At the close of the 19th century, Vienna presented to the world a picture of ordered elegance and dignified gaiety, but beneath the surface the corruption and hollowness of the late Hapsburg Empire produced widespread and deep-seated confusion and so…

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…

This is the first of two films about the music of Tchaikovsky, written and directed by Christopher Nupen. It covers the period from the first tentative stirrings of Tchaikovsky's musical talent to the time of the composition of Eugene Onegin and the…

This is the second of Christopher Nupen's films about Tchaikovsky and it continues his examination of Tchaikovsky's preoccupation with the idea of fate as a governing force in our lives. The first film (Tchaikovsky's Women) focused on the young…

This is a film in two parts with one of the finest performing musicians of the 20th century; an artist whose career spanned 73 years and who won the admiration and respect of virtually every international musician of his time and their genuine…

I believe that there are thousands, perhaps millions, of people in the world who will say that Schubert is their favourite composer, but if questioned will not dare to put him on the level of Beethoven or Bach or Mozart. I have encountered this…

Paganini’s Daemon – with A Most Enduring Legend Niccolo Paganini created perhaps the most elaborate and enduring legend of all instrumental soloists in the history of Western music but as so often with legends, the excitement and the chatter obscured…

A film by Christopher Nupen with the young Russian master pianist who has taken the classical music world by storm in the past fifteen years. Evgeny Kissin not only has dazzling virtuosity and unmistakable star-appeal, his meteoric rise to the top of…

The earth on which we live silently remembers the catastrophies of our history but if we listen to the silence of the earth it will remind us of the fate of others who lived before us and from whose suffering we may yet learn. A television film by…

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…