A thoroughly researched biopic of Charles Ives, America's greatest and most innovative composer (and insurance executive), who combined strikingly futuristic experimentalism with gentle nostalgia. Includes narration taken directly from Ives's own writings, and reminiscence from those who knew him.
John Eliot Gardiner goes in search of Bach the man and the musician. The famous portrait of Bach portrays a grumpy 62-year-old man in a wig and formal coat, yet his greatest works were composed 20 years earlier in an almost unrivalled blaze of creativity. We reveal a complex and passionate artist; a warm and convivial family man at the same time a rebellious spirit struggling with the hierarchies of state and church who wrote timeless music that is today known world-wide. Gardiner undertakes a 'Bach Tour' of Germany, and sifts the relatively few clues we have - some newly-found. Most of all, he uses the music to reveal the real Bach.
Abbado Conducts Mahler No. 1 & Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3
Hudba na zámku v Roztokách
A popular production from 2021, straight from the historic building of the National Theatre. This star-studded title is directed by experienced director Magdalena Švecová, with soloists, the National Theatre Orchestra and Choir, and conducted by Jaroslav Kyzlink. The Barber of Seville was composed by the then 23-year-old Gioachino Rossini in just three weeks, resulting in a witty and dynamic work that perfectly captures the genre of Italian opera buffa. Rossini based his work on the 1772 play The Barber of Seville, or The Misguided Precaution by French dramatist Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais. The two-act opera tells the story of the young love between Rosina and Count Almaviva. However, her guardian Don Bartolo also has his eye on her. Almaviva does not give up and asks the local barber Figaro for help, who comes up with a daring plan to bring the couple to their dream wedding.
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.
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.
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.)
A documentary that explores the challenges that a life in music can bring.
Welshman Sir Karl Jenkins is the most-performed living composer in the world. To mark his 70th birthday on the 17th February 2014, S4C broadcast a film portrayal of the pioneering musician in the programme Karl Jenkins: Pencerdd Penclawdd.
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.
Letters, Riddles and Writs is a one act opera for television by Michael Nyman broadcast in 1991.
Vivaldi: The Four Seasons
The historic Toscanini television concerts with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Broadcast #8 was of a concert on March 15, 1952, at Carnegie Hall, featuring Sibelius's En Saga, two of Debussy's Nocturnes, and Franck's Redemption. (Concerts #8 and #9 were released on "Vol. 5" in the DVD series.)
Lyrical biography of the classical composer, depicted as a romantic hero, an accursed artist.
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.)
Dimash Kudaibergen - ARNAU Tour in New York
As celebrated conductor Lydia Tár starts rehearsals for a career-defining symphony, the consequences of her past choices begin to echo in the present.
Grétry: Richard Coeur de Lion
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.