Bernd Alois Zimmermann

Nancy Shade is persuasive as the awkward adolescent Marie, whose naiveté leads relentlessly to her downfall. Michael Ebbecke is sympathetic as Stolzius, her jilted lover and avenger, while William Cochran is properly brutish as Desportes, the officer who initiates her spiral of decline. Bernhard Kontarsky gets a dedicated response from his Stuttgart Opera forces, who perform with belief in this often excessive but always engrossing work. Recorded at the Staatsoper Stuttgart, 1989.

At the close of the 74th ARD International Music Competition, the best clarinetists, trumpeters, and pianists perform at the winners' concert. They are accompanied by one of the world's most renowned ensembles: the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sasha Scolnik-Brower.

From the Rai Arturo Toscanini Auditorium in Turin, the young conductor Michele Gamba leads the Rai National Symphony Orchestra for Rai NuovaMusica. The program features two major orchestral works by German composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Photoptosis, in its Italian premiere, and Stille und Umkehr. The concert continues with the Italian premiere of Enno Poppe’s Schnur for violin and orchestra, performed by violinist Francesco D’Orazio, and concludes with Iannis Xenakis’s Jonchaies for large orchestra.

A fearless Antigone, refusing to allow the dishonored body of her murdered brother Polynices to be devoured by vultures and dogs, defies the Thebian tyrant Creon by burying him.