The celebrated Australian horn player, Barry Tuckwell, traces how one of the earliest primitive instruments developed the form and sound it has today and became an important part of the symphony orchestra. Accompanied by the English Chamber Orchestra, he is seen performing works by Telemann, Schumann, Beethoven, Britten and Mozart.
Stephen Sondheim
With shows including A Little Night Music, Company and Sweeney Todd, Sondheim established himself as the foremost music dramatist of his generation. In this programme, he describes the key processes involved in song writing, and works with students from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London on the interpretation of some of his most memorable songs.
Claudio Arrau
This profile of the great Chilean pianist, who died in 1991 at the age of eighty-eight, was made in 1984. Throughout his long career his interpretations remained unparalleled in their depth of feeling, virtuosity and fidelity to the text. In the film he talks about his life and work and performs pieces by Beethoven (‘Appassionata’ Sonata No. 23 Op. 57 in F minor), Chopin (Ballade No. 3 in A flat), Debussy (L’Isle joyeuse), Liszt (Petrarch Sonnet No. 104) and Schubert (Klavierstück in E flat minor, D946), describing his feelings for these composers.
Ralph Vaughan Williams – A Symphonic Portrait
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) was a quintessentially English, strongly individual and very personal composer. Ken Russell’s delightful and original tribute to this great man of twentieth-century music uses extracts from his nine symphonies to sketch the story of his life. Vivid memories of Vaughan Williams are recounted by his widow, Ursula, and others who knew him.
Catherine Cookson
Catherine Cookson (1906-98) was a writer who won a huge popular following and many of her books have been successfully dramatised for television. This programme employs an innovative combination of film and video techniques to evoke her struggle to survive an impoverished upbringing in the slums of East Jarrow. Cookson confronts her past which led to a massive and terrifying nervous breakdown many years afterwards. She talks candidly about her life and the experiences that underlie her fiction.
John Piper
English artist John Piper (1903-92) is best known for his romantic pictures of the country’s architectural heritage and landscape. This film surveys his long career – his early abstract paintings, his work as a war artist, his return to representational art – and explores a talent which was expressed in watercolours, oils, ceramics, stained glass, tapestry and opera designs.
Olivier Messiaen
French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) is a key figure in the evolution of twentieth-century classical music. In this definitive profile, made when he was nearly eighty, Messiaen talks about his life, his music and the mainsprings of his work – a deep love of nature and a fervent Christian faith. He is seen improvising on the organ at the St. Trinité church in Paris, and the programme includes specially-recorded extracts from several of his major works.
Alberto Moravia
Alberto Moravia (1907-90), one of Italy’s foremost modern novelists, talks revealingly about his long career, his experience of Fascism, and about women and sex – concerns that lie at the heart of his writing. Filmed in Rome and on Capri, the programme focuses on his novel 1934, and includes contributions from writer Dacia Maraini and film-maker Bernardo Bertolucci, as well as readings from his work.
Ken Russell’s View of The Planets, Op.32
The Planets by Gustav Holst is one of the best-loved pieces of twentieth-century music. Ken Russell has taken a brilliant recording of this work, with Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra, and illustrated the music with passages from a mass of documentary material. In true Russell style, his view of The Planets is provocative, entertaining and wonderfully watchable.
Laurence Olivier
Made in 1982, this two-part film special records the only time Laurence Olivier (1907-89) talked openly for television about a life filled with incident and romance both on and off the stage and screen. His life-story is richly illustrated with film clips and archive material, and there are contributions from friends, including Peggy Ashcroft, Douglas Fairbanks Jnr., John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, John Osborne, and his wife, the actress Joan Plowright.