Known for his mournful "Adagio for Strings," Samuel Barber was never quite fashionable. This acclaimed film is a probing exploration of his music and melancholia. Performance, oral history, musicology, and biography combine to explore the life and music of one of America’s greatest composers. Features Thomas Hampson, Leonard Slatkin, Marin Alsop and many more of the world's leading experts on Barber's music, with tributes from composers Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and William Schuman. The film was broadcast on PBS, and screened at nine film festivals internationally, with three best-of awards. It was named a Recording of the Year 2017 by MusicWeb International.
Jenny is young. Her life is over. She killed someone. And she would do it again. When an 80-year-old piano teacher discovers the girl’s secret, her brutality and her dreams, she decides to transform her pupil into the musical wunderkind she once was.
A film miniature set to classical music. The Spanish landscape, allusively evoked on screen, is dominated by characteristic elements of Gaudí's architecture. From these elements emerges the arena, with the figure of a fighting bullfighter. The appearance of Carmen introduces a lyrical thread. A passionate love develops between her and the bullfighter. Utterly astounding, iridescent salt animation by Aleksandra Korejwo based around Bizet's Carmen, the third and final film in a trilogy.
Avant-garde composer John Cage is famous for his experimental pieces and "chance music" but temporarily branched into video in 1992 with this art film about meaningless activity. The work is composed of two segments that are supposed to be played simultaneously: "One 11" contains the artistic statement, and "103" is a 17-part orchestral piece. Also included is a revealing documentary about Cage and director Henning Lohner.
Recording of a concert from the St. Wenceslas Music Festival. The program of the St. Wenceslas Music Festival offered listeners a treat of spiritual music, the oratorio La Resurrezione (The Resurrection) by German composer George Frideric Handel. The work is one of Handel's early oratorios. When Handel failed to conquer the opera stronghold of the time – Venice, Italy – he returned to Rome and composed the oratorio to a libretto by Sigismondo Capace. It premiered during Easter in 1708. In this musical documentary, we will take you to the orchestra rehearsals with soloists and then to St. Wenceslas Church in Opava, where the oratorio was performed by the top Czech musical ensemble Collegium 1704, which focuses on Baroque music in its original interpretation. This time, in addition to other great soloists, it invited Martina Janková, a native of Orlová and star of the opera scene in Zurich, to collaborate.
Grétry: Richard Coeur de Lion
Bratři Karamazovi
The film covers a hundred years in the lives of the Ricordi family, the Milan publishing house of the title, and the various composers and other historic personalities, whose careers intersected with the growth of the Ricordi house. It beautifully draws the parallel between the great music of the composers, the historic and social upheavals of their times, as well as the "smaller stories" of the successive generations of Ricordi.
El Sistema at the Salzburg Festival
The Montreal Symphonic Orchestra (MSO) and Kent Nagano share the stage with Fred Pellerin, a colorful character whose imagination seduces as much as it surprises. He tells Christmas in his own way, through his stories featuring the protagonists of the small village of Saint-Élie-de-Caxton. An unprecedented encounter of the symphonic world and the universe of this artist of words. Concert recorded on December 16 and 17, 2011 at the Maison symphonique de Montréal.
Witness an epic, heart-rending journey of the soul, as Opera North, Phoenix Dance Theatre, Jazzart Dance Theatre and Cape Town Opera combine for a powerful performance. Filmed at Leeds Grand Theatre, this unforgettable contemporary dance staging of Mozart’s great choral lament is choreographed by Dane Hurst and conducted by Garry Walker. Featuring soloists Ellie Laugharne, Ann Taylor, Mongezi Mosoaka and Simon Shibambu alongside the Chorus and Orchestra of Opera North.
Johannes Brahms: Sinfonie Nr.3 F-Dur, op. 90
Johannes Brahms: Sinfonie Nr. 4 e-Moll op. 98
Das Mauerkonzert
Distinguished Bach specialist Sir András Schiff returned to the BBC Proms in 2018 to present Book II of The Well-Tempered Clavier. Bach's effortless brilliance and new-found sonorities push harmony and counterpoint further than ever with a combination of ancient and modern styles, church austerity and galant lightness. Schiff has said that no-one combines the sacred and the secular as Bach does, and this is comprehensively demonstrated in Bach's fascinating and challenging sequence. This performance in the Royal Albert Hall was described as a musical meditation for our troubled times by the Independent.
The Triple Concerto is one of Beethoven's less frequently performed works - probably also because it requires three soloists and makes considerable demands on them. ARTE presents the Concerto for Violin, Violoncello, Piano and Orchestra in C major at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, performed by an excellent trio of soloists. It is accompanied by the Gewandhaus Orchestra under the direction of Herbert Blomstedt.
The Nutcracker is Mikhail Baryshnikov's breathtaking and critically acclaimed Emmy-nominated production. This spectacular performance is danced by the magnificent team of Baryshnikov, one of the greatest classical dancers of the century, and Gelsey Kirkland, both showcased at the peak of their careers, with members of the American Ballet Theatre.
Millions around the world were touched by his music... Cincinnati was inspired by the maestro. A production of Public Media Connect.
The grand scale and magnificent acoustics of the Roman arena in Verona are ideally suited to the pageantry of Verdi's Egyptian opera, presented here in a staging that is true to the original 1913 production, framed by obelisks and sphinxes and filled with chorus and dancers. Chinese soprano Hui He has won international acclaim for her portrayal of the eponymous slave girl whose forbidden love for the war hero Radamés (Marco Berti, the experienced Verdi tenor) brings death to them both.
After the great success of his Beethoven cycle, Christian Thielemann now turns with his new orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, to the symphonic work of Johannes Brahms. Bonus features include: an extensive 52 minute interview with Christian Thielemann on Brahms' Symphonies and provides and in-depth look into his interpretation of Brahms.