When the First World War broke out in 1914, the musical world did not remain unaffected. Artists inevitably became involved, either as soldiers at the front or as composers of patriotic music or musical memorials to a lost world. The three-part documentary series investigates the (un)known, overt and hidden connections between music, war and revolution. Beginning with what led to this great human tragedy, each episode addresses different perspectives of the relationship between war and politics. The great seminal catastrophe of 1914 was not merely a historical upheaval for politics and society. Music had also lost ist political innocence. But can music really be political? Already in the 19th century, an increasing number of composers and musicians had started to adopt political agendas and to this day many musicians position themselves politically. Power and Music embarks on a search for the political aspects of music, combining historical examples with the present. The film itself thus deals with various standpoints of music’s political moments and starts a dialogue with renowned artists such as conductor Valery Gergiev, Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero or the German-British cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, one of the last survivors of the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz.
Gidon Kremer – Finding your own voice
He is a violinist of the century who is a stranger to entertainment. He is an exception in an industry that is aimed currently at market value, marketing and mass appeal: Gidon Kremer is one of the most exciting artist personalities of our time. Gidon Kremer – Finding your own voice is a calm and thoughtful portrait of the great violinist and intellectual. Over the course of one year, Paul Smaczny accompanied Gidon Kremer with the camera, observing him with his Kremerata Baltica Chamber Orchestra in Paris and his native Riga, and as a soloist in Moscow and Tokyo, as well as encountering him as a socially and politically active person. Gidon Kremer – Finding your own voice seeks to find out what drives a person like Gidon Kremer, what lies behind making music, where the deep meaning of music lies hidden. A film about a great intellectual who sees himself as a mediator of values whose ethos is alien to, indeed contrary to, any form of narcissism and profit-seeking.
Yo-Yo Ma: Inspired by Bach – Suite 1: The Music Garden
Inspired by Bach presents cellist Yo-Yo Ma performing the six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello by J.S. Bach in collaboration with artists from different disciplines, in a set of six films. THE MUSIC GARDEN opens the Yo-Yo Ma: Inspired by Bach series with an exploration of music as interpreted through gardening on a grand scale. The film follows the efforts of Yo-Yo Ma and landscape designer Julie Moir Messervy to create a formal garden, based on J.S. Bach’s First Suite for Unaccompanied Cello, in the centre of Boston.
Inspired by the music to reawaken the nature buried beneath the concrete of a modern city, Yo-Yo and Julie are a study in optimism as they set off to convince politicians, financiers, bureaucrats and planners to join in their great dream.
Yo-Yo Ma: Inspired by Bach – Suite 2: The Sound of the Carceri
Inspired by Bach presents cellist Yo-Yo Ma performing the six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello by J.S. Bach in collaboration with artists from different disciplines, in a set of six films. THE SOUND OF THE CARCERI explores the deep relationship between music and architecture through a high-tech “virtual confrontation” between the architecture of Giovanni Battista Piranesi and the music of J.S. Bach. Using a striking and highly contrasted visual style, director François Girard places Yo-Yo Ma within a series of computer-generated, three-dimensional recreations of Piranesi’s well-known prison etchings. Through Yo-Yo Ma’s and music producer Steven Epstein’s struggle to recreate and interact with the imaginary space that Ma performs in, THE SOUND OF THE CARCERI examines the complexity of illusion, of representation and reality.
Yo-Yo Ma: Inspired by Bach – Suite 3: Falling Down Stairs
Inspired by Bach presents cellist Yo-Yo Ma performing the six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello by J.S. Bach in collaboration with artists from different disciplines, in a set of six films. Follows an intense year-long collaboration between Yo-Yo Ma and choreographer Mark Morris, which culminates in a spectacular performance, conceived especially for film, of J. S. Bach’s Suite No. 3 for Unaccompanied Cello as interpreted by Yo-Yo Ma and the 14-member Mark Morris Dance Group. The film shows the intimacy, soul-searching and humor involved in the creative process, as Yo-Yo and Mark struggle to create a completely new work that can live up to the title “Inspired by Bach.”
Yo-Yo Ma: Inspired by Bach – Suite 4: Sarabande
Inspired by Bach presents cellist Yo-Yo Ma performing the six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello by J.S. Bach in collaboration with artists from different disciplines, in a set of six films. A missed limousine; a masterclass; a doctor’s office; a recital. Inspired by the moods and emotions of the Fourth Suite, SARABANDE is a dramatic film directed by feature film director Atom Egoyan and starring Yo-Yo Ma, Lori Singer, Arsinée Khanjian and Don McKellar. The film weaves together numerous stories in a series of coincidences intimating themes of generosity and exchange. Beginning with Ma’s confused and humorous arrival at Toronto International Airport, his taxi ride downtown and the goings-on at a doctor’s office, this enigmatic drama culminates in a masterclass conducted by Yo-Yo Ma and attended by the doctor (played by Lori Singer). Ultimately, the film examines the effect of music on the everyday lives of the characters and specifically the value of music to healing, especially in relation to the Bach Cello Suites.
Yo-Yo Ma: Inspired by Bach – Suite 5: Struggle For Hope
Inspired by Bach presents cellist Yo-Yo Ma performing the six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello by J.S. Bach in collaboration with artists from different disciplines, in a set of six films. Two celebrated artists – cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Kabuki actor Tamasaburo Bando – combine talents to create an emotionally charged dance performance to J.S. Bach’s Fifth Suite for Unaccompanied Cello that draws its very inspiration from two very distinct worlds. Struggle For Hope follows Yo-Yo and Tamasaburo on this seemingly impossible collaboration. As Eastern mysticism meets Western rigour, the two rehearse and discuss the ultimate goal: a performance that enhances both traditions and transcends the cultural boundaries that naturally exist between them.
Yo-Yo Ma: Inspired by Bach – Suite 6: Six Gestures
Inspired by Bach presents cellist Yo-Yo Ma performing the six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello by J.S. Bach in collaboration with artists from different disciplines, in a set of six films. When Yo-Yo Ma decided to re-record J.S. Bach’s Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, he approached world champion skaters Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean to join him in interpreting the Sixth Suite. Combining beautiful images of Yo-Yo Ma’s performance with magnificent sequences of Torvill and Dean and J.S. Bach’s first person narrative, SIX GESTURES investigates J.S. Bach’s personal and professional history while linking his life and music to our modern world
Puccini – The dark side of the moon
The Italian composer, Giacomo Puccini is reputed to have once described himself as „a passionate hunter of water birds, texts and women.“ It was an ironic description of the problems which are said to have accompanied him throughout his life. He was indeed a passionate, yet terrible, hunter. With every opera he wrote, he wore out numerous librettists in the search for the perfect text, because unlike Mozart, he couldn’t write a single note before the „script“ for a new piece of work was just as he wanted it – and for as long as he lived, he was almost manic in his hunt for and collection of beautiful women…The film by Andreas Morell looks at Giacomo Puccini’s life from the point of view of his psychological manic preoccupation with one subject: women. He makes connections between the women in Puccini’s life and those in his operas, looking as he goes, at what made Puccini tick. Starting with a characteristic situation in Vienna in 1923 – one year before the composer’s death – the film offers an insight into Puccini and reflects a repetitive pattern which spanned almost three decades of his life. As he summarised for his own credo: “I cannot compose without love in my life!”
Music, War and Revolution – Music in the Time of the Great War
When the First World War broke out in 1914, the musical world did not remain unaffected. Artists inevitably became involved, either as soldiers at the front or as composers of patriotic music or musical memorials to a lost world. The three-part documentary series investigates the (un)known, overt and hidden connections between music, war and revolution. The first part focuses on the enthusiasm for the war in the musical world: when musicians and composers became fervent patriots and soldiers. How did the composers and musicians such as Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, Maurice Ravel and Béla Bartók handle these times of war? How did their experiences at the battlefront affect their composing? What do the compositions reveal of this era and its spirit, believes and artistic changes of this age? The documentary combines important historical locations in the lives of the composers and musicians: such as the original battlefront of Verdun with the Voie Sacrée and the old Vienna with the Wiener Musikverein.