DVD Videos

Centred on a production for the Puccini Festival staged in Puccini’s home town of Torre del Lago in Tuscany. This documentary provides a superb introduction to Puccini’s masterpiece whilst illustrating his consummate skill as a composer for the operatic stage. This DVD is an informative and insightful exploration of the opera’s themes and musical expression, which is wonderfully brought to life through substantial performance extracts.

Rachmaninoff’s passionate music is more popular today than it has ever been. This 100-minute documentary, filmed in Russia, Switzerland and America, made with the full participation of the composer’s grandson, Alexander Rachmaninoff, celebrates the life and work of a remarkable musician and composer of genius who, forced into exile in 1917, became the greatest pianist of his day.

Featuring soloists Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Mikhail Pletnev (with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Claudio Abbado, and his own Russian National Orchestra),Valentina Igoshina, Peter Jablonski, Nikolai Putilin and the Kirov Orchestra and Chorus of the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg (with which Rachmaninoff was intimately associated) are conducted by Valery Gergiev. Tony Palmer’s film, with Rachmaninoff’s own words spoken by Sir John Gielgud, is a unique and loving insight into a world long gone, but definitely not forgotten.

CHOIR WORKS (Four Programmes)

An inspirational journey through the world’s choral tradition Driven by the infectious enthusiasm of zany writer and presenter Howard Goodall, we travel to locations around the world to focus on people, their lives, individual traditions, customs and histories. The four programmes set out to show how singing in groups is fundamental to the way communities express themselves. From the joyous sounds of South Africa, through Nashville, USA, and Eastern Europe, to the traditional cathedral choirs of England, the series gives a refreshing overview of some of the vastly different choral traditions of the world today. The programme was first shown on Channel 4 in 1997.

CHOIRS PERFORM

A performance special showcasing leading choirs and their contrasting traditions. This performance special, first screened on Channel 4 in 1997, showcases seven of the world’s leading choirs and their contrasting choral traditions. The rich and haunting harmonies of South African Iscathimiya – a call and response style – are performed here by Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Christ Church Cathedral Choir in Oxford and Salisbury Cathedral Girls Choir, both stalwarts of English church music, perform works by Byrd, Stanford and Bruckner. The keening, yearning tone of Bulgaria’s throaty Cosmic Voices is contrasted with the joyous and heartfelt gospel of Just Us and The Temple Church Choirs in Nashville, and the clarity and purity of The Academic Female Choir of Tartu University’s nationalistic folk songs in Estonia. The variety in each choir’s repertoire is complemented by their striking costumes.

Written and Presented by HOWARD GOODALL

The Places

Northern Italy has been ruled by various powers over the centuries. The Southern Tyrol, seen here, retains much of its Austrian past, with some regions predominantly German-speaking and others Italian. Scenes are shown of the Dolomites, the strangely shaped rock formations, a typical castle and mountain lakes. There are also views of the neighbouring Swiss-Italian canton of Ticino.

The Music

Music for the tour is by Beethoven, with his Violin Concerto, written and first performed in Vienna, and one of his two Romances for solo violin and orchestra, independent pieces perhaps intended as slow movements for another concerto that was never completed.

The Places

The Road of Romance, in South Bavaria, leads through the countryside to the great castle of Weikersheim, former residence of the Counts and Princes Hohenlohe. Further exploration of Bavaria and the Bavarian Forest leads to Prunn Castle on its rocky eminence, and finally to Würzburg on the River Main and the Marienberg Fortress.

The Music

Max Bruch, a native of Cologne, enjoyed a career that took him, as a conductor, to Liverpool, Coblenz, Breslau and Bonn, before his final years in Berlin. His first Violin Concerto remains among his most popular works. Carl Maria von Weber led an even more varied life that took him to musical centres in Germany and Austria. He was a pioneer of German romantic opera, and three opera overtures are chosen here. Der Freischütz (The Marksman) evokes the spirit of the German forest, while Euryanthe explores more exotic territory, as does Oberon, Weber's final opera, written for London in 1826, the last year of his life.

The Places

This musical tour of France starts in Paris with scenes that reflect the modenisation of the city in the 19th century under Baron Haussmann. From Paris the tour passes to Burgundy, with its vineyards, to Provence, with its Fête des Gardiens in Arles and Roman aqueduct, thence to the Loire, with its great castles and country-houses. The tour ends with a visit to Brittany and Normandy, the northern coasts and the great monastery of Mont Saint-Michel.

The Music

Music for the tour is taken from Fryderyk Chopin's two piano concertos. The son of a French émigré and a Polish mother, Chopin left his native Warsaw in 1830, settling in the following year in Paris, where he lived until his death in 1849. His piano concertos were written and first performed in Warsaw in 1830, and seemed a necessary part of his stock-in-trade for a planned career as a virtuoso. In the event Chopin found a more congenial role in Paris as a performer in private society salons and as a fashionable teacher.

Music by Lalo, Saint-Saens & Sarasate

Music by Tchaikovsky

Tony Palmer directs this prize-winning film about the great English composer Henry Purcell. Very little is known about his life, but the script - by Charles Wood and the late John Osborne - solves this problem by launching a group of actors in the 1960s on a voyage of discovery into the 1660s & late-17th century England, the extraordinary period in which Purcell lived. But it is Purcell’s music which is the driving force of the drama, with a stunning soundtrack conducted by John Eliot Gardiner.

Features an all-star cast with Simon Callow as Charles, Michael Ball as Henry Purcell, Letitia Dean as Barbara, Nina Young as Mrs Purcell, Corin Redgrave as William III, Lucy Speed as Nell, John Shrapnel as Pepys, Robert Stephens as Dryden, Murray Melvin as Shaftesbury, Terence Rigby as Cooke, Peter Woodthorpe as Kiffen, John Fortune as Clarendon, Edward Michie as young Harry and Bill Kenwright as Bill.

Subtitles included: English, German, Spanish and Italian

Award-winning director and cinematographer,Thomas Riedelsheimer (director of the acclaimed Rivers and Tides), takes us on a journey through a universe of sound with percussionist Evelyn Glennie. While exploring the role of deafness in Glennie’s music-making, Touch the Sound challenges our understanding of the senses and celebrates Glennie’s uncanny gifts. Believed to be the first full-time solo percussionist in the West, Dame Evelyn Glennie has performed with nearly all of the world's major orchestras in front of several presidents and world leaders. In concert, she plays up to 60 instruments including the gamelan, xylophone, marimba and timpani. Outside percussion, she is also adept on the great highland bagpipes. On stage, the percussionist performs barefoot in order to feel vibrations from her instruments, and often stands at 90 degrees to the audience so they can see the drum skins vibrating. Her personal collection includes 1,800 instruments, several of which Glennie designed herself, and she keeps percussion kits in six countries to facilitate her hectic touring schedule. Outside the world of classical music, Glennie has achieved fame for her collaborations with artists including Sting, Ray Davies, Fred Frith and Bjork. She is the vice-president of Hearing Concern and Deafness Research UK, and president of The Beethoven Fund for Deaf Children, which provides musical therapy units to schools for the deaf and partially-hearing across the UK. Evelyn's activities also include lobbying the Government on political issues; her consortium with Sir James Galway, Julian Lloyd Webber and the late Michael Kamen successfully led to the government providing £332 million towards music education.

“A feast for the senses.” New York Daily News

“Beautifully shot and filled with gorgeous music.” Chicago Tribune

“Rewarding, thought-provoking and subtly visceral.” Hollywood Reporter

“Potent and Imaginative!” Los Angeles Times