Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American composer, pianist, and leader of a jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life…

Robert Schumann (8 June 1810 – 29 July 1856) is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. The originality of his work pushed at emotional, structural and philosophical boundaries. Schumann’s music is largely programmatic, meaning it tells a story (through music, not specifically through words). Through the 1830s Schumann wrote a vast quantity of piano music which included pictorial cycles with literary or personal associations such as Papillons, Carnaval and Davidsbündlertänze.

The sound and picture on these DVDs are excellent; the sound is truly comparable to a well-recorded CD. The soundtrack is available both in stereo and also an excellent 5.1 Dolby mix. The disks have a set of program notes and a biography of von Karajan.

Delightful corners of the European nature, from harsh northern seas of Norway to the beautiful southern coast of Portugal, mysterious caves, majestic mountains, colorful alpine meadows of Switzerland, beautiful waterfalls, rivers and lakes in Finland - this is only a small part of what you can see in the film series " Planet Earth in Lounge Music ". The main feature of this series is perfectly matched modern music, which is as much an important part of the film, as well as videos.

Swan Lake became an unexpected popular hit when radical choreographer Matthew Bourne took Tchaikovsky's traditional ballet by the scruff of the neck and reworked it with a myriad of modern influences and themes to astonishing effect. Seldom have the dark psychological riptides at the heart of so many classical ballets been so brilliantly exposed. The Prince (Scott Ambler) is a wretched and dissolute young man dominated by his mother, the Joan Collins-like Queen (Fiona Ambler). Shades of Tennessee Williams, indeed. Von Rothbart becomes a press secretary, more sinister eminence grise than hissable villain. Most startling of all, the Swan (Adam Cooper) is a muscular, emphatically masculine male.

Bourne has stressed the universality of his interpretation, which proved such a success for his Adventures in Motion Pictures dance company. And indeed this is never an overtly "gay" Swan Lake, although the electricity of the pas de deux at the height of Act 2 delivers a palpably homoerotic charge. Its universal threads–as Bourne suggests, the need to be held and understood is common to us all–are synthesized in the utterly moving conclusion as the Swan cradles the lifeless Prince and raises him to a better place. Swan Lake becomes a human, rather than simply romantic, tragedy.

Continuing with with my previous video upload, here is the 2nd Lecture pronounced at Harvard in 1973 by Leonard Bernstein as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry during his tenure from 1971 onwards.