Heinrich Schiff is one of today’s top ranking cellists. In an interview recorded at his home in Austria, he talks about his musicianship, his celebrated career as a performer, to his move towards conducting in becoming the director of England’s Northern Sinfonia, with whom he is seen rehearsing Beethoven and Bartók. Performance extracts include Schiff playing Bach sonatas and Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 2 in G Op. 126.
Vera Lynn
At the height of her popularity during World War Two, the singer Dame Vera Lynn captured the heart of the British nation with ballads such as The White Cliffs of Dover and We’ll Meet Again. As the Forces’ sweetheart, she symbolised the fortitude with which Britain survived the Blitz. She has been called upon to recreate the spirit of resilience and patriotic pride ever since. This portrait celebrates Dame Vera – her music and her times.
All Night Vigil
Recorded live from London’s Royal Albert Hall, Valery Polyansky conducts the USSR Ministry of Culture Chamber Choir, with soloists Tatiana Zheranzhe (contralto) and Victor Radkevich (tenor), in a performance of Rachmaninov’s sublime sacred work. Written before Rachmaninov went into exile, the work is in Russian and scored for unaccompanied choir, since the Orthodox Church does not permit instrumental accompaniment.
Corps
Hans van Manen’s Corps takes its inspiration from Alban Berg’s elegiac Violin Concerto and reflects the ‘longing for’ and ‘taking leave of’ expressed in the music. The nervous restlessness and often aggressive pattern of the movements capture the impotent rage invoked by the death of a loved one. The corps de ballet plays a leading role, interacting with twelve male dancers and three female dancers. This performance by the Dutch National Ballet was recorded in studio and Gidon Kremer is the soloist with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Colin Davis.
The Strange Affliction of Anton Bruckner
Master of the music biopic, Ken Russell explores the psyche of Anton Bruckner (1824-96) and the extraordinary music he wrote, by focusing on his recovery from numeromania, an obsession with numbers. The onset of this mental illness began when the Austrian composer, on the brink of committing suicide by throwing himself off a bridge, instead began to count what he saw in the panorama below him. Subsequently, he entered a lunatic asylum and was cured in three months.
Willard White
Singer Sir Willard White not only has a superb bass/baritone voice, but his acting talent has landed him leading roles in the theatre as well as on the operatic stage. Jamaican by birth, he now lives in England, but this programme takes him back to his homeland to tell the remarkable story of his success. He demonstrates his operatic skills in special recordings of some of his most celebrated roles, and is seen in rehearsals for an English National Opera production of Pelleas and Melisande.
Anne-Sophie Mutter
This portrait of the protégé of the late Herbert von Karajan – who, when she was only thirteen years old, proclaimed her “the greatest youthful musical talent since the young Menuhin” – shows her in performance, and talking in interview at her home in Kitzbühel about her life and her ideas on music. She is seen in concert at London’s Barbican Centre playing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Op. 35, as well as sonatas by Ravel, Franck, Tartini, Sarasate and Beethoven.
Oscar Marzaroli
Oscar Marzaroli was a gifted photographer but worked as a director in the Scottish film industry. He left over one hundred thousand negatives when he died in 1988 and yet his arresting view and social history of Scotland – Glasgow in particular – was scarcely known. His obsession and his legacy are the subject of this film by acclaimed directors Bill Forsythe and Charlie Gormley, who pay unsentimental homage to the man they worked with when they started out in films.
August Wilson
One of the most important US playwrights to emerge since Arthur Miller, Wilson explores the same territory – the American Dream – but, as a black writer, his perspective is different. To show the background to his work, this film was made with Wilson in his home territory, The Hill district of Pittsburgh, a black ghetto shattered by unemployment and drug dealing. It centres on specially-staged extracts from his plays and a major interview.
Alan Parker
Despite altercations with the British film industry and critics, Parker, whose credits include Bugsy Malone, Midnight Express, Fame, and Mississippi Burning, remains one of the country’s most accomplished film-makers and one the few to transplant successfully to Hollywood. In a programme which follows him back to his roots in London, to the Cannes Film Festival, and to Dublin to work on his film The Commitments, Parker talks revealingly about his career, which is amply illustrated with clips.