When the beloved cellist of a world-renowned string quartet is diagnosed with a life threatening illness, the group's future suddenly hangs in the balance as suppressed emotions, competing egos and uncontrollable passions threaten to derail years of friendship and collaboration. As they are about to play their 25th anniversary concert — quite possibly their last — only their intimate bond and the power of music can preserve their legacy.
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After a gifted musician inherits a mansion after her long lost father dies under mysterious circumstances, she discovers his last musical masterpiece riddled with cryptic symbols that unravels an evil secret, triggering dark forces that reach beyond her imagination.
In the midst of rehearsals for a new play, amateur dramatics proponents Colin and Kathryn receive the shattering news that their friend George is fatally ill and only has a few months to live.
When a tycoon passes away, he unexpectedly leaves the family fortune to outsider Tamayo on the condition that she marries one of the grandsons, pitting blood against blood.
Ex-con Alex plans to flee to the South with his girl after a robbery. But something terrible happens and revenge seems inevitable.
An affair with a 19-year old actor helps reinvigorate life for thirty-something Amy after she moves home to her parents’ house following her divorce.
A book-smart teenager joins his school's wrestling team as a way to reunite his surviving family members, who split apart after the death of his father, a college wrestling legend, 10 years ago.
It's 1968, and four young, talented Australian Aboriginal girls learn about love, friendship, and war when they entertain the US troops in Vietnam as singing group The Sapphires.
A resort for individuals who want to lose weight is helps several women discover friendships, acceptance with body image and hard truths.
Paris in the 1920s. Marguerite Dumont is a wealthy woman with a passion for music and the opera. For years, she has performed regularly for a circle of guests. But Marguerite sings tragically out of tune and no one has ever told her. Her husband and her close friends have always encouraged her in her illusions. Things become very complicated the day she gets it into her head to perform in front of a genuine public, at the Opera.
Alex, Emily, and their son, RJ, are new to Los Angeles. A chance meeting at the park introduces them to the mysterious Kurt, Charlotte, and Max. A family “playdate” becomes increasingly interesting as the night goes on.
Álvaro, a man obsessed with the idea of writing what he brands as “high literature,” manipulates the lives and feelings of the people around him to write about the consequences caused by his devious acts.
A man looking for the release of a long-time prisoner takes a police officer, his daughter, and a group of strangers hostage.
In Japan's Aokigahara Forest, a troubled teacher meets a mysterious lost stranger who takes him on a life-changing journey of love and redemption.
After leaving their company Christmas Party together, David Hargrove and Emily Brandt’s impromptu first date takes an unexpected turn when their coworker, Corey, asks them to make a late-night stop at an ATM. What should be a routine transaction turns into a desperate struggle for survival when an unknown man appears outside the vestibule.
In a last-ditch effort to save his career, sports agent JB Bernstein dreams up a wild game plan to find Major League Baseball’s next great pitcher from a pool of cricket players in India. He soon discovers two young men who can throw a fastball but know nothing about the game of baseball. Or America. It’s an incredible and touching journey that will change them all — especially JB, who learns valuable lessons about teamwork, commitment and family.
Harry Caine, a blind writer, reaches this moment in time when he has to heal his wounds from 14 years back. He was then still known by his real name, Mateo Blanco, and directing his last movie.
Kim Sun-woo is an enforcer and manager for a hotel owned by a cold, calculative crime boss, Kang who assigns Sun-woo to a simple errand while he is away on a business trip; to shadow his young mistress, Hee-soo, for fear that she may be cheating on him with a younger man with the mandate that he must kill them both if he discovers their affair.
Curmudgeonly old Frank lives by himself. His routine involves daily visits to his local library, where he has a twinkle in his eye for the librarian. His grown children are concerned about their father’s well-being and buy him a caretaker robot. Initially resistant to the idea, Frank soon appreciates the benefits of robotic support – like nutritious meals and a clean house – and eventually begins to treat his robot like a true companion. With his robot’s assistance, Frank’s passion for his old, unlawful profession is reignited, for better or worse.
After a painful breakup, Ben develops insomnia. To kill time, he starts working the late night shift at the local supermarket, where his artistic imagination runs wild.
A woman searches for her adult son, who was taken away from her decades ago when she was forced to live in a convent.
Lyrical biography of the classical composer, depicted as a romantic hero, an accursed artist.
The evocative music of Claude Debussy has been described as the foundation of modern music. But how did the composer come to develop his unique style? On this video, maestro Francois-Xavier Roth and the London Symphony Orchestra present the UK premiere of a previously lost work by the young Debussy, alongside some of his earliest inspirations. Debussy's newly discovered Premiére Suite gives a rare insight into the mind of a young composer on the cusp of innovation. It's a work filled with Romantic and Eastern influences and glimpses of the unexpected harmonies that came to define Debussy's work. Paired alongside the composer's role models - from Wagner's powerful intertwining motifs, the abundant Spanish influences in Lalo's rarely-heard Cello Concerto performed here by Edgar Moreau, and Massenet's majestic Le Cid - Francois-Xavier Roth gives a fresh perspective on the much-loved composer.
In the 1950s, a communist country. The film follows a retired detective who investigates two enigmatic murders. Both murders are connected to a murder exposing an old secret about a corrupt officer that causes controversy throughout the city and alerts the political security. As he uncovers clues, the detective plunges deeper and deeper into a maelstrom of political and personal intrigue that leads him to a final revelation.
When Gabriel and Emilie meet by chance, he offers her a ride, and they spend the evening talking, laughing and getting along famously. At the end of the night, Emilie declines Gabriel's offer of "a kiss without consequences". Emilie admonishes him that the kiss could have unexpected consequences, and tells him a story, unfolding in flashbacks, about the impossibility of indulging your desires without affecting someone else's life.
A thoroughly researched biopic of Charles Ives, America's greatest and most innovative composer (and insurance executive), who combined strikingly futuristic experimentalism with gentle nostalgia. Includes narration taken directly from Ives's own writings, and reminiscence from those who knew him.
A comic opera in two acts about the fickleness of women performed by HAMU students at the Disk... The alleged amorality of the story condemned Cosi fan tutte (They are all like that), Mozart's last opera to a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, to numerous contemporary adaptations and even to oblivion during the 19th century. What was the outrage? Following a bet, two bachelors in exotic disguises successfully exchange their fiancées, who have sworn eternal fidelity to them before parting. It's an old-fashioned plot based on a judgment on female constancy and male boastfulness arising from exaggerated vanity...
The historic Toscanini television concerts with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Broadcast #9 was of a concert on March 22, 1952, at Carnegie Hall, featuring Beethoven's 5th Symphony and Respighi's Pines of Rome. (Concerts #8 and #9 were released on "Vol. 5" in the DVD series.)
Frederick Ashton's La Fille mal gardée (The Wayward Daughter) is one of the choreographer's most joyous and colourful creations. Inspired by his love for the Suffolk countryside, the ballet is set on a farm and tells a story of love between Lise, the daughter of Widow Simone, and Colas, a young farmer. It contains some of Ashton's most stunning choreography, most strikingly in the series of energetic pas de deux that express the youthful passion of the young lovers, performed here by Natalia Osipova and Steven McRae. The ballet is laced with exuberant good humour, and elements of national folk dance, from dancing chickens and a maypole dance to a Lancashire clog dance for Widow Simone, performed by Philip Mosley.
Solange is seriously depressed, and her kindhearted husband, Raoul, makes it his mission to cure her doldrums. After many failed attempts to cheer her up, Raoul hits upon a possible solution: find his wife a lover. Unfortunately, his choice, Stéphane, proves to be just as ineffectual in restoring her flagging spirits. In the end, the gorgeous Solange finds her own, highly problematic tonic to her troubles in the form of a 13-year-old boy.
Violinist Sydney Wells was accidentally blinded by her sister Helen when she was five years old. She submits to a cornea transplantation, and while recovering from the operation, she realizes that she is seeing dead people.
A ruthless real estate agent discovers a passion for piano and auditions with help from a young virtuoso, but the pressures of his corrupt career threaten to derail his musical aspirations.
A fictionalised exploration of Beethoven's life in his final days working on his Ninth Symphony. It is 1824. Beethoven is racing to finish his new symphony. However, it has been years since his last success and he is plagued by deafness, loneliness and personal trauma. A copyist is urgently needed to help the composer. A fictional character is introduced in the form of a young conservatory student and aspiring composer named Anna Holtz. The mercurial Beethoven is skeptical that a woman might become involved in his masterpiece but slowly comes to trust in Anna's assistance and in the end becomes quite fond of her. By the time the piece is performed, her presence in his life is an absolute necessity. Her deep understanding of his work is such that she even corrects mistakes he has made, while her passionate personality opens a door into his private world.
Jenny is young. Her life is over. She killed someone. And she would do it again. When an 80-year-old piano teacher discovers the girl’s secret, her brutality and her dreams, she decides to transform her pupil into the musical wunderkind she once was.
This short film is made for the "Chopin-Pletnev" disc which marked Mikhail Pletnev's debut as a pianist on Deutsche Grammophon. In the film, we witness Mr. Pletnev's journey, starting from him on his way to studio, through his performance of Chopin's Etude Op. 25 No. 7 in C sharp minor "The Cello" and the process afterwards. One is struck repeatedly by Pletnev's crystalline arpeggiations, the velocity of his passage work, his singing tone, his rhythmic suppleness, and, above all, the grandeur of his sound.
The grand scale and magnificent acoustics of the Roman arena in Verona are ideally suited to the pageantry of Verdi's Egyptian opera, presented here in a staging that is true to the original 1913 production, framed by obelisks and sphinxes and filled with chorus and dancers. Chinese soprano Hui He has won international acclaim for her portrayal of the eponymous slave girl whose forbidden love for the war hero Radamés (Marco Berti, the experienced Verdi tenor) brings death to them both.
With more than 50 years of experience as film director, Peter Greenaway (Nightwatching, Eisenstein in Guanajuato) combines the worlds of film and opera at the Verdi Festival in Parma, demonstrating what magic those two can do together with an all new approach to Giuseppe Verdi's Giovanna d'Arco, staged and edited by himself and his wife, Saskia Boddeke. The opera's libretto is based on Friedrich Schiller's 'The Maid of Orleans'. It tells the story of the French national hero Jeanne d'Arc, who defends her country against the English troops during the Hundred Years' War. Constantly torn between her humble roots, her love for King Charles VII and her heavenly task to fight for France, she gains eternal glory by giving her life in the final, victorious battle against England.
The film is a parody of Disney's Fantasia, though possibly more of a challenge to Fantasia than parody status would imply. In the context of this film, "Allegro non Troppo" means Not So Fast!, an interjection meaning "slow down" or "think before you act" and refers to the film's pessimistic view of Western progress (as opposed to the optimism of Disney's original).
Known for his mournful "Adagio for Strings," Samuel Barber was never quite fashionable. This acclaimed film is a probing exploration of his music and melancholia. Performance, oral history, musicology, and biography combine to explore the life and music of one of America’s greatest composers. Features Thomas Hampson, Leonard Slatkin, Marin Alsop and many more of the world's leading experts on Barber's music, with tributes from composers Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and William Schuman. The film was broadcast on PBS, and screened at nine film festivals internationally, with three best-of awards. It was named a Recording of the Year 2017 by MusicWeb International.
Letters, Riddles and Writs is a one act opera for television by Michael Nyman broadcast in 1991.