Strauss Fantasy

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.

A look at the activities of the Tanglewood Music Center, America's renowned summer Academy for talented musicians, singers, composers and conductors.

Can a work of art remain relevant 200 years after its creation? Ludwig van Beethoven’s last completed symphony proves it’s possible.

Journeying across Varanasi, Lucknow, and Muzzafarpur in India, this documentary film traces the lost traditions and the culture of tawaifs (courtesans of North India), particularly through a song sung by Rasoolan Bai, "Lagat karejwa ma chot, phool gendwa na maar" and its lesser known, earlier version "Lagat jobanwa ma chot, phool gendwa na maar" (recorded in a 1935 Gramophone recording). Weaving the past with the present, the film spans between personal stories as it interacts with historical events, ultimately leading to the decline of a great art form.

Artie Shaw and his orchestra perform four popular songs, "Alone Together", "Jeepers Creepers", "Deep Purple", and "Lady Be Good".

The great composer of The Planets, Gustav Holst also taught himself Sanskrit, lived in a street of brothels in Algiers, cycled into the Sahara Desert, and allied himself during the First World War with a ‘red priest' who pinned on the door of his church "prayers at noon for the victims of Imperial Aggression". He hated the words used to his most famous tune "I Vow to Thee My Country" because it was the opposite of what he believed, and died before the age of 60 - broken and disillusioned.

In this vivid transposition of contemporary music for television, Cahen "responds" to the complex musical transitions of Répons, a work by French composer Pierre Boulez. Performed by the Ensemble InterContemporain and conducted by Boulez, the intricate Répons was designed for an ensemble of twenty-four musicians, six soloists and a "real-time" digital processor. In Cahen's re-composed interpretation, he responds with visual and temporal transformations, "opening" the images in space and time and applying electronic techniques to engulf the instrumentalists in ocean, sky, and trees. Mirage-like superimpositions, temporal shifts, mirroring effects and de-synchronization result in a rhythmic confluence of the illusory and the real. Immersing the viewer in image and sound, Cahen mirrors the transformative process of Boulez's music.

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

This documentary portrait, the first television biography of Rattle for 15 years, follows him through an extraordinary year of concerts, oratorios and opera with five different orchestras. We see his rigorous preparation and experience his irresistible dynamism in rehearsal and performance. We will watch him at work with the Berliner Philharmoniker, often described as the world’s leading orchestra. We will also see him with the Orchestra Of The Age Of Enlightenment and with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. We see him preparing a score for performance, share his experiences with the players and gain privileged insights into the day-to-day life of a conductor