The challenges of a young singer today: by telling Elina Garanc?a’s story, this film invites us on a journey into the heart of today’s lyrical art. It is this intriguing contrast between the beaming singer on stage with the young, concentrated woman, demanding and fragile in her work. This film will be a testimony, one of a future great singer that allows the general public to discover and understand the rise of a grand diva today. ‘There is a moment when you close yourself off completely. You don’t want to let anyone in because you have just given and shown everything possible of yourself and you simply feel empty and sort of lost. It is a special moment… so I gather all the pieces together that I have just given. […] Sometimes it occurs overnight. I wake up in the morning and I realize: Yes, the cosmos has pieced me together again.’
Elina Garanca
This Unitel documentary with unreleased footage material – produced in the course of his 80th birthday in March 2007 – shows the eventful and emotional life of the extraordinary cellist Mstislaw Rostropovich. In one of his last interviews, Mstislaw Rostropovich draws a touching bow from his childhood in Russia – when he suffered from the apathy of his father – to his emigration, his enormous prosperities in a foreign country and to the point of his triumphal return back home. The portrait describes emotional moments in the life of one of the most important cellists and lights up the political and social commitment of the artist. Companions and pupil of the musician like the composer Krzysztof Penderecki, Natalia Gutman and Maxim Vengerov give an impression of who and how he was.
Unlike the piano, the violin or even the flute, the oboe is a relatively rare instrument for a solo career. And when a soloist such as Albrecht Mayer plays the oboe, one wishes composers had written more works for this weetly mellow instrument. Critics write about the “divine spark” that inspires his playing, and about the “miraculous oboe” that turns into “an instrument of seduction.” With his particularly warm tone and exceptionally broad palette of nuances, it’s no surprise that Albrecht Mayer is one of today’s most sought-after international oboists. In this documentary portrait of the oboist, we retrace the musician’s impressive career and witness some of its many high points. Mayer embarked on a professional career in 1990, when he joined the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra as solo oboist. Two years later, he made the transition to the absolute top league with his appointment as solo oboist of the Berlin Philharmonic, and since then he has made countless international appearances, playing under such eminent conductors as Abbado, Rattle and Harnoncourt. In addition to his work as a soloist, Mayer also attaches great importance to chamber music. He is a permanent member of the Sabine Meyer Wind Ensemble and also plays with such partners as Thomas Quasthoff, Matthias Goerne and Leif Ove Andsnes.
“Fritz Wunderlich is one of those singers whom I’ve never felt were historical. In his recordings he sounds so much of the present, that it’s as though he were still among us.” These comments by Rolando Villazón make it clear that the book of Fritz Wunderlich’s life is by no means closed. Forty years after his tragic death, he is a far more potent presence through his recordings than he was during his lifetime. He continues to reach his public, whether they be fans who know his recordings inside-out or people hearing his voice for the first time.
In the “making-of” documentary on “My Mozart” Anne-Sophie Mutter talks about her relationship to Mozart’s music and is joined by her colleagues André Previn, Lambert Orkis and Daniel Müller-Schott.
When Leonard Bernstein died in 1990 at the age of 72, music lovers the world over mourned the loss of one of the 20th century’s artistic giants. In addition to his role as conductor, composer, educator and performing artist, Bernstein was one of the early pioneers in bringing the arts to television. As such, he became one of the most internationally recognized musical personalities in the world. Yet in spite of the existence of vast quantities of visual material, the two-hour film “The Infinite Variety of Leonard Bernstein” is the first full-scale biographical film portrait of the musician. The spine of the film is Bernstein’s own narrative. Supplementing this are recollections from friends, family, artistic collaborators and others who provide a historically critical perspective on his work and career. An equally important element is the integration of Bernstein’s compositions throughout the film. Through his television specials as an educator, as well as through the orchestral works he conducted for television, the film also provides a rich, varied and insightful reflection on Bernstein’s music-making.
“The last of the great international orchestral and operatic maestri” (The Times), Sir Georg Solti was a testament to the elegance and impeccable tastefulness of central European music-making. Born in Budapest in 1912, he studied with Béla Bartók, Ernö von Dohnányi, Zoltán Kodály and Leo Weiner. In 1937, Toscanini chose him to be his assistant at the Salzburg Festival. After the war, Solti was asked by the American military government to conduct a performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio in Munich. This led to his appointment as Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera. In 1952 he became Artistic and Music Director at the Frankfurt Opera, where he remained for ten years. The next station in his career was the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where he was Music Director from 1961 to 1971 and was named Music Director Laureate in 1992. He served as Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of the London Philharmonic Orchestra from 1979 to 1984. Solti’s remarkable partnership with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra began in 1954, when he first led the orchestra at the Ravinia Festival. After returning to conduct the ensemble several times during the following years, he was named Music Director in 1969 and held this post for a phenomenal 22 years. He is credited with greatly extending and enhancing the orchestra’s worldwide reputation. Solti died in September 1997 shortly before his 85th birthday. Unitel is proud to offer a number of Strauss masterpieces recorded under the maestro’s baton. Topping the list is an Otto Schenk production of “Arabella” with the Vienna Philharmonic, starring Gundula Janowitz, Edita Gruberova, Bernd Weikl and René Kollo. Lucia Popp gives an absorbing account of the “Four Last Songs” in a concert with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra which also features “Tod und Verklärung” and “Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks”. Solti has recorded many works for Unitel, including music by his compatriots Bartók (“Duke Bluebeard’s Castle”), Kodály, Liszt, and Weiner; by Beethoven, Berlioz, Brahms, Bruckner (Symphonies Nos. 6 and 7), Mendelssohn, Prokofiev, Schubert (Symphonies Nos. 6 and 8), Shostakovich (Symphony No. 1), Verdi (“Falstaff”) and Wagner. Also available is a fascinating portrait of the artist, “Sir Georg Solti, Conductor – A Portrait”, with the participation of Isaac Stern, Hildegard Behrens, Wolfgang Wagner, the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
The internationally acclaimed baritone Hermann Prey was born in Berlin in 1929. He made his breakthrough in 1956 as Figaro in the Vienna State Opera’s production of Rossini’s “Barber of Seville”. His resounding success as Figaro in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s 1969 staging of Rossini’s “Barber of Seville” at the Salzburg Festival stamped him as the Figaro of that era. Recorded a few years later by Unitel, this production has taken on an almost legendary status. Prey soon became a Mozart singer par excellence, portraying Guglielmo (“Così fan tutte”), Almaviva (“The Marriage of Figaro”), Papageno (“The Magic Flute”) and, of course, Figaro. His unforgettable interpretation of this role in Ponnelle’s production of “The Marriage of Figaro” is preserved for all times by Unitel in a 1976 recording with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Kiri Te Kanawa and Mirella Freni. Prey also enjoyed great popularity in the United States, appearing in operas in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Houston and New York. After his Met debut as Wolfram in “Tannhäuser” in 1960, he regularly sang at that house until 1995. In addition to Mozart and Rossini, Prey’s other favorite composers included Lortzing, Donizetti, Strauss and Wagner. Prey made his Bayreuth debut in 1965. It was there that he transformed the Meistersinger’s Beckmesser into a sympathetic figure, a poet tinged with melancholy, in Wolfgang Wagner’s early 1980s production. This performance is also preserved on film by Unitel. Hermann Prey was never exclusively an opera singer, however. His other specialty was the German song. As a kind of ambassador of the German lied, he filled concert halls all over the world. Prey sang Schubert and Schumann, Brahms and Mahler in a way that always emphasized naturalness and spontaneity over analytical profundity and scholarship. But his inquisitiveness also led him to explore the treasures of the German song from the Middle Ages to the present day. A special fondness for Schubert moved him to set up a Schubert festival in the Austrian town of Hohenems, where he planned to perform all of Schubert’s works. His interpretations of Schubert’s songs have – with those of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau – set standards for lieder singing in the 20th century. Unitel is proud to offer Prey’s recordings of Schubert’s “Die schöne Müllerin”, “Schwanengesang” and “Die Winterreise” on video, as well as lieder by Robert Schumann and Richard Strauss.
