Tony Palmer’s film contains a startling kaleidoscope of images reflecting precisely what Berlioz (1803-69) had written in his music: war, destruction, death, sometimes blending seamlessly with great natural beauty, sometimes juxtaposed with erotica. The pictures are underscored by the composer’s powerful and evocative music – mainly from his life’s work, The Trojans. This opera’s failure to convince the musical establishment of its greatness caused Berlioz to die a broken man. The programme, which takes as its source the composer’s letters and memoirs, details his vain attempts to gain recognition for this epic work. Corin Redgrave portrays Berlioz. The soloists are Ludmilla Schemtschuk, Giorgio Lamberti, Agnes Habereder and Anne Sofie Von Otter, and the ensemble, chorus and orchestra of the Zürich Opera House are conducted by Ralf Weikert.
James Galway
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.
St Matthew Passion BWV 244
Recorded live from the Romanesque church in Alpirsbach, Enoch zu Guttenberg conducts the Neubeuern Choral Society and the Munich Bach Collegium, with soloists Claes-Hakon Ahnjsö (tenor), Margaret Marshall (soprano), Jard van Nes (contralto), Aldo Baldin (tenor) and Anton Scharinger (bass). The culmination of Bach’s writing for the Church, this massive choral work is a deeply moving combination of joy and grief which attains the utmost heights of expressiveness.
Velaquez
In return for immortalising the grotesquely in-bred court of the rapidly declining Spanish Hapsburgs, Philip IV admitted Velazquez (1599-1660) to the ranks of the nobility at a time when artists were considered no better than carpenters. Didier Baussy-Oulianoff’s resplendent portrait focuses on this special relationship between an artist and a king, and benefits from exclusive access to a major Velazquez exhibition mounted at the Prado in Madrid. The artist’s character is revealed through his work.
Perlman in Russia
This documentary follows Itzhak Perlman when he travelled to Russia for the first time in 1991, accompanied by Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic. Perlman describes his experiences with wit and warmth, and speaks movingly of what it means to him, as a Jew, to perform in Russia with a Jewish orchestra.
Highlights from Arena di Verona
Some of the opera world’s greatest artists are featured in extracts from works by Verdi and Puccini, performed at Italy’s spectacular Arena di Verona. Extracts from Tosca, Otello, Il Trovatore, Turandot
Symphony for the Spire – A spectacle of music and theatre from the West Green, Salisbury Cathedral
Salisbury Cathedral’s West Green is the setting for Symphony for the Spire. Set against the magnificent backdrop of the cathedral, the evening is a mixture of spectacular special effects and pyrotechnics with a programme of unique stars, including Placido Domingo, Jessye Norman, and cellist Ofra Harnoy. The cathedral’s West Front also acts as an enormous projection screen for a series of dramatic images to support a special adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry V. Starring Kenneth Branagh in the role that made him internationally famous, and Charlton Heston, the action is backed by a special version of the acclaimed score by Scottish composer, Patrick Doyle.
Pierre Boulez conducts Varèse
“I dream of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds,” said Edgard Varèse, and what better interpreter of his astonishing, genre-defying soundscapes than Pierre Boulez – arguably his spiritual successor, and perhaps the only figure in postwar French music whose sonic imagination matched Varèse’s own? In this 1990 concert from Frankfurt’s Alte Oper, Boulez conducts the youthful virtuosi of the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie in the shattering Amériques and directs Ensemble Intercontemporain in near-definitive accounts of Ionisation, Offrandes and Octandre. First, though, musicologist Michael Nupen offers an expert introduction to this most innovative of 20th-century musical minds.
Solti conducts Bruckner: Symphony No. 2
It’s almost a cliché to describe Bruckner’s symphonies as “cathedrals in sound”, and especially when the symphony in question is the Second: perhaps Bruckner’s most personal homage to the Viennese classical tradition. But there’s an unmistakable synergy between visuals and music in this live performance from the magnificent Romanesque cathedral at Speyer in Bavaria, with Sir Georg Solti conducting the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra in a setting steeped in the south German Catholic tradition that Bruckner loved so much. Solti brought an irrepressible energy to everything he conducted, and this is no exception. The result is a near-perfect meeting of music and architecture.
Svetlanov conducts Prokofiev
Yevgeny Svetlanov conducts the State Symphony Orchestra of USSR in this remarkable all-Prokofiev programme, filmed at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt in 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed. They begin with the composer’s Symphony No. 1, “Classical”, in a performance that brings out all the pointed wit of Prokofiev’s brilliant pastiche of Viennese classicism. Violinist Vadim Repin then takes to the stage as soloist in the fiercely virtuosic Violin Concerto No.1, composed in the same year, 1917 – a year that, despite major political turbulence in Russia, saw Prokofiev produce several enduring masterpieces.