“Art is the celebration of the world. It does not seek to evoke sin, guilt, torment, distress and fear.” With these words, Veronese (1528-88) successfully defended the supposed irreverence of his work before the Inquisition. Shot on location in Venice, this sumptuous study of the sixteenth-century master, his works, life and times, reveals the deeper interaction between sensuousness and faith that lies beneath the careless beauty, wit and gaiety of his art.
Bernard Haitink
Bernard Haitink, a leading figure in international concert halls and opera houses, is one of the most sought-after Mahler and Bruckner conductors of our time. This biographical documentary follows him as he prepares for and conducts concerts, operas, sound and television recordings. Music highlights include extracts from works by Bruckner, Mahler, Mozart, Schubert and Wagner. Archive material illustrates his long and illustrious career and maestro Haitink talks at length about his life, his music and conducting.
Sergei Rachmaninov
Fleeing Russia in 1917, Rachmaninov (1873-1943) was forced to set aside composing in order to support his family as a pianist. This film looks at his life in exile and at how this separation from his homeland affected his music. Filming centres on Senar, the villa by Lake Lucerne which Rachmaninov built as a conscious recreation of Ivanovka, his wife’s beloved estate in Russia. His grandson still lives there and, with his co-operation and that of Sofia Satin, his niece, the family archives have been used to piece together a picture of the composer’s life in both Russia and Europe.
The Schönberg Cycle: String Sextet Op. 4 (Verklärte Nacht)
In a series of specially-staged performances, The Schoenberg Quartet – Janneke van der Meer (violin), Wim de Jong (violin), Henk Guittart (viola) and Viola de Hoog (cello) – perform Schoenberg’s complete works for strings. The recordings benefit from the creative use of visual techniques, and the intimate camerawork, focus on detail and superb sound quality which studio conditions facilitate. The quartet is joined by Arleen Augér (soprano) for the String Quartet No. 2, and by Jan-Erik van Regteren Altena (viola) and Taco Kooistra (cello) for Verklärte Nacht.
String Quartet in D
27′
String Quartet No. 1 in D minor Op. 7
46′
String Quartet No. 2 in F sharp minor Op. 10
33′
String Quartet No. 3 Op. 30
33′
String Quartet No. 4 Op. 37
36′
String Sextet Op. 4 (Verklärte Nacht)
31′
String Trio Op. 45
21′
A 52-minute companion documentary is available to accompany these performances.
In this documentary, made to accompany The Schoenberg Cycle, the Schoenberg Quartet is seen preparing for their performance of the cycle in Los Angeles in 1989. Their tutor is the violist Eugene Lehner, a member of the former Kolisch Quartet, which, in ist day, worked extensively with Schoenberg, Berg, Webern and Bartók, premiering many of their works. Ronald, Lawrence and Nuria Nono Schoenberg, as well as staff at The Schoenberg Institute contribute to this fascinating film.
Pique Dame (The Queen of Spades)
From the Glyndebourne Festival Opera 1992: Producer Graham Vick, designer Richard Hudson, conductor Sir Andrew Davis, the London Philharmonic and the full cast of singers won unanimous critical acclaim for their revelatory interpretation of this mesmeric and psychologically harrowing work. Hudson’s eighteenth-century costumes are sumptuously realistic, while his set is abstract and modern. The cast features three top Russian singers – Sergei Leiferkus, Dimitri Kharitonov and Yuri Marusin. Nancy Gustafson, Felicity Palmer and Louise Winter also won high praise for their performances in this “marvellous and brilliant piece of modern music-theatre” (Financial Times). (Sung in Russian)
Dancing
From the stylised steps of a Japanese kabuki dancer to the frenetic posturings on a disco floor, people around the world use dance to reflect their thoughts and beliefs, their philosophies and desires. Filmed in over a dozen countries on four continents, this series offers a global view of dance in its infinite variety, and is as much about why we dance as how we dance. Each programme focuses on a specific aspect of dance, such as its religious significance, its expression of social values and its role as a medium of cultural fusion.
Masters of German Art
Some of the greatest names in the history of German art are featured in this series of ten-minute films. Visiting galleries throughout Germany to focus on key oeuvres, these finely-focused vignettes summarise the lives and work of the featured artists, including contributions from leading art historians and drawing on archive documentation. Mathis Grünewald Caspar David Friedrich Lucas Cranach Ignaz Günther Hans Holbein Albrecht Altdorfer Johann Tischbein Otto Dix Ernst Barlach Käthe Kollwitz
William Forsythe – From a Classical Position
William Forsythe, acknowledged as one of the greatest choreographic talents of our time, and his long-time collaborator Dana Caspersen, also of the Frankfurt Ballet, perform a duet conceived especially for the camera. From a Classical Position constitutes a one-off as choreographers, dancers and now film-makers. The piece is performed to an original score by Thomas Willems, a composition for a single piano, which like the dance, is at once naked in its simplicity and at times spell-binding in its complex intensity. To this sometimes-music and sometimes-silence, Caspersen and Forsythe dance a duet of sublime passion and sophistication, a love story without sentimentality.
Modern Masterworks: John Cage
Few figures of 20th-century music were as innovative, iconoclastic and controversial as John Cage, a composer who asked fundamental about the nature of music and art. When he died in 1992, a festival of his music scheduled in Frankfurt took on the character of a celebration of his life and art. The performances featured here are drawn from that festival, with David Tudor – Cage’s friend and musical partner for over 40 years – performing two of the composer’s major concert works, accompanied by Ensemble Modern and conductor Ingo Metzmacher. The performances are preceded by an introduction to Cage and his work by Michael Nupen.
Masur conducts Strauss
It’s hard to overstate the esteem in which Kurt Masur and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra were held in Europe in the 1990s. As well as playing a pivotal role in the return of democracy and the reunification of Germany, they performed the German symphonic repertoire with unrivalled splendour and authority. This concert captures them on tour Frankfurt in 1992, in a programme of Richard Strauss at his most exuberant (Till Eulenspiegel) and his darkest (Metamorphosen). The Leipzig orchestra’s historic relationship with Strauss had never seemed more vital, and it gives a special emotional charge to Júlia Várady’s luminous performance of the Vier Letzte Lieder.