When Bach was in the service of Prince Leopold in Coethen, he had his own orchestra and was contracted to compose a great deal of instrumental music. This gave him an opportunity to try new techniques and to develop his own instrumental style. The six Brandenburg Concertos belongs to these masterpieces for a small ensemble. This joyously infectious performance of these famous landmarks in the history of music by the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra demonstrates both the musical satisfaction and the high professional standard that can be reached with period instruments. The performance was given in the Bach Anniversary Year 2000 – 250 years after his death – in the elegant Hall of Mirrors at Coethen Castle. The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra’s members all have virtuoso skills. They take the spotlight gracefully for solos but also play with the true ensemble spirit required by the music. Their decision to perform without a conductor revives an eighteenth century practice.
RETURN tells the story of a retired Green Beret who embarks on a healing journey from Montana to Vietnam. There he retraces his steps, shares his wartime experiences with his son, treats his Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and seeks out the mountain tribespeople he once lived with and fought alongside as a Special Forces officer.
Eyüp decides to cross mount Ararat looking for his aunt in Yerevan after following a madman's words. His aunt has also been expecting someone to come from behind this mount for many years. Eyüp cannot be sure about the woman he finds behind the blue door, whether it is his aunt or not because they can't understand each other.
The comedian and best selling author of "Cancer on $5 a Day...How Humor Got Me Through the Toughest Journey of My Life," has plenty to say on everything from raising a 17 year old daughter, bargaining with the Almighty, and how not to make friends with a dolphin.
Static images of an old country house are combined with voices of the past to evocative effect. Haunting and nostalgic, 'Return' conveys the life that exists in old, abandoned places.
A documentary about the development around Barton Springs in Austin, Texas, and nature's unexpected response to being threatened by human interference.
The Stooges are tree surgeons who are enlisted by a rich old man to find a mate for his rare puckerless persimmon tree. The boys sail to the tropical island of Rhum-Boogie to find the tree. When they arrive they are captured by the natives and will be eaten unless Curly marries the Chief's ugly daughter. The boys escape with the tree and, after a confrontation with an alligator, sail off with their prize.
This three-part film explores homosexuality in communist China.
A girl is at school. Suddenly it's as if she can't breathe. As she runs down the stairs we follow her into her mind. It takes us deep into dark woods.
Shot in Munich just a few weeks after it was taken by the American troops on April 30, 1945.
The first Czech cartoon based on a fairy-tale about grandpa, grandma, their granddaughter, dog and cat who all wanted to pull a big beet out from the ground. The picture shows children that a big task can only be fulfilled by joint effort.
The second erotica queen! The main character Haruka is played by Reiko Nagaoka, an active gravure idol new actress. Takeyuki Yue, a talented actor who is very active in TV dramas and variety shows, as Haruka’s opponent, Tabata. Midori Ezawa was selected to star in “When I Love You, When I Love You” directed by Takahisa Zeze in the role of her far older sister, Sayaka. The director made his debut as a movie director at the age of 23, and Hidekazu Takahara continues to play an active role in a wide range of fields, from romance movies to bad V-cinema, as well as television, documentary, and music videos. Draws a pure love between a dull man and a pure idol. ――Haruka (Reiko Nagaoka) is active as a mid-sized gravure idol, and the manager suggests that she play a role with a love scene in her starring movie. She’s happy with the movie offer, but much more has a complex in her chest and should she accept it?
‘At the work's core is an experimental approach to the stuff of film and a fiercely political outlook. Dresden Dynamo is an abstract assault on the senses. Eschewing a camera, Rhodes affixed patterned Letratone stickers to the film itself and used filters to create red and blue colours. Stripes, dots and wavy lines surge across the screen, and their forms dictate the accompanying barrage of white noise and atonal bleeps.’ --Ben Luke London Evening Standard 26 January 2012
Two young children and an adult in a small town have an encounter with an alien spaceship. 25 years later the children are reunited as adults in the same town which is now beset by strange cattle mutilations. Matters become worse when the cattle mutilations are joined by human murders and mutilations.
Return is a methodical construction of the approach of an individual towards an unseen goal, which assumes metaphorical significance. Viola moves toward the camera/viewer, pausing every few steps to ring a bell, at which point he is momentarily thrust back to his starting place, and then advanced again. Finally reaching his destination, he is taken through all of the previous stages in a single instant and returned to the source of his journey.
John Eliot Gardiner goes in search of Bach the man and the musician. The famous portrait of Bach portrays a grumpy 62-year-old man in a wig and formal coat, yet his greatest works were composed 20 years earlier in an almost unrivalled blaze of creativity. We reveal a complex and passionate artist; a warm and convivial family man at the same time a rebellious spirit struggling with the hierarchies of state and church who wrote timeless music that is today known world-wide. Gardiner undertakes a 'Bach Tour' of Germany, and sifts the relatively few clues we have - some newly-found. Most of all, he uses the music to reveal the real Bach.
A documentary that explores the challenges that a life in music can bring.
Davina McCall chats to Ariana Grande in this musical extravaganza. Ariana performs songs from her latest album Sweetener and some of her biggest hits accompanied by her band and an all-female orchestra.
‘La course à l’abîme’ is a depiction of the final ride into hell from ‘La Damnation de Faust’ (1846) by Hector Berlioz.
Verdi's sweepingly ambitious opera on war, religion, love and fate is given a cinematic staging by Christof Loy. The Marquis of Calatrava forbids his daughter Leonora to marry the South American nobleman Don Alvaro. The lovers attempt to elope, but the Marquis catches them. In the ensuing altercation, Alvaro accidentally kills the Marquis, who curses his daughter as he dies. Leonora and Alvaro become separated during their escape. Leonora's brother Don Carlo di Vargas decides to find them and avenge his father.
Before the Trojan War, Agamemnon gathered the Greek armies at the port of Aulis. The goddess Diane sent unfavorable winds to prevent the Greeks from sailing. Her oracle set a condition for Agamemnon: to earn the right to sail forth and destroy an innocent country, he would have to sacrifice his own daughter. Agamemnon accepted these terms and killed his young daughter Iphigénie on the altar. In his play Iphigenia in Tauris Euripides imagines that Diane plucked Iphigénie from that altar and delivered her to a temple in distant Tauride, where Iphigénie began to serve the enemy Scythians as Diane’s high priestess—all the while Iphigénie’s family believing her dead.
Johnny Green conducts the MGM Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Tchaikovsky's "Capriccio Italien".
Critical review of the music of the Electric Light Orchestra during the Roy Wood era. Features highlights from tracks including '10538 Overture', 'Jeff's Boogie 2', 'Queen of the Hours' and 'Ball Park Incident'. The Independent biography traces the foundations of the band through its metamorphosis from The Move in 1970 and later to the point where Roy Wood quit the group leaving Jeff Lynne to steer the band in to worldwide stardom. Narrated throughout by a team of music journalists and musicians. Also included are a bonus live set filmed in 1972 originally called Granada's Set of Six and features four of the six songs, These songs are the only known live original Roy Wood ELO tracks ever filmed. The DVD was originally released in 2005 under the title Inside the Electric Light Orchestra 1970–1973 minus the bonus live tracks.
In 2005, the Staatsoper Berlin and its orchestra, the Staatskapelle Berlin under musical director Daniel Barenboim, celebrated a series of events to celebrate the 80th birthday of French conductor and composer Pierre Boulez. Artistically associated for decades with Barenboim and Berlin, Pierre Boulez is one of today's most distinguished composers and conductors. As part of the celebration, Boulez conducted a performance of Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony at the Berlin Philharmonie. With his uncompromising approach to the score, Pierre Boulez's Mahler readings have long fascinated critics and audiences alike. Boulez eschews the romanticized readings common in performance tradition and, instead, reveals the real joy and terror in Mahler's large-scale symphonies.
Beethoven spent three years composing the Eroica, an intimate journal of his emotional crises and his dramatic emergence as an original master. Michael Tilson Thomas and the musicians of the San Francisco Symphony help you make sense of this voyage into life as it really is.
A live Metallica concert backed by a 80 piece symphony orchestra, conducted by Michael Kamen. Two songs are debuted, "- Human" and "No Leaf Clover." A documentary is included. It also was released on audio CD.
Utterly astounding, iridescent sand animation from Aleksandra Korejwo based around Bizet's Carmen.
Avant-garde composer John Cage is famous for his experimental pieces and "chance music" but temporarily branched into video in 1992 with this art film about meaningless activity. The work is composed of two segments that are supposed to be played simultaneously: "One 11" contains the artistic statement, and "103" is a 17-part orchestral piece. Also included is a revealing documentary about Cage and director Henning Lohner.
The first part of this Academy Award-winning short consists of a behind-the-scenes look at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra as it prepares to perform Ravel's "Bolero." Individual musicians offer their thoughts as workers set up chairs and music stands; there are also comments by conductor Zubin Mehta and scenes of Mehta and the orchestra rehearsing. The rest of the film features a complete performance of "Bolero" with striking images of the orchestra as the music relentlessly approaches its climax.
Ludwig van Beethoven headed for Symphony No. 9 literally his entire life. As early as the 1790s, he had an eye on Ode to Joy, perhaps the most well-known poem by Friedrich Schiller, written on the threshold of the French Revolution (1786). In his mature and, in particular, later years, the deaf composer with an acute ‘hearing vision’ increasingly distanced himself from conventional forms and genres and wrote parts beyond the possibilities of instruments of his day. He nurtured the idea of a symphony with a choir for at least several years. The history of the Ninth’s interpretations includes 200 years of staggering revelations and lingering stagnation. Performed by the musicAeterna orchestra, choir, and guest soloists under the baton of Teodor Currentzis, Beethoven’s opus magnum acquires the original poignancy and energy of a recent discovery.
A performance for the ages - the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under the charismatic yet calculated baton of Andris Nelsons give everything they've got to Shostakovich's might 8th Symphony.=2011 winner of the prestigious ECHO Klassik Award, Andris Nelsons is one of the most sought-after young conductors on the international scene today.=Over the next few seasons he will continue collaborations with Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Boston Symphony and the New York Philharmonic. Andris Nelsons is a regular guest at Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the Metropolitan Opera New York.
Johnny Green leads the MGM Symphony Orchestra in a medley of waltzes and other familiar pieces by three members of the Strauss family.
Kyung-Wha Chung performs Beethoven's violin concerto in this live recording with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Klaus Tennstedt