Lecture 21

Bertram Pincus, a cranky, people-hating Manhattan dentist, develops the unwelcome ability to see dead people. Really annoying dead people. Even worse, they all want something from him, particularly Frank Herlihy, a smooth-talking ghost, who pesters him into a romantic scheme involving his widow Gwen. They are soon entangled in a hilarious predicament between the now and the hereafter!

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.

Claire is under the grip of a mysterious new cult called Faults. Desperate to be reunited with their daughter, Claire's parents recruit one of the world's foremost experts on mind control, Ansel Roth.

After squandering his grant money, despondent and recently widowed anthropologist James Krippendorf must produce hard evidence of the existence of a heretofore undiscovered New Guinea tribe. Grass skirts, makeup, and staged rituals transform his three troubled children into the Shelmikedmu, a primitive culture whose habits enthrall scholars. But when a spiteful rival threatens to blow the whistle on Krippendorf's ruse, he gets into the act as well.

Before he left for a brief European visit, symphony conductor Sir Alfred De Carter casually asked his staid brother-in-law August to look out for his young wife, Daphne, during his absence. August has hired a private detective to keep tabs on her. But when the private eye's report suggests Daphne might have been canoodling with his secretary, Sir Alfred begins to imagine how he might take his revenge.

In the late '50s, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Richard Starkey were just four Liverpudlian teenagers who decided to play music. With no formal training and no ability to read or write music, they tried to emulate their American rock heroes. Within a few years, they would change music history (and the world) forever. Scott Freiman traces the birth of the Beatles from their days as the Quarrymen to their first visit to EMI Studios and the recording of “Love Me Do.”

RCO: Pappano conducts Beethoven & Schumann

The story about the relationship between a manic depressive man, Mr Jones, and the female doctor who takes more than a professional interest in his treatment.

L. van Beethoven Symfonie d moll

The staff of an American magazine based in France puts out its last issue, with stories featuring an artist sentenced to life imprisonment, student riots, and a kidnapping resolved by a chef.

Without us noticing, modern life has been taken over. Algorithms run everything from search engines on the internet to satnavs and credit card data security - they even help us travel the world, find love and save lives. Mathematician Professor Marcus du Sautoy demystifies the hidden world of algorithms. By showing us some of the algorithms most essential to our lives, he reveals where these 2,000-year-old problem solvers came from, how they work, what they have achieved and how they are now so advanced they can even programme themselves.

Showcasing a musical masterpiece in a rare full-length television recording by the Vienna Chamber Orchestra with the Westminster Symphonic Choir, under the direction of conductor Mark Laycook. An introduction to the performance, narrated by actor John Lithgow, gives a unique perspective on music history.

In late 1962, the Beatles stepped into EMI studios for the first time, meeting producer George Martin and beginning an unparalleled and remarkable recording career. Over the next eighteen months, they would release four number one singles (including “She Loves You” and “I Want To Hold Your Hand”) and two number one albums while becoming worldwide superstars. In Deconstructing The Beatles 1963 Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!, Scott Freiman explores the music that helped launch Beatlemania.

After the death of his mother, a man tries to discover a meaning to his life, to the universe and to rebuild a relationship with the only family he has left: his gay brother.

Bugs Bunny conducts an orchestra of all his greatest operatic hits.

Beethoven · Violin Concerto & Symphony No. 6 'Pastoral' (Bernard Haitink, Isabelle Faust)

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.

Robert Benchley offers a humorous lecture on how to avoid different types of strain during reading.

During a family gathering, a celebration for their father's 60th birthday, the eldest son presents a speech that reveals a shocking secret to everyone.

Recordings of all the Beethoven symphonies with their chief conductor are always a milestone in the artistic work of the Berliner Philharmoniker. So it was with Herbert von Karajan and Claudio Abbado, and expectations are correspondingly high for this cycle conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. Where does the special status of these symphonies come from? Simon Rattle has an explanation: “One of the things Beethoven does is to give you a mirror into yourself – where you are now as a musician.” In fact, this music contains such a wealth of extreme emotions and brilliant compositional ideas that reveal the qualities of the orchestra and its conductor as if under a magnifying glass.