DVD Videos

All My Loving? The Films of Tony Palmer is the first book length study of a man who, in a career of over forty years, has directed and produced more than a hundred documentary and theatrical films, directed stage plays and operas, authored books and columns, hosted radio and television programs, and garnered dozens of awards, including multiple Italia Prizes (television’s most coveted award) - “the best director in television,” according to Ken Russell. Palmer takes us backstage to protest-and-acidfueled rock concerts with his friend John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix, glittering Las Vegas shows with Michael Crawford, legendary ballet performances with Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, memorable stage productions with Richard Burton and playwright John Osborne, politically-charged operas with John Adams and Peter Sellars, and music festivals with Benjamin Britten in Aldeburgh, Plácido Domingo in Salzburg, Yehudi Menuhin in London, Maria Callas in Paris and Valery Gergiev in St Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre in Russia. Palmer knew them all.

In the words of renowned film critic and historian David Thomson “Palmer has made an absolutely unique contribution to films about art and music. A genius sitting in our own backyard.”

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg von Richard Wagner.

The genesis of a Bayreuth production Das Entstehen einer Bayreuth-Inszenierung.

The film documents the genesis of the new production of Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” in Bayreuth. In 2007, Katharina Wagner made her directing debut at the Bayreuth Festival – a debut unlike any other. For Katharina Wagner is none other than the great-granddaughter of Richard Wagner, the daughter of the long-time Bayreuth patriarch Wolfgang Wagner, and, in his eyes at least, his sole possible successor as head of the Bayreuth Festival. Rarely was the musical world’s attention focused on one opera production as on this staging of “Die Meistersinger”. For eight months, Dagmar Krauss accompanied Katharina Wagner and her team, filming them in candid moments and revealing the inner workings of the Bayreuth Festival such as we have never seen before. Balancing the spontaneity of the roving camera are interviews and statements by singers and theatre employees, as well as by director colleagues such as Christoph Schlingensief and conductors such as Christian Thielemann. As we witness the development of the production concept, we, too, are drawn into the excitement leading to the premiere on 25 July 2007. The film paints the impressive portrait of a gifted, self-controlled, no-nonsense young woman who tackles a work that has stumped many an older and more experienced colleague and endows it with a new, contemporary, controversial message. She cunningly holds up a mirror to the festival public, both the traditional-minded, long-standing Wagnerians as well as the younger opera lovers who demand more risk and innovation. She offers a wealth of surprising views on art in general, demands that one take a stance, and even thematizes her own situation as potential head of the Bayreuth Festival.

Sound Format: DD 5.1 (German), DD 5.1 (English)

Picture Format: 16:9

DVD Format: DVD 9, PAL

Running Time: 82 mins

FSK: 12

Region Code: 2

Bruno Monsaingeon has dedicated a great part of his life to directing movies about the greatest musicians of our times (Gould, Richter, Menuhin, Oïstrakh…), sharing with us his passionate vision of artists. His last movie, which has already won awards in several festivals, is an intimate portrait of the non-conformist pianist Piotr Anderszewski. Somewhere between documentary and fiction, this rail-road-movie's setting is a winter journey through Poland to Budapest, on a train in which the pianist has taken his grand piano with him… In this movie, Piotr Anderszewski gives us his most inner thoughts and doubts about music and this special train ride through the land of his childhood, revealing his true nature, generous but tormented. A brilliant film by Bruno Monsaingeon, utterly poetic and deeply emotional, inviting us to join the journey. Polish-Hungarian pianist Piotr Anderszewski is widely regarded as one of the most exciting pianists of his generation. Since first coming to public attention at the 1990 Leeds Piano Competition, he has become a familiar figure on the international concert platform, recognised for the intensity and originality of his interpretations. His solo engagements in 2009 include recitals at Carnegie Hall, Chicago's Symphony Center, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Royal Festival Hall, London.There will be further recitals in Rome, Cologne, St Petersburg and Paris.

Region Code: NTSC 0

Picture Format: NTSC 16:9

Sound Formats: PCM-STEREO

Subtitles: English, French, German, Polish

Disc Format: DVD9

Number of Discs: 1

Run Time: 83 mins

Released: 2009-06-01

The dramatization of a severe professional and personal crisis in the life of Anton Bruckner, who has to make the most important decision he will ever make: whether to stay in his hometown of Linz as a teacher and organist or go to Vienna to work as a composer. This period of soul-searching makes his later symphonies all the more powerful.

At the age of 43, Anton Bruckner still has not yet developed his full musical genius. Although everything inside him is striving towards music he finds one excuse after another to turn away from his vocation. Having completed every imaginable course of study in music, he is now confronted with the decision of his life: should he go to Vienna and complete his work as a composer, or should he remain in his home town of Linz as a teacher and organist?

Director Jan Schmidt-Garre‘s work is, like much of Bruckner‘s music, poetic and beautiful, with a sense of timelessness.

In 2003, after a career spanning nearly forty years, Julia Varady discreetly retired from the public stage. She now dedicates her time to teaching.While for most great singers the transition from performing to teaching generally follows signs of vocal deterioration, Julia Varady's voice is still dazzling. She sings out in full voice during her classes, with the same intensity and generosity of spirit that made her one of the very finest lyric sopranos of our time. A must for all lovers of the art of singing!

The documentary combines scenes from the master class with personal statements by Julia Varady talking about her life and way of teaching and scenes from a performance of Mozart arias with her husband Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau conducting.

Bonus: Complete master class with Julia Varady (110 mins)

"Julia Varady can lay claim to be the most versatile, committed and technically assured lyric-dramatic soprano of the 20th century's final quarter…" Gramophone

Region Code: NTSC: 0

Picture Format: NTSC: 16:9

Sound Formats: DD 2.1

Subtitles: F, GB, D

Booklet: F, GB, D

Disc Format: DVD 9

No of Discs: 1

Run Time: 56 mins + 110 mins (Bonus)

Released: 2009-05-01

The original 1971 (uncut) intimate study with and about the legendary actor which, as he later admitted, was “the only portrait which really understood me”. Banned by the BBC at the time, this devastating film reveals the full tragedy of a man who had everything, but believed he had nothing. With contributions from RINGO STARR, RAQUEL WELCH, LAURENCE HARVEY, YUL BRYNNER, HARVEY ORKIN, KENNETH TYNAN, GRAHAM STARK and especially SPIKE MILLIGAN and other friends who loved him.

“Palmer’s extraordinary films not only keep faith with their subjects, but they do something altogether more unusual these days. They take an argument about what makes great art and present it to a mass audience, and do so with a passion and conviction which could have belonged to the subjects themselves. They are therefore quite marvellous portraits, unequalled on television.” GILLIAN REYNOLDS – The DailyTelegraph

On May 8th 1956, Look Back in Anger changed theatrical history. It’s a fact. But why? And in what ways? And could it possibly be true that Osborne wrote very little else of consequence, as some of his harshest critics maintain? And what exactly did his outbursts against the world in which he found himself really represent?

Osborne believed in an England which he saw successive governments destroying, and saw himself as almost a lone voice screaming protest - it was as simple as that. But this protest was maintained at a terrible cost, to his wives, to his professional standing, to his health, to his pocket, and eventually to his own self-confidence. He made an epic journey from the most successful playwright of his generation, to a forlorn and almost forgotten figure, railing at those who preferred to ignore him. But what was really extraordinary was that throughout that journey, he never lost the fiery power of tongues.

A unique aspect of this two-hour film is the recent discovery of extracts from some of the original stage performances of Osborne’s most famous plays, material of great historical importance not seen for almost 40 years. – Laurence Olivier in The Entertainer; Albert Finney in Luther; Nicol Williamson in Inadmissable Evidence; Robert Stephens in Epitaph for George Dillon; Jill Bennett in A Patriot for Me, with a very young John Osborne as Reidl. Apart from a behind-the-scenes look at Osborne’s Oscar-winning film, Tom Jones, other contributions are from David Hare, Richard Burton, Claire Bloom, John Heilpern (Osborne’s authorized biographer), Peter Nichols, Christopher Hampton, Jocelyn Herbert, Claire Bloom, Charles Wood, Kenneth Tynan, Tony Richardson, Natasha Richardson, Lindsay Anderson, Peter Bowles, Ben Walden, Terence Frisby, Bill Bryden, Sylvia Syms, Anthony Page and the late Helen Osborne, with extracts from other plays performed by Peter Egan and Tom Hollander.

This film is a 'docufiction' on the great Toscanini directed by well-known film-maker Larry Weinstein, who pushes the boundaries of conventional documentary storytelling by borrowing tools from fiction. Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957), arguably the greatest and most famous conductor in history, was paradoxically one of the most private. He never granted interviews, left diaries or journals of any kind. But during the last years of his life, his son Walter secretly recorded 150 hours of intimate conversations that Toscanini shared with friends and family.

TOSCANINI: In His Own Words, is based on these tapes which remained hidden for more than 50 years. Recreated conversations reveal aspects of the Maestro never seen before. Subjects such as his loves, opinions about colleagues, his clashes with Mussolini and Hitler, his personal memories of Verdi, Puccini, Furtwangler, Stokowski, as well as his greatest joys and causes of his endemic sadness are all part of his frank conversation. Interwoven throughout the film are many of Toscanini's greatest musical performances. ARTURO TOSCANINI (Barry Jackson)

WALTER TOSCANINI (Joseph Long) The firstborn of Arturo and Carla Toscanini's four children: scholar, bookseller, husband of the celebrated ballerina Cia Fornaroli and his father's right-hand man during the Maestro's last years. He later dedicated himself to preserving and protecting his father's recorded legacy.

WALLY TOSCANINI (Carolina Giammetta) Arturo and Carla's second child: a great beauty who led an adventurous early life, married Count Emanuele Castelbarco and fled to Switzerland during the German occupation of Milan. After the war, she played an unofficial but important role in La Scala's artistic and social life.

ANITA COLOMBO (Jennie Goosens) artistic executive assistant to Toscanini at La Scala during the 1920s and was later its general manager for two seasons. She remained a close friend of the Toscanini family.

WILFRID PELLETIER (Michael Brandon) French-Canadian conductor for many years on the staff of the Metropolitan Opera. He and his wife, the American soprano Rose Bampton, were among the Toscanini family's closest friends.

IRIS CANTELLI (Valentina Chico) She was married to the brilliant young conductor Guido Cantelli, who was much admired by Toscanini. The Cantellis were frequent guests of the Toscaninis.

A Film by Jan Schmidt-Garre and Marieke Schroeder.

Intriguing documentary about black singers of classical music set against the background of black emancipation in politics and society in the US.

Think of today‘s top operatic voices, and black owners of them are as likely to come into the list as white ones: Willard White, Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle to name only three. We know it wasn‘t always thus - Paul Robeson‘s struggles to be recognised as a great singer, instead of a black singer, went on for many decades. But this programme reveals just how hard the journey to acceptance of America‘s black singers has been. It opens with one of the greatest voices of the 20th century: Marian Anderson and a clip of her magnifi cent performance of ‚Ave Maria‘. The film offers newsreel footage from her landmark 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial, which was held after the Daughters of the American Revolution denied her access to their Constitution Hall venue. But the black tradition of classical singing goes back even further: Before Leontye Price, Jessye Norman and even before Marian Anderson, Sissieretta Jones was arguably the greatest black performer of 19th century America and certainly the first great black diva. Sissieretta Jones , the ‚Black Patti‘, an allusion to Italian-American primadonna Adelina Patti, performed before four American presidents, mesmerized critics and audiences alike and was so successful that at one concert in New Jersey 1,000 visitors had to be turned away. The film Aida‘s Brothers and Sisters intends to focus the viewer‘s gaze particularly on the black classic and also on the fascinating mixed forms that have developed from the confrontation of white and black music in the last hundred years. The encounter with the powerful personalities of the singers and their music will reveal the humour, the lust for life, and the spiritual depth of black culture, and will perhaps add a dash of colour to a white fin de siècle culture that is in danger of contracting anaemia. A fascinating documentary with historical and contemporary film and video records of performances by Leontyne Price, Simon Estes, Grace Bumbry, Reri Grist and many others.