Keeping Score: Beethoven's Eroica

Not Mozart: Letters, Riddles and Writs

January 1991 •English

Letters, Riddles and Writs is a one act opera for television by Michael Nyman broadcast in 1991.

G. F. Händel: La Resurrezione – Vzkříšení

April 2010 •Czech

Recording of a concert from the St. Wenceslas Music Festival. The program of the St. Wenceslas Music Festival offered listeners a treat of spiritual music, the oratorio La Resurrezione (The Resurrection) by German composer George Frideric Handel. The work is one of Handel's early oratorios. When Handel failed to conquer the opera stronghold of the time – Venice, Italy – he returned to Rome and composed the oratorio to a libretto by Sigismondo Capace. It premiered during Easter in 1708. In this musical documentary, we will take you to the orchestra rehearsals with soloists and then to St. Wenceslas Church in Opava, where the oratorio was performed by the top Czech musical ensemble Collegium 1704, which focuses on Baroque music in its original interpretation. This time, in addition to other great soloists, it invited Martina Janková, a native of Orlová and star of the opera scene in Zurich, to collaborate.

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.

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.

Aida - Arena di Verona

November 2013 •Italian

The grand scale and magnificent acoustics of the Roman arena in Verona are ideally suited to the pageantry of Verdi's Egyptian opera, presented here in a staging that is true to the original 1913 production, framed by obelisks and sphinxes and filled with chorus and dancers. Chinese soprano Hui He has won international acclaim for her portrayal of the eponymous slave girl whose forbidden love for the war hero Radamés (Marco Berti, the experienced Verdi tenor) brings death to them both.

Mozart's Sister

October 2024 •English

For the first 18 years of her life, Mozart’s sister shared equal billing with her brother. Musical partners and collaborators, Wolfgang Mozart and Maria-Anna Mozart played together before Kings and Queens, and were the talk of Europe. What happened to her? Forced into retirement by age 16 because she was a woman, a stunning new investigation explores why she was retired against her will and the explosive theory: did Maria-Anna Mozart continue to compose in secret?

Beethoven: The Piano Concertos

November 2007 •English

Leonard Bernstein filmed Piano Concertos 3, 4, and 5 in 1989, but did not live to film the first two. He died in 1990. So Krystian Zimerman, the pianist, paid tribute to Bernstein and rounded out the set in 1991 by both playing and conducting Concertos 1 and 2.

Luthière

Invalid date •Dutch

Elara, a young violinist, is madly in love with Lucio, a Sicilian student. Their love blossoms, but suddenly Lucio must return to Italy to care for his sick niece. Elara struggles with loneliness and sadness, until she finds new inspiration in a dream.

Deception

October 1946 •English

After marrying her long lost love, a pianist finds the relationship threatened by a wealthy composer who is besotted with her.

André Rieu - The Christmas I Love

November 2011 •Dutch

The Christmas I Love’ is a very special Christmas gift – a collection of some of the most tender carols personally chosen by Andre for this album and performed with the full forces of the Johann Strauss Orchestra and Choir. All the popular carols are there Ave Maria, White Christmas, Silent Night, Jingle Bells but also included are Baroque Christmas Classics Corelli's Christmas Concerto and “Winter” from Vivaldi's Four Seasons. The DVD offers a delightful Christmas experience featuring timeless yuletide favorites filmed in many of Europe's most beautiful locations.

Allegro non troppo

March 1976 •Italian

The film is a parody of Disney's Fantasia, though possibly more of a challenge to Fantasia than parody status would imply. In the context of this film, "Allegro non Troppo" means Not So Fast!, an interjection meaning "slow down" or "think before you act" and refers to the film's pessimistic view of Western progress (as opposed to the optimism of Disney's original).

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.

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.

Chip Chip : Chopin par Desjardins

October 2023 •French

Cecilia Bartoli Sings Haydn

January 2001 •English

From the Styriarte Festival in Graz Austria, the acclaimed mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli and Maestro Nikolaus Harnoncourt with his orchestra Concentus Musicu Wien, present a concert on Haydn arias and Symphony No.92, the "Oxford". The singing virtuosity of "Scena di Berenice" is sublime as is the performance of The "Oxford" Symphony from the ensemble renown for its specialty in early music and playing on period instruments. A unique concert.

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.

Johannes Brahms: Sinfonie Nr. 4 e-Moll op. 98

December 2016 •German

The Life and Loves of Beethoven

January 1937 •French

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

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.

Carmen Torero z „Carmen-Suity”

July 1996 •Polish

Utterly astounding, iridescent sand animation from Aleksandra Korejwo based around Bizet's Carmen.