Benjamin Britten and His Festival

Debussy, Images pour orchestre

Leonard Bernstein conducts Stravinsky & Bach

Offenbach: Barbe-Bleue

In a mixture of feature film, music documentary and animated comics, historical facts are retold, analyzed and interpreted in modern settings. Ludwig van Beethoven, played by Lars Eidinger, becomes a contemporary of today's audience. Quick-tempered, irascible, curmudgeonly - that is the common image of Ludwig van Beethoven, the composer with the wild lion's mane. But there is also another Beethoven - young, seductive, spirited and, above all, combative.

Vivaldi: The Four Seasons

In the spotlight of global media coverage, the first transgender woman ever to perform as Don Giovanni in a professional opera, makes her historic debut in one of the reddest states in the U.S.

Beethoven spent three years composing the Eroica, an intimate journal of his emotional crises and his dramatic emergence as an original master. Michael Tilson Thomas and the musicians of the San Francisco Symphony help you make sense of this voyage into life as it really is.

“Symphonic Sketches” tells the story of one classical music concert performed by the Denver Philharmonic Orchestra. Musicians from diverse racial backgrounds connect to the repertoire in unique ways and stage an unforgettable performance.

After marrying her long lost love, a pianist finds the relationship threatened by a wealthy composer who is besotted with her.

Ľubica Rybárska

Le Concert de Paris 2024

The film is a parody of Disney's Fantasia, though possibly more of a challenge to Fantasia than parody status would imply. In the context of this film, "Allegro non Troppo" means Not So Fast!, an interjection meaning "slow down" or "think before you act" and refers to the film's pessimistic view of Western progress (as opposed to the optimism of Disney's original).

Newman's poem tells the story of a soul's journey through death, and provides a meditation on the unseen world of Roman Catholic theology. Gerontius (a name derived from the Greek word geron, "old man") is a devout Everyman. Elgar's setting uses most of the text of the first part of the poem, which takes place on Earth, but omits many of the more meditative sections of the much longer, otherworldly second part, tightening the narrative flow.

Documentary on conductor Herbert van Karajan, focusing on his early adoption of audio and video recording technology and his impetus to make use of it to preserve his musical legacy for future generations.

Fantasia

Frederick Ashton's La Fille mal gardée (The Wayward Daughter) is one of the choreographer's most joyous and colourful creations. Inspired by his love for the Suffolk countryside, the ballet is set on a farm and tells a story of love between Lise, the daughter of Widow Simone, and Colas, a young farmer. It contains some of Ashton's most stunning choreography, most strikingly in the series of energetic pas de deux that express the youthful passion of the young lovers, performed here by Natalia Osipova and Steven McRae. The ballet is laced with exuberant good humour, and elements of national folk dance, from dancing chickens and a maypole dance to a Lancashire clog dance for Widow Simone, performed by Philip Mosley.

At the beginning of 1964, the music world experiences something completely unexpected. Maria Callas returns to the opera stage as the prima donna. Her “Tosca” at the Royal Opera House becomes a sensation. Maria Callas wants to show everyone once again that she deserves the title of “prima donna assoluta.” On the condition that star director Franco Zeffirelli take over the direction, the exceptional singer agrees to sing the role of Tosca. The BBC recorded the 2nd act of the opera for television. It is one of the most dramatic acts in opera history: in order to free the painter Cavaradossi from the hands of torturers, Tosca ends up murdering the police chief Scarpia. The film footage is one of the rare opportunities to see Maria Callas in an opera performance and to experience her highly emotional performance art and vocal abilities...

The historic Toscanini television concerts with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Broadcast #9 was of a concert on March 22, 1952, at Carnegie Hall, featuring Beethoven's 5th Symphony and Respighi's Pines of Rome. (Concerts #8 and #9 were released on "Vol. 5" in the DVD series.)

The historic Toscanini television concerts with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. This concert, broadcast in two parts, on 26 March and 2 April 1949, from NBC Studio 8H, features the opera "Aida" by Giuseppe Verdi. (Both broadcasts were released as "Vol. 3" in the DVD series.)

This short film is made for the "Chopin-Pletnev" disc which marked Mikhail Pletnev's debut as a pianist on Deutsche Grammophon. In the film, we witness Mr. Pletnev's journey, starting from him on his way to studio, through his performance of Chopin's Etude Op. 25 No. 7 in C sharp minor "The Cello" and the process afterwards. One is struck repeatedly by Pletnev's crystalline arpeggiations, the velocity of his passage work, his singing tone, his rhythmic suppleness, and, above all, the grandeur of his sound.