In 2012 the St. Thomas Boys Choir Leipzig celebrated its 800th birthday. An almost unbelievable period of time, if one considers that the choir outlasted all political systems, maintaining its unbroken traditions over the centuries, and was thus able to hold onto established principles such as the inclusion of the elder boys in the education of the younger ones. The film accompanied the St. Thomas Boys Choir and their choir master Georg Christoph Biller over the period of one year, immersing the audience in a unique world between motet, boarding school and football pitch, into a life that is distinguished by success and pressure to perform, doubts and pride, homesickness and genuine friendship.
Solti – Journey of a Lifetime
Solti’s professional advancement starts at a time when Germany was on its knees. The film depicts this situation by including historical video documents. Only a couple of hours before his death on 5th September 1997, he made his last corrections for the book. By using a narrator who reads excerpts of his biography, Solti is virtually given a voice in this film. The interview partners add an important dimension to the film. All of them were very well acquainted with Solti and have fascinating stories to tell. In regards to capturing performances, Solti was as productive as Bernstein and Karajan. The archives of the ARD network list about 120 TV productions, interviews, rehearsals. Further rich sources are the archives of BR, HR, SWR, ORF, Unitel and the BBC.
The Heart of Sound – A Musical Journey with Vittorio Ghielmi
The Island of Sardinia is very rich in traditional song, music and dance of all kinds, and supports two distinct forms of polyvocal singing. The first is the secular sung dance-music Cantu á Tenores tradition, the second is the Coro or Cuncordu tradition of sacred ritual music, which in the quite recent past they were an integral part of numerous socio/religious rituals. World-renowned Viola da Gamba player, conductor and composer Vittorio Ghielmi (who appears with orchestras such as Il Giardino Armonico, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra or the London Philharmonic Orchestra) has been on a lifelong quest to find and create authentic interpretations of ancient-classical music.The film documents a special and unique way of making music that contributes to the vitality of rural life and thus provides a closer picture at Sardinia off the beaten tourist tracks. The sound track as well follows untrodden paths: the fruits of this collaboration reward the audience with music never ever played before.
Stravinsky in Hollywood
Stravinsky in Hollywood explores the short-lived film career of this legendary composer, it is the story of his trials and tribulations with the Hollywood Studios, the story of an ‘old school’ European artist knocking heads with the brash New World. Igor Stravinsky lived in the heart of Hollywood from 1939 until shortly before his death in 1971 – longer than in any other single place. He came expecting to find lucrative work composing for the movies. The 60-minute film uses a combination of existing archival footage (some of it never before seen), contemporary interviews with experts in the field and living movie composers, and scenes from several big studio films of the 40s brought together – for the first time – with the music which Stravinsky wrote for them.
Vadim Repin – a Magician of Sound
Born in Siberia in 1971, Vadim Repin started to play violin at the age of five and had his first stage performance six months later. At only eleven he won the gold medal in all age categories in the Wienawski Competition and gave his recital debuts in Moscow and St Petersburg. In 1985 at fourteen he made his debuts in Tokyo, Munich, Berlin, Helsinki; a year later in Carnegie Hall. Two years later Vadim Repin was the youngest ever winner of the most prestigious and demanding violin competition in the world, the Reine Elisabeth Concours. From the vastness of Siberia to world fame, the violin virtuoso Vadim Repin returns to where his career began, for a Brahms tour, far away from the cultural centre of Moscow. From Irkutsk at Lake Baikal to Novosibirsk, we follow the magnificent artist to the West, where Yehudi Menuhin once called him the ‘most perfect violinist in the world’ he ever heard.
Carlos Kleiber – I Am Lost To The World
Carlos Kleiber, the eccentric and reclusive conductor was a fabled perfectionist who was known as much for the rarity of his appearances as for the brilliance of his interpretations. Georg Wübbolt’s film sheds light on the relationships with his family, including his father and mother, traces the development of Kleiber’s career and covers the ‘mythologizing’ that started during the lifetime of the maestro.
Inside The Infernal Comedy
John Leake, who spent 3 years researching the Unterweger case in minute detail (‘entering Hades’), in conversation with Michael Sturminger
the author and director of the Infernal Comedy. Martin Haselböck, the conductor of the Vienna Academy Orchestra, illuminates the beginnings and musical conception of this utterly new form with classical 18th century arias and the fate of a 20th century serial killer to create a profound evening of musical theatre. The truth and nothing
but the truth.
Antonio Vivaldi – The Red Priest
This fascinating film tells the exciting life-story of the world-renowned composer Antonio Vivaldi, the redhaired priest. Famous artists and musicologists describe the great importance of Vivaldi’s music for our time. Highlight of the film is the terrific world premiere of Vivaldi’s great choral work ‘Dixit Dominus’, which was attributed to his contemporary Baldassare Galuppi for more than 200 years. Recorded at original locations in Venice, Vienna and Dresden and others.
Lang Lang & Nikolaus Harnoncourt: Mission Mozart
In spring 2014 the Vienna Musikverein turned into a music laboratory, a recording studio and into a venue for a very exciting enounter of two seemingly very different artists: Nikolaus Harnoncourt, well-known as an intellectual musician who came to attention as a period-practice and Lang Lang, a superstar, a pianist of stunning virtuosity and freewheeling music instincts, together with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra record the Mozart Piano Concertos No. 17 K453 in G major and No. 24 K491 in C minor. This documentary is a revealing insight into the creative process of two of the most distinctive and influential musicians in the world today.
Sound of the Sidewalks
You can find them standing in walkways, in front of bars or in the Paris metro, playing rock music, classical, Latin American or Caribbean rhythms on the world’s largest public stage: the street. This series is dedicated to street musicians in Europe ‘on the road’ with artists of life, dropouts, and virtuosos. Some of the résumés that can be discovered here are incredible, touching, and yet written by life. Whether getting up in the morning in Paris in search of a suitable location for the next performance, in dispute with the local authorities in Cologne or on nightly strolls through the lonely streets of Amsterdam, the camera is always there, allowing the audience to participate in the lives of these artists of life.