Awakening and decline are basic experiences of human life. Myths and religions speak about the beginning of the world, nature wakes up every year when spring returns, and every day begins with the change from night to morning. Moments like these have inspired composers for a long time. Music can…
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Contrast is part of life. We experience difference constantly: tension and release, light and shadow, movement and stillness. Music works in the same way. Differences in tempo, dynamics, register, texture and orchestration define musical form. Fast and slow, loud and soft, major and minor, solo and tutti — these oppositions…
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Time is an essential element of music. Music is the only art form that depends entirely on time. A painting or sculpture stands still, but a piece of music only exists as it unfolds. Its shape depends on our ability to remember what came before and to connect it with…
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What does the Enlightenment sound like? The Enlightenment — or Age of Reason — was a period in the 17th and 18th centuries marked by a profound shift in how people understood the world. Thinkers like Voltaire, Kant, and Hume challenged tradition and authority, promoting reason, science, education, and individual…
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Karajan recorded the two complete sets of the “Paris” and the “London” symphonies in the early 1980s...
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Joseph Haydn’s oratorio “The Creation” was one of his major works and one of his last masterpieces...
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Here you can download the full curriculum vitae of Herbert von Karajan!