Chopin: The Women Behind the Music (2010)

Amadeus

Disciplined Italian composer Antonio Salieri becomes consumed by jealousy and resentment towards the hedonistic and remarkably talented young Viennese composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Enescu, Skinned Alive

Brilliant composer and violinist George Enescu is at the peak of his career and wants to compose an opera. He falls in love with a princess, Maruca, who inspires and challenges him. She is fascinated by Enescu and his music, she loves him passionately, but has a duty towards her husband and her two children. Destiny will release her from the chains of marriage, but will that be enough for the genius and the princess to live happily ever after?

Immortal Beloved

A chronicle of the life of infamous classical composer Ludwig van Beethoven and his painful struggle with hearing loss. Following Beethoven's death in 1827, his assistant, Schindler, searches for an elusive woman referred to in the composer's love letters as "immortal beloved." As Schindler solves the mystery, a series of flashbacks reveal Beethoven's transformation from passionate young man to troubled musical genius.

About the Looking for and the Finding of Love

Director helmut Dietls and Patric Susskinds illustrate a legendary story of two lovers who cant keep themselves away from death.

Samuel Barber: Absolute Beauty

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.

Ray

Born on a sharecropping plantation in Northern Florida, Ray Charles went blind at seven. Inspired by a fiercely independent mom who insisted he make his own way, He found his calling and his gift behind a piano keyboard. Touring across the Southern musical circuit, the soulful singer gained a reputation and then exploded with worldwide fame when he pioneered coupling gospel and country together.

Mr. Holland's Opus

In 1965, passionate musician Glenn Holland takes a day job as a high school music teacher, convinced it's just a small obstacle on the road to his true calling: writing a historic opus. As the decades roll by with the composition unwritten but generations of students inspired through his teaching, Holland must redefine his life's purpose.

Cha-Cha-Cha

Gruber is a normal 16-year-old growing up in Budapest in 1962, but he has a problem -- how does he get to know the opposite sex? At the Sunday afternoon dance classes the young "ladies and gentlemen" hold each other while dancing, and that makes the lessons worth something. Otherwise, the pianist's attention wanders and the orchestra does not exactly play with a single-minded dedication. In fact, everybody seems to have other things on their minds, except for the enthusiastic dance instructor and his ever-smiling assistant.

The Broken Melody

A composer goes to Devil's Island for killing his wife's lover, then writes an opera about it.

Boléro

Boundary-pushing Russian dancer and actress Ida Rubinstein selects renowned French composer Maurice Ravel to compose the music for her next ballet. Ravel ends up creating his greatest success ever: Boléro.

Passion

Passion concentrates on Grainger's unusual relationship with his mother and his sexual peculiarities (especially his obsessive self-flagellation, though homosexuality is also hinted at) which affect his relationship with a woman who comes to love him. It is set mainly in London in 1914, when Grainger's mother Rose was ill (she would later jump to her death in New York, upset by ill-founded rumours of incest with her son).

You're the Top: The Cole Porter Story

Biographical portrait of one of Broadway's most brilliant songwriters. Told through the use of archival material and interviews with the rich and famous that knew him, this portrait concentrates on his career and his public life events.

Lepakkolinna

Set in 1860's Transylvania, a group of travelers ends to the Dracula's castle.

Annea Lockwood: A Film About Listening

Sam Green's intimate portrait of Annea Lockwood shares with us a glimpse into the enthralling world of sound that she has been exploring and creating for many years. It is a touching and personal story of imagination and love.

Once

A vacuum repairman moonlights as a street musician and hopes for his big break. One day a Czech immigrant, who earns a living selling flowers, approaches him with the news that she is also an aspiring singer-songwriter. The pair decide to collaborate, and the songs that they compose reflect the story of their blossoming love.

August Rush

Lyla and Louis, a singer and a musician, fall in love, but are soon compelled to separate. Lyla is forced to give up her newborn but unknown to her, he grows up to become a musical genius.

Bill Evans Time Remembered

A biographical film featuring the music and times of Bill Evans with interviews from Tony Bennett, Jack Dejohnette, Billy Taylor, Paul Motian, Jon Hendricks, Orin Keepnews, Bobby Brookmeyer, Pat Evans and more, including family and friends who knew Bill Evans well.

House of Ricordi

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.

Die Deutschmeister

Young Stanzi who is visiting Vienna helps a young corporal and musician to become famous for his marching song "Die Deutschmeister".

Children of Pleasure

A successful songwriter, dazzled by high society, falls for a society girl who is just playing around.

The Beat That My Heart Skipped

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.

TÁR

As celebrated conductor Lydia Tár starts rehearsals for a career-defining symphony, the consequences of her past choices begin to echo in the present.

The Great Waltz

A musical based on the life and music of Johann Strauss, Jr.

Fuga

Could a brilliant composer's music actually be killing his loved ones? Eliseo can't help but believe it when his younger sister dies tragically and then his pianist Georgina suddenly dies on the piano. Completely traumatized, Eliseo is taken to a mental hospital where he can find escape only through music.

Paris Blues

During the 1960s, two American jazz musicians living in Paris meet and fall in love with two American tourist girls and must decide between music and love.

Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda

Oscar winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto weaves man-made and natural sounds together in his works. His anti-nuclear activism grew after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, and his career only paused after a 2014 cancer diagnosis.

Karel Svoboda: Šťastná léta

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What the World Needs Now: Words by Hal David

Hosted by Bette Midler, enjoy a musical tribute to the man who wrote some of the most enduring songs in American popular music. Lyricist Hal David and composer Burt Bacharach dominated the pop-music charts in the 1960s and early ’70s, crafting dozens of timeless Top 40 hits.

The Third Part of the Third Measure

The Third Part of the Third Measure creates an encounter with the militant minimalism of black avant-garde queer composer, pianist and vocalist Julius Eastman. The film focuses on what The Otolith Group describe as ‘an experience of watching in the key of listening’, invoking political feelings of defiance and the collective practice of movement building that participates in the global struggles against neoreactionary authoritarianism. The Third Part of the Third Measure invites viewers to attend to exemplary ecstatic aesthetics of black radicalism that Eastman himself once described as ‘full of honour, integrity and boundless courage’.

Igor Levit: No Fear

Follows the artist over two years as he explores his „life after Beethoven“, as he searches for his next challenge, his identity as an artist.

Orlando

With an original staging of text and music, Orlando follows the trail of one of the greatest composers of the Renaissance: Orlando di Lasso (also known as Roland de Lassus). His life and masterful oeuvre continue to move people to this day. Although he was a European star at the time, di Lasso had to endure the indignities of his social status as a servant. This documentary explores the relationship between art and power, musically accompanied by the ensemble La Tempête.

Phantom of the Paradise

Singer-songwriter Winslow Leach seeks revenge on the nefarious music producer Swan, who steals both Winslow's music and his favorite singer for the grand opening of his new rock palace, the Paradise.

Concert of 1936

In 1936, two female artists (a singer and a pianist) visit the city of Lushnja, which was very conservative.

The Passions of Vaughan Williams

Fifty years after his death, this musical and psychological portrait of Ralph Vaughan Williams explores the passions that drove a giant of 20th-century English music.

Kesäillan valssi

A story built around the music of Oskar Merikanto, tells the love story of the poor musician Lauri Alanko and the daughter of the rich Grahn family Annina. Annina’s family doesn’t approve of the relationship, and the couple’s happiness is also threatened by Lauri’s worsening eye disease.

Currentzis conducts Beethoven Symphony No. 9

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.

The Yellow Shark

This live recording was culled from seven September 1992 concerts given in Vienna, Berlin, and Frankfurt by the Ensemble Modern, a Frankfurt-based chamber orchestra that performs only contemporary music. Composed and conducted by Frank Zappa.

Night and Day

When his first stage show fails, songwriter Cole Porter goes off to fight in WWI until, injured, he lands in a hospital. He impresses nurse Linda Lee with his creativity, but their budding romance must wait as Cole heads home. Back in New York, he mounts a series of popular shows, and when his work brings him back to Europe, he eventually marries Linda. But success doesn't spare him from marital complications or bad news about a beloved relative.

Rhapsody in Blue

Fictionalized biography of George Gershwin and his fight to bring serious music to Broadway.

The Seventh Veil

A concert pianist with amnesia fights to regain her memory.

The Eddy Duchin Story

The life story of the famous pianist and band-leader of the 1930s and 1940s.

Copacabana

In 1948, aspiring songwriter Tony works as a bar pianist; he meets aspiring star Lola, and is immediately smitten. At Manhattan's Copacabana lounge, they both start finding fame. However, fate steps in and she is swept to Havana to work in a splashy nightclub act where she is convinced she will find her stardom. Instead, she finds Rico, a suave gangster and the club owner.

The Swan and the Wanderer

The film tells the story of two very popular Finnish singer/songwriters: Tapio Rautavaara and Repe Helismaa, who worked together until their relationship got frictious for a long time. The film covers the years from 1949 to 1965. Since the film is based on real-life persons it also tells much about the change in Finland during those years and of course much about Finnish popular music.