This film shows the making of a once in a lifetime musical event: The world’s most beloved tenor, Andrea Bocelli, gifts New York City with a free concert with the New York Philharmonic to take place at Central Park’s Great Lawn, joined by Celine Dion, Tony Bennett and Bryn Terfel. The New York Philharmonic’s music director, Alan Gilbert, conducts.
Herbert von Karajan – Maestro for the Screen
Herbert von Karajan was the important conductor, who created film and later video productions on his own responsibility. „I am actually born too early“, he said, well knowing, that the video possibilities were still in their very beginnings. Georg Wuebbolt made interviews with Karajan’s team: his Director of photography, his cutter, his secretary, his producer and musicians of Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. This documentary includes outstanding performance material from the Unitel and Telemondial library, as well as unreleased digitally remastered excerpts from the legendary
RBB (SFB) and ORF archive.
Eras of Music History
Bold in conception, popular in format, gripping in its presentation – “Eras of Music History” makes the soundtrack to European history come alive – immediate and easily comprehensible for young viewers, classical newcomers and experts. In the series “Eras of Music History” music becomes something palpable – sounds you can touch and feel. Graphic novels, historical scenes, jam sessions and commentaries by classical stars, footnotes from political figures, philosophers and cultural scholars – all these are woven together with video and audio documents of the history of great performances. (4 part series: Baroque, Romantic, Viennese Classicism, 20th Century – 4×90’ or 8×45’)
Through The Eyes Of Yuja
With more than 120 performances a year, Yuja Wang lives a nomadic lifestyle. Travelling the world professionally, two extra small trolley suitcases carry the essentials for a two week trip: dresses, shoes, iPad, iPod and Smartphone. Yuja is 27 and leads a new generation of pianists who can play anything with comfort thanks to their phenomenal technique and strong self-confidence. “Through the Eyes of Yuja” reveals us this artist in a very personal way, equipped with a portable camera and her smartphone the film wants to be a kind of digital diary, a reflection of the image Yuja casts to the world as well as a phantasmagorical world the directors, Anaïs and Oliver Spiro, tend to loom about this image.
Mission Incognito
The opera house, the concert hall, the museum … these venues are passé – “Mission Incognito” is the new tomorrow. Celebrity artists go outside their comfort zone and share their high art directly with the people on the streets. An entertaining half hour format featuring well known musicians and artists, such as Rolando Villazón or Vladimir Malakhov, that will step into the world and meet their amateur counterparts.
Jonas Kaufmann – You Mean The World To Me – Documentary
Jonas Kaufmann traces the paths of the great singers and composers during the last years of the Weimar Republic (between Germany’s defeat at the end of World War I in 1918, and Hitler’s rise to power in 1933). The film is focussing on three pillars: Franz Léhar, Richard Tauber and the heydays of the “Silver Operetta” era; Robert Stolz, Joseph Schmidt and the invention of sound movies; and the diversification of musical styles through international commercialization. It includes excerpts of Jonas Kaufmann’s correpetitions with Stellario Fagone in Munich and the recording session for his album in the Funkhaus Berlin. Also available: Concert “You Mean The World To Me” (70′), Cat.No. 9151
Satiesfictions – Saunters with Eric Satie
Always armed with a melon, umbrella and wisecracks, he is not only on the outside the strangest fellow in French music history: Erik Satie was a composer, designer, church founder, PR pioneer and master of aperçus. In playful episodes the documentary “Satiesfictions” by Youlian Tabakov and Anne-Kathrin Peitz illuminates the phenomenon that is Satie: His countless ads evolve into real commercials and his drawings into cartoons. Interwoven with accounts by Satie associates and music experts, the film offers a unique insight into Satie’s cosmos of word and sound, featuring divas, dogs, and children, pianists playing on pianos stacked atop each other or performers turning into “musical furniture”.
Miloš – Heartstrings
In early 2011 The UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper claimed, “The Classical Guitar has a new hero”. That man is thirty-year-old Miloš Karadaglic from Montenegro. “I want to wake this instrument from hibernation”, he says. From growing up in war-torn Yugoslavia, discovering a battered guitar in his parents’ bedroom, Heartstrings tells the story of his love affair with the guitar, taking it to concert halls around the world and restoring it to ist rightful place in the pantheon of classical music. The documentary was filmed throughout 2012, the breakthrough year on the concert stage for Miloš with sold-out debut performances and tours around the word, and charts the guitarist’s story to date.
The Reichsorchester
In 2009 the Berlin Philharmonic celebrated its 125th year.The orchestra is using its jubilee as an opportunity to examine a rather unknown chapter in its history: The years under the rule of the National Socialists (between 1933 and 1945). Thanks to contemporary witnesses from the orchestra and its fringes who are still alive today, and thanks also to extensive and until now unappraised archive materials, it is possible to gain an insight into this microcosmos: where does the thin line run separating autonomy from entanglement, innocence from guilt? A chapter from the history of Germany and Berlin, as gripping as it is volatile, comes to life once more.
John Cage – Journeys in Sound
On the occasion of the 100th birthday of the American composer in autumn 2012, the documentary honors one of the most extraordinary protagonists of 20th century music. The program is directed by Oscar® winner Allan Miller, whom the ‘New York Times’ called ‘America’s foremost filmmaker of documentaries on classical music’, co-directed by Paul Smaczny. Shot in America, Germany and Japan, the program premieres rare archival footage; presenting concert excerpts and a set of short stories, featuring associates of Cage and contemporary artists, playfully delineating different aspects of John Cage. Protagonists are Yoko Ono, David Tudor, Christian Wolff, Steffen Schleiermacher, Toshio Hosokawa, Mayumi Miyata, Calvin Tomkins and many others. The film was awarded as ‘best documentary’ at the Golden Prague Festival 2012 and best educational program at FIFA Montréal 2013.