Ten years of hard work have made the Arod Quartet one of the most brilliant of its generation. For it takes years to blend together four individual talents into one. Resolving conflicts, working together, travelling and touring without neglecting…

A retrospective view of twenty years in the life of this Soviet-born master pianist who has lived in the West since 1963. We have been producing films and television programmes with Vladimir Ashkenazy since 1966 and this one spans the entire period…

“Jazz is more than just a style of music”, says Amro Salah. “It’s about freedom.” Salah, a jazz pianist, is an enthusiastic promoter of the genre. Every year he organises the Cairo Jazz Festival, but doesn’t view himself as a festival director: He is…

A film about Georges Bizet and his ill-starred masterpiece. This film has two themes: first the substance and narrative of Bizet's perennially popular opera and second the story of its disastrous première, which had such a dramatic effect on Bizet…

The remarkable life and career of opera singer Soňa Červená: After escaping from the Iron Curtain, she made a career in Western Germany both as an internationally successful opera singer and actress on TV and on the theatre stage. It was not before…

A film about the pioneering career of Christopher Nupen, who founded one of the first independent production companies in the 1960s, at the dawn of the music documentary era. Seizing upon the emerging camera technology and his unique access to a…

How did artists survive in the Soviet Union? How tricky did they have to be in the face of authorities? What kind of danger and difficulties did they have to fear? Gennadi Rozhdestvensky talks about authorities, watchdogs and the political system in…

Country music does not enjoy a good reputation - at least not in Europe. Country is barely within the boundaries of good taste. Country ‒ that’s botoxed women and flabby men with guitars. Just one look at the American Country Music Awards (ACM) and…

Autumn 2020. An international cast arrives in Amsterdam for the rehearsals of Mozart's “Le nozze di Figaro” by Dutch National Opera. Hundreds of people have been working on it for three years and the performances are sold out. The young up-and-coming…

A Christopher Nupen film with Daniil Trifonov –– pianist, composer, Russian and a magician at the keyboard. The astonishing musical gifts of Daniil Trifonov have to be seen and heard to be believed. How many have won both the Rubinstein and…