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. Esa-Pekka Salonen rehearses and performs Debussy’s impressionistic orchestral piece, La Mer, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Directed
by Peter Berggren 56′
Hermes Pan began choreographing Hollywood musicals in 1933, when he embarked on a long-running collaboration with Fred Astaire. For over three decades he was the man who made the stars dance – Ginger Rogers, Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, Cyd Charisse, Shirley MacLaine, Frank Sinatra, Bob Fosse and many others. In this, the last programme he made before his death in 1990, Pan introduces a dance extravaganza which takes viewers back to the days when musicals were all the rage on the silver screen.
From 1975-85, flautist James Galway was continually in the public eye. He widened the audience for classical music and, to the purists’ horror, added unashamedly popular music to his repertoire. Since then, he has tired of hell-raising and the publicity circus and is more eager than ever to perfect and to communicate his art. Galway talks with disarming frankness about his life and his music and is seen teaching, rehearsing and performing.
Evelyn Glennie is a unique phenomenon. She is profoundly deaf and yet is recognised as one of the world’s top percussionists. This programme follows her to Rio de Janeiro in search of new percussion techniques. She learns the samba rhythms and participates in the famous Rio Carnival. Back in the UK, she incorporates the experiences of her trip into her repertoire as she plays two Brazilian pieces, one with the London Symphony Orchestra.
Leading German composer Hans Werner Henze’s early experiences of Nazism and wartime conscription left him with a passionate belief in music as a means of political resistance and as a healing force. Filmed while on a rare visit to his home town in Westphalia, Henze talks candidly about his youth, the development of his revolutionary aesthetic and his nomadic musical life. He is seen at work on the score for his opera, The Treacherous Sea.
Haydn (1732-1809), the ‘Father of the Symphony’, spent his most creative years as Kapellmeister at the Esterháza Palace in Hungary. Conductor Christopher Hogwood travels to Esterháza with his orchestra, the Academy of Ancient Music, and leading Haydn authority H. C. Robbins Landon, to explore the composer’s life and his music. Musical illustrations recorded at Esterháza raise questions about the authentic style of rendition championed by Hogwood and his musicians.
Morris is a brilliantly creative choreographer whose musicality and almost classical regard for form have led him to be hailed as the successor to the late George Balanchine, the doyen of twentieth-century dance. This programme was made when he was the resident choreographer at La Monnaie in Brussels. It focuses on his highly-acclaimed ballet L’allegro, il penseroso ed il moderato. He is also seen creating a new work in rehearsal, with dancers including Mikhail Baryshnikov.
In this documentary, which tells something of the history of one of today’s most popular instruments, several acclaimed pianists talk about their choice of piano and discuss the merits of using period keyboards when playing baroque and classical compositions. Lively musical illustrations are included.
The organ is one of the oldest and most glorious musical instruments known to man. Since the early fifteenth century, its history has been closely linked with the religious setting in which it came to reside. Visiting churches in Italy, Spain, France, Holland, Germany and Switzerland, this series looks at the work of the great organ-builders of Europe. Leading organists demonstrate the magnificent range and beauty of this complex instrument’s sound, from sixteenth-century compositions to contemporary masterpieces, among them works by de Cabézon, Frescobaldi, Couperin, Sweelinck, Buxtehude, Bach, Widor and Messiaen.
The pianist, conductor and composer Lalo Schifrin is perhaps best-known for the award-winning film and television scores he has penned, such as Mission Impossible, Cool Hand Luke, Bullit and The Fox. This documentary includes clips from these screen classics and features extensive extracts from a concert Schifrin gave in Cannes, with the Lyon National Orchestra and guests, including Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Brown and Grady Tate (The Dizzy Gillespie Trio) and soprano Julia Migenes.
