It is not an account of events in an artist’s life, nor is it a critical examination of his music, which speaks more eloquently for itself than any words might do. It is an attempt at using the medium of film to echo something of the spirit of…

Jacqueline du Pré had a very unusual and elevated relationship with the Elgar 'cello Concerto. For critics and public alike, her performances focused new attention on the inherent pathos in Elgar's melancholy masterpiece and had a ringing authority…

A television film about a single work, Modest Mussorgski’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”. Written as a tribute to a lost friend, Victor Alexandrovich Hartmann, it is a strange and moving masterpiece which has become Mussorgski’s most popular work. It…

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…

Norbert Beilharz's film looks at this masterwork of 19th century liturgical music through 20th century eyes, presenting the entire work, not as the usual televised concert, but rather as a film collage, concentrating on three locations: St. Mark's…

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…

Mitsuko Uchida in conversation: She discusses her intellectual and technical approaches to the masterworks of keyboard literature and performs the works under discussion. Arnold Schönberg Drei Klavierstücke Op. 11, Joseph Haydn Klaviersonate C-Major

Musical encounters with Barbara Hendricks on tour in Eastern Europe with several Eastern European vocal masterworks in her musical repertoire. Our film documents this encounter between Western artists and Eastern Europe, both in the concert hall and…