El Sistema at the Salzburg Festival

Lyrical biography of the classical composer, depicted as a romantic hero, an accursed artist.

The 82-year-old Japanese Seiji Ozawa is one of the last remaining conductor legends of a golden era. Portrait of the ambitious maestro and educator who made the western repertoire really well known in Japan.

Baritone Benjamin Appl and pianist James Baillieu reimagine Schubert's song cycle Winterreise in the wintry setting of an Alpine landscape at the top of a mountain pass in Switzerland - a place that emphasises the timelessness of Schubert's music

1779. Eight-year-old Ludwig van Beethoven, called "Louis", is already known as a musical prodigy. He learns to go his own way - much to the dismay of the people around him. Some years later, he meets Mozart during times of political upheaval. The unconventional genius and French Revolution are sparking a fire in Louis' heart; he doesn't want to serve a master - only the arts. Facing times of family tragedies and unrequited love, he almost gives up. However, Louis makes it to Vienna to study under Haydn in 1792, and the rest is history. Who was this man, whose music has since touched countless hearts and minds? At the end of his life, the master is isolated by loss of loved ones and hearing. Surely though, he was way ahead of his times.

John Eliot Gardiner goes in search of Bach the man and the musician. The famous portrait of Bach portrays a grumpy 62-year-old man in a wig and formal coat, yet his greatest works were composed 20 years earlier in an almost unrivalled blaze of creativity. We reveal a complex and passionate artist; a warm and convivial family man at the same time a rebellious spirit struggling with the hierarchies of state and church who wrote timeless music that is today known world-wide. Gardiner undertakes a 'Bach Tour' of Germany, and sifts the relatively few clues we have - some newly-found. Most of all, he uses the music to reveal the real Bach.

A documentary that explores the challenges that a life in music can bring.

A behind-the-scenes look at the Aldeburgh Festival and the opening by The Queen of the new concert hall at Snape.

Join the Muppets' best sidekick, Beaker as he spreads his passion for the classics with his rendition of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy."

The great composer of The Planets, Gustav Holst also taught himself Sanskrit, lived in a street of brothels in Algiers, cycled into the Sahara Desert, and allied himself during the First World War with a ‘red priest' who pinned on the door of his church "prayers at noon for the victims of Imperial Aggression". He hated the words used to his most famous tune "I Vow to Thee My Country" because it was the opposite of what he believed, and died before the age of 60 - broken and disillusioned.