatic t

Gurrelieder is a gigantic, post-Wagnerian cantata that, in retrospect, seems like the terminus ante quem for Romanticism in music, beyond which further elaboration or intensity was surely impossible, and led surely if not inevitably to the

Boris Blacher's oratorio, Der Großinquisitor, was only half finished in 1943. Having found himself in truly dire straits -- forced to withdraw from musical life thanks to his inclusion on the Nazi register of Jews in music, and hit by a par

A careful blend of recitative, arioso and set piece, Euryanthe was Carl Maria von Weber's second opera, first performed in 1823 (two years after the premiere of Der Freischütz) and based on an early 13th-century French romance with a libret

Gabriel Faure composed his requiem in 1887/8 after a period of intense personal grief. His father had died in 1885, and his mother died two years later. The early version was scored for violas, cellos, organ, harp and timpani. A later vers