In recent years, one of Finland’s leading contemporary composers has found international fame. His Angel of Light CD has become a world-wide best-seller and, in the words of The Financial Times, “popular taste has suddenly caught up with Rautavaara’s mystical Romanticism. The time is right for his style.” Now in his seventies, he is at the height of his musical powers. This impressionistic film explores the charismatic composer’s life and music, glimpsing the richness of his creative imagination.
In Rehearsal: Mariss Jansons
Featuring some of today’s leading conductors in rehearsal, this series gives a unique insight into the process of creating great music. The conductors’ very different styles and methods; the dialogue between an orchestra and an inspired interpreter; the intensity of the preparations for a concert performance; and the struggle towards perfection are captured in these revealing audio-visual records. Most episodes include a full run-through of the work rehearsed. All include interviews with the conductor who is seen at work. Mariss Jansons prepares Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin Suite with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra.
Masterclass: Christa Ludwig
Christa Ludwig is acknowledged as one of the twentieth century’s most explorative and complete vocal artists. Her professional singing career spanned five decades. Two public masterclasses, recorded at the Volkstheater in Vienna, show her working with young singers set on finding success on the operatic stage. Candid, humorous and encouraging, she focuses on the dramatic truth expressed in the arias of their choice and helps them to communicate this in their interpretations.
In Rehearsal: John Eliot Gardiner
Through his particular combination of scholarship and inspired musicianship, John Eliot Gardiner has won international acclaim as a key figure in the revival of early music. His concert performances and recordings with the ensembles he has founded – the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestra Révolutionnaire et Romantique – are unmistakable, not just for their zest and technical mastery, but as highly personal readings of music from Monteverdi to Verdi and beyond.
This present film of the rehearsal of Bach’s Canata BWV 63 is intercut with comments from the singers and an interview with John Eliot Gardiner which reveals not only the depth of his knowledge of Bach’s music but also his profound love of the composer’s work. He talks incisively about Bach’s music as a whole, the place of the cantatas in the composer’s oeuvre, the particular structure and brilliance of “Christen, ätzet diesen Tag”, and explains something of his reasons for championing authentic rendition.
Valery Gergiev & Le sacre du printemps
This programme records the meeting of two Russian musical giants, as Valéry Gergiev, the most charismatic and dynamic conductor of our day, rehearses, performs and discusses Stravinsky’s masterpiece. Innovative, inspiring and exhilarating, the Sacre du printemps is close to the maestro’s heart. Among a wide range of archive material used in the programme is a rare clip of Igor Stravinsky conducting the Sacre, as well as footage of him talking about his composition.
Sabine Kupferberg – Woman of a Thousand Faces
Sabine Kupferberg is a remarkable dancer. At an age when most dancers hang up their shoes, leading dance-makers, including van Manen, Forsythe and Ek, continue to create exciting new pieces for her and her colleagues at Nederlands Dans Theater 3. This company for the over-forties was founded by her partner, the internationally-acclaimed choreographer Jirí Kylián. Her collaboration with Kylián comes into focus in this dance-filled profile which showcases her distinctive talent in a wealth of performance extracts.
David Bowie
Ever since he burst on to the music scene in the early 1970s, David Bowie has been one of rock’s most consistently inventive performers. Driven by manic creativity and restless energy he has constantly assumed new roles, each signalling a change of personal and musical direction. In a wide-ranging interview Bowie talks about his many reinventions of himself and his music, and these remarkable changes are charted in memorable performance extracts and archive film.
Gergiev conducts Debussy, Prokofiev and Stravinsky
The energy and excitement of performances under the baton of maestro Valéry Gergiev are thrilling. This concert, with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, was recorded live at the city’s Doelen Hall. The programme includes Debussy’s Fragments Symphoniques for D’Annunzio’s mystery play Le Martyre de St Sébastien, Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite, Stravinsky’s Fireworks and his Piano Concerto. The soloist for the concerto is the Georgian virtuoso Alexander Toradze, a singularly imposing figure at the keyboard.
Robert Rauschenberg
One of the most important American artists of the twentieth century, since the mid-1950s Rauschenberg has continued to pioneer new approaches to an extraordinarily diverse range of media. The many aspects of his prolific creativity are explored in this film, which draws on the ideal resource of a major retrospective of his work at the Guggenheim Museum, New York. At his studio on the island of Captiva, Rauschenberg gives a relaxed and candid interview and is seen at work.
Stockhausen’s Gruppen
Involving three orchestras playing different but related music simultaneously, Stockhausen’s masterpiece is the ultimate in large-scale musical complexity. State-of-the-art sound technology captures Gruppen’s textural richness in this recording of a rare performance of the work. Lighting and colour are used to striking effect. Sir Simon Rattle, John Carewe and Daniel Harding conduct the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and contribute to an illuminating introduction, which includes film of their preparations and rehearsals.