Symphony n. 9 by Ludwig van Beethoven in St. Mark’s Square

What Difference Does It Make?

February 2014 •English

A documentary that explores the challenges that a life in music can bring.

Giovanna D'Arco

January 2016 •English

With more than 50 years of experience as film director, Peter Greenaway (Nightwatching, Eisenstein in Guanajuato) combines the worlds of film and opera at the Verdi Festival in Parma, demonstrating what magic those two can do together with an all new approach to Giuseppe Verdi's Giovanna d'Arco, staged and edited by himself and his wife, Saskia Boddeke. The opera's libretto is based on Friedrich Schiller's 'The Maid of Orleans'. It tells the story of the French national hero Jeanne d'Arc, who defends her country against the English troops during the Hundred Years' War. Constantly torn between her humble roots, her love for King Charles VII and her heavenly task to fight for France, she gains eternal glory by giving her life in the final, victorious battle against England.

CODA

January 2014 •English

This short animation draws on advanced digital technologies to offer a new vision of dance in cinema. With motion capture (MoCap) and particle processing, designers Denis Poulin and Martine Époque create virtual dancers free of their morphological appearance. In this balletic and hypnotic film, dynamic traces carry the motion of the real dancers behind the on-screen movements. Addressing environmental themes by way of metaphor, CODA is a fused universe where space and time collide, deploy, and dissolve. In this technically and formally innovative film, luminous bodies in the infinite space of the cosmos transform and evolve to the rhythms of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

TÁR

September 2022 •English

As celebrated conductor Lydia Tár starts rehearsals for a career-defining symphony, the consequences of her past choices begin to echo in the present.

Fidelio

March 2020 •German

Beethoven’s only opera is a masterpiece, an uplifting story of risk and triumph. In this new production, conducted by Antonio Pappano, Jonas Kaufmann plays the political prisoner Florestan, and Lise Davidsen his wife Leonore (disguised as ‘Fidelio’) who daringly sets out to rescue him. Set in strong counterpoint are the ingredients of domestic intrigue, determined love and the cruelty of an oppressive regime. The music is transcendent throughout and includes the famous Act I Quartet, the Prisoners’ Chorus and Florestan’s impassioned Act II cry in the darkness and vision of hope. Tobias Kratzer’s new staging brings together the dark reality of the French Revolutionary ‘Terror’ and our own time to illuminate Fidelio’s inspiring message of shared humanity.

House of Ricordi

December 1954 •Italian

The film covers a hundred years in the lives of the Ricordi family, the Milan publishing house of the title, and the various composers and other historic personalities, whose careers intersected with the growth of the Ricordi house. It beautifully draws the parallel between the great music of the composers, the historic and social upheavals of their times, as well as the "smaller stories" of the successive generations of Ricordi.

Johann Sebastian Bach -The Well Tempered Clavier Book II Sir Andras Schiff

December 2018 •German

In 2018, the Thomanerchor and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig performed in the Thomaskirche Leibzig under the direction of Gotthold Schwarz together with an internationally renowned ensemble of soloists.

Samuel Barber: Absolute Beauty

March 2017 •English

Known for his mournful "Adagio for Strings," Samuel Barber was never quite fashionable. This acclaimed film is a probing exploration of his music and melancholia. Performance, oral history, musicology, and biography combine to explore the life and music of one of America’s greatest composers. Features Thomas Hampson, Leonard Slatkin, Marin Alsop and many more of the world's leading experts on Barber's music, with tributes from composers Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and William Schuman. The film was broadcast on PBS, and screened at nine film festivals internationally, with three best-of awards. It was named a Recording of the Year 2017 by MusicWeb International.

Four Minutes

June 2006 •German

Jenny is young. Her life is over. She killed someone. And she would do it again. When an 80-year-old piano teacher discovers the girl’s secret, her brutality and her dreams, she decides to transform her pupil into the musical wunderkind she once was.

Who plays me, hears my voices

December 2020 •Spanish

"Who plays me, hears my voices”, shows a recent moment in the life of Gaston Lafourcade, a classical pianist and harpsichordist who, at the age of 83, enters a recording studio for the first time in his life to record a solo album and to join his daughter, Natalia Lafourcade, who during a recess period in her career, decides to embark on this adventure as a love letter to her father and as a way to enjoy what brings them together, beyond blood ties: their deep love for music.

Třetí koncert na kurtech

January 2007 •Czech

The Beat That My Heart Skipped

March 2005 •French

A ruthless real estate agent discovers a passion for piano and auditions with help from a young virtuoso, but the pressures of his corrupt career threaten to derail his musical aspirations.

Toscanini: The Television Concerts, Vol. 9: Beethoven: Symphony No. 5/Respighi: The Pines of Rome

March 1952 •English

The historic Toscanini television concerts with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Broadcast #9 was of a concert on March 22, 1952, at Carnegie Hall, featuring Beethoven's 5th Symphony and Respighi's Pines of Rome. (Concerts #8 and #9 were released on "Vol. 5" in the DVD series.)

Vilém Veverka a Ensemble Opera Diversa

January 2018 •Czech

Renowned Czech oboist in the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra Ostrava chamber music series. Vilém Veverka, one of the most respected Czech oboists, performs as a soloist with major orchestras and has performed a number of demanding compositions from the second half of the 20th century in European premieres. This time, he will present important works by Czech composers to the audience together with the string orchestra Ensemble Opera Diversa. The highlights of the concert are compositions by Gideon Klein and Pavel Haas, who belong to the so-called Terezín composers. Pavel Haas' Suite for Oboe and Piano, Op. 17, was composed in the autumn of 1939 under the shadow of occupation, and its arrangement for oboe and string orchestra by composer Ondřej Kyas is a reference to the unfinished nature of Haas' composition.

Charles Ives: A Good Dissonance Like a Man

April 1977 •English

A thoroughly researched biopic of Charles Ives, America's greatest and most innovative composer (and insurance executive), who combined strikingly futuristic experimentalism with gentle nostalgia. Includes narration taken directly from Ives's own writings, and reminiscence from those who knew him.

Abbado Conducts Mahler No. 1 & Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3

January 2009 •German

Chip Chip : Chopin par Desjardins

October 2023 •French

The Nutcracker

December 1977 •English

The Nutcracker is Mikhail Baryshnikov's breathtaking and critcally acclaimed Emmy nominated production. The thisspectacular performance is danced by the magnificent team of Baryshnikov, one of the greatest classical dancers of the century, and Gelsey Kirkland, both chowcased at the peak of the their careers, with members of the American Ballet Theatre.

Immortal Beloved

December 1994 •English

A chronicle of the life of infamous classical composer Ludwig van Beethoven and his painful struggle with hearing loss. Following Beethoven's death in 1827, his assistant, Schindler, searches for an elusive woman referred to in the composer's love letters as "immortal beloved." As Schindler solves the mystery, a series of flashbacks reveal Beethoven's transformation from passionate young man to troubled musical genius.

The Life and Loves of Beethoven

January 1937 •French

Lyrical biography of the classical composer, depicted as a romantic hero, an accursed artist.