A Film by Peter Maniura and Jonathan Moore: Turnage’s critically-acclaimed opera, set in London’s backstreets, is a modern version of the Oedipus myth, based on a play by Steven Berkoff. The composer has matched the raw potency of Berkoff’s graphic language and bold imagery with a rasping lyricism and remorseless drumbeat. This powerful television production was adapted by Jonathan Moore from his original stage version. The cast includes Helen Charnock, Fiona Kimm, Quentin Hayes and Richard Suart. Richard Bernas conducts The Almeida Ensemble. (Sung in English)
Excerpts from Eugene Onegin Op.24
Hailed by the press as “the definitive video production” of Tchaikovsky’s music, this exceptional concert series, recorded live from the Alte Oper Frankfurt, features the leading Russian conductor Vladimir Fedoseyev and the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra. Fedoseyev’s perceptive reading of the works of his fellow countryman, the masterly playing of the orchestra and guest soloists combine to produce performances which are revelatory in their execution and understanding of Tchaikovsky’s music and the Russian heritage.
Alfred Schnittke – Words Return to Music
“Schnittke (1934-98) is now established as one of Russia’s most important twentieth-century composers. This programme features the first major television interview he gave in Moscow for broadcast in the West, when he and his colleagues were able to talk freely in the wake of Gorbachev’s reforms. The film reflects the “unreal reality” he describes by using specially-shot black and white sequences and original performance extracts to create an impressionistic tapestry of biography, music and ideas.
Works featured include Violin Sonata No. 2, Symphony No. 1, Prayer of a Young Man, Three Scenes, Epilogue from Peer Gynt and the Faust Cantata.”
Joseph Brodsky
In this profile the dynamic and provocative Nobel prize-winning poet Joseph Brodsky, expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 and a United States citizen until his death in 1996, talks at length about his poetry and recollects growing up in Russia. His account of his creative life there is illustrated with documentary and archive footage, and friends and colleagues from both his native and adopted homelands contribute. Brodsky’s poems are read by Igor Panich.
Raymond Carver
On his death in 1988, the American writer Carver was mourned as a national literary figure. Only ten years before he had been a chronic alcoholic, abandoned by his wife and family. From these experiences he produced stories and poems of profound humanity about the downside of the American Dream. This film portrait includes interviews with his second wife, his close friends and members of his family, as well as dramatisations of two of his most famous stories.
Dance Crazy in Hollywood
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.
Vivienne Westwood
Once Queen of Punk, Vivienne Westwood has gone on to be the toast of the Paris cat-walks. This Programme looks at the career of one of Britain’s most innovative and idiosyncratic fashion designers and examines the way in which she draws on history, fetishism and street culture for her inspiration.
Evelyn Glennie in Rio
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.
David Lean and Robert Bolt
Film director David Lean (1908-91) and screen-writer Robert Bolt (1924-95) collaborated on some of the cinema’s greatest successes, including Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor
Zhivago and Ryan’s Daughter. This film was made in 1989 when Bolt, having recovered from a massive heart attack, was working with Lean to develop a feature based on Conrad’s Nostromo. They talk frankly about their working relationship and their friendship, which survived the strains of thirty years in the film business.
Communicado
Communicado, a touring Company which works in Scotland, is one of Britain’s most innovative and exciting theatre groups. This programme follows the development of one of its projects, a daring theatrical extravaganza by Jock Tamson called Bairns. It sits in on rehearsals and witnesses the grand spectacle of the finished piece.