A Film About George Costakis and His Definitive Collection of Russian Avant-garde Art George Costakis (1912-90) was one of the world’s greatest collectors. Over a thirty-five year period, he built up a magnificent collection of Russian Avant-garde paintings – the most comprehensive record of an art movement ever amassed. In this film, Costakis tells the remarkable story of how he rescued these important artworks from destruction during political upheavals in the Soviet Union and imparts his first-hand knowledge of the artists and their work.
Raphael
For four centuries after his death, Raphael (1483-1520) occupied a pre-eminent position in the world of art but, while his greatness is still unquestioned, his popularity has waned over the past hundred years. This three-part study reappraises his work and considers why the values represented in his art are in eclipse. Filmed in Italy in the centres where Raphael lived and worked, the programmes also travel around Europe to survey his influence.
Three Painters
The painter, scholar and writer Lawrence Gowing (1918-91) was an eminent figure in the British art establishment. In this series he illuminates a central purpose in the work of three seminal artists who each mark a distinct stage in the story of European painting between the Renaissance and today. The artists’ work lies at the heart of the documentaries and Gowing’s lucid commentary reveals their wholly original achievements.
The Catherine Wheel
When Twyla Tharp’s The Catherine Wheel was premiered on Broadway, it was described by Arlene Croce of the New Yorker as “a major event in our theatre”, with “dancing of astonishing beauty and power”. It was then completely refashioned by Twyla Tharp herself specially for television, with computer-generated figures, shadow-play and reverse action – creating a video version that has met with overwhelming praise: “if ever a programme demanded to be viewed again and again with a video recorder, this is it.” FINANCIAL TIMES. Set to an original score by David Byrne, the lead singer/composer of Talking Heads, the dance grew out of Twyla Tharp’s fascination with Saint Catherine, the 4th-century martyr who was condemned to die on a spiked wheel.
Die tote Stadt
In 1920s Germany, Erich Korngold’s work was considered “degenerate” and banned. Eventually, in 1934, he left for Hollywood. There, he made a name for himself as a film composer and only rarely wrote great works for the stage. Many of his quite successful operas, composed between 1913 and 1927, stopped being performed after World War II. Among these was his perhaps most significant work, Die tote Stadt (“The Dead City”), which was performed again for the first time after a long hiatus in 1955 in Munich. Further productions followed. Nevertheless, Götz Friedrich’s version of 1983 for the Deutsche Oper Berlin was only the fifth new production of the opera after 1945. Thanks to it, the work became established in the repertoires of many other opera houses, if only as a curiosity.
In the production at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 1983, James King, who debuted at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 1961 and had a great interest in the role, starred as Paul; the internationally renowned singer Karan Armstrong as Marietta; and William Murray as Frank.
Montezuma
Including: Preussisches Märchen // Montezuma // Die tote Stadt // Die Gespenstersonate / Oedipus
For ist 100th anniversary the Deutsche Oper Berlin is featured in a special edition of live recordings that were produced since the beginnings of television broadcasts from the opera house. Following the first DVD collection with recordings from the 1960s, this special edition box contains
operas from the 1970s and 1980s – treasures in colour featuring great opera singers, stage directors and contemporary composers.
Introduction to Brahms, Serenade No.2 in A major
Just like the Serenade No. 1, its companion piece Op. 16 was also written in the little princely residence town of Detmold chiefly in the summers of 1858 and 1859. Brahms, then a young man in his mid 20s, enjoyed the summers he spent there in the employ of the princely family, and the result was works marked by a filigree lightness and a dancing lilt. They are both gentle scores, so modest in physical volume of sound, so tender, idyllic in mood that they suggest a conscious reaction against the monumentalism of their immediate predecessor, the Piano Concerto in D minor. Brahms enjoyed his Serenade No. 2 and wrote: “I felt absolutely blissful… I have rarely composed with such exhilaration – the music flowed so sweetly and gently inside me that I was filled with joy through and through.” The work was premiered in Hamburg on 10 February 1860. It was performed in New York by the New York Philharmonic two years later, on 1 February 1862. Between 1981 and 1984, Leonard Bernstein recorded nearly all of Brahms’s orchestral works with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra to honor the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 1983. Today, the cycle is considered as a landmark in the interpretation of Brahms’ music. Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic have underscored both the classicism and romanticism, the dramatic intensity and the sober restraint of Brahms’s music. The venue was Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal, where two of Brahms’s symphonies were premiered and where Brahms himself conducted. In his introductions, Bernstein speaks with an eloquence and conviction that go far beyond the opening words to a traditional concert performance. With his stimulating theories on Brahms and his music, Bernstein prompts viewers to listen to the music with an open mind.
Introduction to Brahms, Symphony No.2 in D major, op.73
Brahms’s sunny Second Symphony is as warm and lyrical as his First had been stormy and dramatic. It quite possibly reflects the idyllic nature around Lake Wörth in Austria, where Brahms composed it in the summer of 1877. Brahms himself, however, called attention to the melancholy current that undermines the pastoral serenity (“You’ve never heard anything as world-weary as this”, he wrote to his friend Schubring). Despite the apparent simplicity of the symphonic writing, the work is strengthened and enriched by many thematic threads that run from one movement to another. It has been a special favorite among music lovers since its premiere in Vienna on 30 December 1877. The celebrated 19th-century music critic Eduard Hanslick wrote that it was for “all who long for good music, whether they understand its complexity or not”. Between 1981 and 1984, Leonard Bernstein recorded nearly all of Brahms’s orchestral works with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra to honor the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 1983. Today, the cycle is considered as a landmark in the interpretation of Brahms’ music. Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic have underscored both the classicism and romanticism, the dramatic intensity and the sober restraint of Brahms’s music. The venue was Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal, where two of Brahms’s symphonies were premiered and where Brahms himself conducted. In his introductions, Bernstein speaks with an eloquence and conviction that go far beyond the opening words to a traditional concert performance. With his stimulating theories on Brahms and his music, Bernstein prompts viewers to listen to the music with an open mind.
Introduction to Brahms, Symphony No.3 in F major, op.90
A particularly mellow, burnished glow radiates from Brahms’s F major Symphony. The work was written chiefly in Wiesbaden, where Brahms spent the summer of 1883. He had just turned fifty – and had possibly fallen in love with the much younger singer Hermine Spiess, who happened to live in Wiesbaden. Like most of his symphonies, the Third is also permeated by a melodic motto. This one consists of three notes which not only open the symphony but are frequently woven into its texture and return with dramatic emphasis at crucial moments in the later movements. The unexpectedly quiet close of the Third sets it off against the previous two symphonies and calms the electrifying tension of all four movements before reaching a tension-releasing “transfiguration” (Clara Schumann). Between 1981 and 1984, Leonard Bernstein recorded nearly all of Brahms’s orchestral works with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra to honor the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 1983. Today, the cycle is considered as a landmark in the interpretation of Brahms’ music. Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic have underscored both the classicism and romanticism, the dramatic intensity and the sober restraint of Brahms’s music. The venue was Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal, where two of Brahms’s symphonies were premiered and where Brahms himself conducted. In his introductions, Bernstein speaks with an eloquence and conviction that go far beyond the opening words to a traditional concert performance. With his stimulating theories on Brahms and his music, Bernstein prompts viewers to listen to the music with an open mind.
Introduction to Brahms, Symphony No.4 in E minor, op.98
Composed during the summer months of the years 1884 and 1885 in Mürzzuschlag, southwest of Vienna, the Fourth Symphony tended to disconcert the public at first and had to prove itself in the concert circuit before gaining recognition as a masterwork of epoch-making stature. What Brahms’s contemporaries regarded as difficult and bewildering were above all the extreme constructive density of the score, the unusual layout, especially of the third and fourth movements, a number of archaic elements pointing back to the formulae and techniques of “early music” (the passacaglia in the fourth movement) and the austere, elegiac mood that permeates the entire work. The premiere of the Fourth Symphony performed by the Meiningen Court Orchestra in Meiningen under Brahms’s direction on 25 October 1885 was a great success. The work became the chief feature of the orchestra’s ensuing tour, with Brahms conducting it in nine cities. Between 1981 and 1984, Leonard Bernstein recorded nearly all of Brahms’s orchestral works with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra to honor the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 1983. Today, the cycle is considered as a landmark in the interpretation of Brahms’ music. Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic have underscored both the classicism and romanticism, the dramatic intensity and the sober restraint of Brahms’s music. The venue was Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal, where two of Brahms’s symphonies were premiered and where Brahms himself conducted. In his introductions, Bernstein speaks with an eloquence and conviction that go far beyond the opening words to a traditional concert performance. With his stimulating theories on Brahms and his music, Bernstein prompts viewers to listen to the music with an open mind.