Two episodes from the documentary series featuring performances by the All-Star Orchestra, which is comprised of the best players from 30 American orchestras. As well as performances, the series includes interviews with the players and conductor Gerard Schwarz, providing insight into each piece of music. The episodes 'Music's Emotional Impact' and 'Mahler: Love, Sorrow and Transcendence' feature works by Tchaikovsky, David Stock, Mahler, Augusta Read Thomas and Bernard Rands.

Two episodes from the documentary series featuring performances by the All-Star Orchestra, which is comprised of the best players from 30 American orchestras. As well as performances, the series includes interviews with the players and conductor Gerard Schwarz, providing insight into each piece of music. The episodes 'Music for the Theatre' and 'What Makes a Masterpiece' feature works by Stravinsky, Ravel, Bright Sheng, Beethoven and Philip Glass.

A series of powerful, largely radical works in the early 1920s saw Hindemith established as Germany's leading young composer. In 1936 he was asked by choreographer and dancer L onide Massine to collaborate on a ballet project and Hindemith proposed scenes from the life of St Francis of Assisi. The resulting ballet, Nobilissima Visione (The Noblest Vision), is a work of lyricism, elegy and majesty. This is the first recording of the complete ballet score, not the three-movement concert suite that Hindemith later extracted. The Five Pieces for String Orchestra is an earlier, spirited work dating from 1927.