Opera

Operas and operettas are basically plays (tragedies, dramas and comedies) set to music. Most feature solo voices and choruses and the whole is accompanied by orchestra.

Contemporary Jazz

From the late 19th century to the present day, a collection of popular musical styles and performance techniques originating in African American communities of the southern states of the USA. Although it became primarily an instrumental genre, jazz emerged when West African rhythms and call and response chants were blended with elements of gospel hymns, parlour songs and marches in improvised, unaccompanied work songs.

Chinese Music

Chinese Classics series presents fascinating classical music by leading Chinese composers including Ding Shande, Hua Yan-jun, Lu Wen-cheng, Ma Si Cong, Ren Guang, Tang Bi-guang, Wang Lishan and Zhu Jianer. Several decades of musical interaction between Eastern and Western traditions has resulted in many highly acclaimed compositions which combine and juxtapose instrumental sounds and musical techniques from both hemispheres within the ever-broadening ambit of Western classical music.

Chamber Music

This category covers works written for between two and ten instruments. The most popular chamber music works are sonatas for piano and one other instrument such as violin or cello and string quartets. Most great composers have written such instrumental sonatas and quartets. Other chamber music formats are the trio (three instruments—for example, piano trios feature piano, violin and cello), the quintet (five instruments, frequently five string instruments—Schubert’s Trout Quintet for piano and four string instruments is perhaps the most famous chamber music work of all time), the sextet (six instruments), the septet (seven instruments), the octet (eight instruments) and the nonet (nine instruments). There are also a few works for ten instruments known by the French name dixtuor.