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Tony Palmer’s Film About Holst - In The Bleak Midwinter

Tony Palmer’s Film About Holst - In The Bleak Midwinter
ID: TPDVD173
CDs: 1
Type: DVD
Collection: Documentary
Subcollection: Biography Movie

Tony Palmer - Director, Editor
Region Code: 0, All regions, NTSC
Screen (Picture) Format: 16:9
Presentation: Wide Screen
Language: English
Time: 2:17:00
This new DVD from director Tony Palmer telling the story of Gustav Holst is the first ever film about this extraordinary composer.


The first ever film about this extraordinary man - who taught himself Sanskrit, lived on a street of brothels in Algiers, cycled into the Sahara Desert, allied himself during the First World War with a "red priest"who pinned on the door of his church "prayers at noon for the victims of Imperial Aggression," who hated the words used to his most famous tune "I Vow to Thee My Country" because it was the opposite of what he believed, who distributed a newspaper called The Socialist Worker, whose music - especially The Planets - owed little or nothing to anyone, least of all the English folk song tradition, but was a very great composer who died of cancer, broken, and disillusioned, before he was 60.
21.00 eur Buy

Tony Palmer’s Film of Hail Bop! - A Portrait of John Adams

Tony Palmer’s Film of Hail Bop! - A Portrait of John Adams
ID: TPDVD158
CDs: 1
Type: DVD
Subcollection: Opera

Directors: Tony Palmer
Format: Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English
Subtitles: English, Dutch, Spanish, French, Italian
Region: 0, All Regions
Screen (Picture) Format: 16:9
Aspect Ratio: 1.77:1
Number of discs: 1
Rated: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Voiceprint Records
DVD Release Date: February 9, 2010
Run Time: 98 minutes

He is the most performed composer of his generation. His operas "Nixon in China" and "The Death of the Klinghoffer" have been international hits. This is an intimate portrait of a great composer at work in his High Sierra log cabin and features rehearsals with soloists Emanuel Ax and Michael Collins.

This is an intimate portrait filmed over 12 months, of a great composer at work in his High Sierra log cabin and in rehearsal with soloists Emanuel Ax and Michael Collins.
The dramatic landscapes of America, which Adams brings to life so vividly in his music, provide the visual backdrop. Contributors include stage director Peter Sellars and librettist Alice Goodman. The music has been specially recorded for the film by Edo de Waart and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic.
21.00 eur Buy

Tony Palmer's Classic Film of John Osborne and the Gift of Friendship

Tony Palmer's Classic Film of John Osborne and the Gift of Friendship
ID: TPDVD150
CDs: 1
Type: DVD
Collection: Popular Music

Format: Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English
Region: 0, All Regions
Screen (Picture) Format: 16:9
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Number of discs: 1
Rated: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Tony Palmer Films
DVD Release Date: September 15, 2009
Run Time: 128 minutes

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.

Performance Credits
Laurence Olivier -(Films)(Music) - Participant
Albert Finney -(Films)(Biography)(Music) - Participant
Nicol Williamson -(Films)(Biography)(Music) - Participant
Robert Stephens -(Films)(Biography)(Music) - Participant
Jill Bennett - Actor
John Osbourne - Actor
Richard Burton - Actor
David Hare - Participant
Kenneth Tynan - Participant
Tony Richardson - Participant
Claire Bloom - Participant
John Heilpern - Participant
Peter Nichols - Participant
Christopher Hampton - Participant
Jocelyn Herbert - Participant
Charels Wood - Participant
Natasha Richardson - Actor
Lindsay Anderson - Actor
Peter Bowles - Actor
Ben Walden - Participant
Terence Frisby - Participant
Bill Bryden - Participant
Sylvia Syms - Participant
Ben Kenwright - Participant
Robert Fox - Participant
Anthony Page - Participant
Helen Osbourne - Participant

Technical Credits
Tony Palmer - Director
21.00 eur Buy

Tony Palmer's Film About Stravinsky - Once, at a Border...

Tony Palmer's Film About Stravinsky - Once, at a Border...
ID: TPDVD126
CDs: 1
Type: DVD
Collection: Documentary
Subcollection: Biography Movie

Made at the request of the Stravinsky Estate to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Stravinsky’s birth, this highly-praised and award-winning film celebrates one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century. As Paul Griffiths said in The Times, “this is a wholly wonderful film…much of this portrait is a like a miraculous image, filled with the sense of Stravinsky as man and musician, above all as Russian and believer”.R ’ S a b o u tThis autobiographical film includes documents, photographs and film neverseen publicly before. Stravinsky’s three surviving children talk about their father, and there are contributions from the late Madam Vera Stravinsky, his musical associates Robert Craft, Marie Rambert, Balanchine, Benny Goodman, Serge Lifar, Jean Cocteau, Diaghilev’s secretary, Nijinsky’s daughter, Rimsky Korsakov’s granddaughter, Nadia Boulanger, Georges Auric and many friends and colleagues. Also included in the film are important performances: Les Noces, heard here for the first time in its original scoring, Petrushka, specially recreated for the film by the Bolshoi ballet in its 1911 choreography, The Rite of Spring, the Symphonies, the Violin Concerto, The Rake’s Progress, The Symphony of Psalms…and much else.

Filmed in communist Russia, France, Switzerland, Latvia, New York and Los Angeles, with the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta, Westminster Abbey Choir, the State Choir of Latvia, the National Radio Orchestra of the U.S.S.R., the Royal Ballet…… Finally, there is priceless film of Stravinsky himself, talking, remembering, conducting, at work and at home and in the room in which he actually composed The Rite of Spring, in this altogether unique portrait.

Directors: Tony Palmer
Format: Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English
Region: All Regions
Screen (Picture) Format: 16:9
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Rated: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Tony Palmer Films
DVD Release Date: November 18, 2008
Run Time: 166 minutes
21.00 eur Buy

Tony Palmer’s Film of Parsifal - The Search for the Grail

Tony Palmer’s Film of  Parsifal - The Search for the Grail
ID: TPDVD167
CDs: 1
Type: DVD
Subcollection: Opera

Region Code: NTSC. Plays in all territories
Classification: Exempt
Presentation: Wide Screen
Picture Format: 16:9
Sound Format: Dolby Digital Stereo
Language: English
Subtitles: None
Duration: 116 mins

Recorded: Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, Ravello, Siena, Bayreuth

Placido Domingo (Parsifal)
Violeta Urmana (Kundry)
Matti Salminen (Gurnemanz)
Nikolai Putilin (Klingsor) & Anna Netrebko

Tony Palmer’s documentary about Richard Wagner’s opera ‘Parsifal’, with extracts from Tony Palmer’s stage production of Parsifal starring Placido Domingo, Violeta Urmana, Matti Salminen and Anna Netrebko.
The Grail - the cup which Jesus Christ is said to have used at The Last Supper - is one of the most powerful symbols in Western culture. Wagner’s three-act opera, Parsifal, is the most famous work which celebrates the search for the Grail. Parsifal is an opera about ideas, about philosophical questions rather than answers, where the questions themselves are what is important, and the power and eloquence with which they are expressed. With the help of a rare interview with Wolfgang Wagner, Richard Wagner’s grandson, who explains what his grandfather intended and why, plus an all-star cast including the first performance on film of Anna Netrebko, this documentary explores the explosive nature of Wagner’s dangerous ideas. Wagner was virulently anti-Semitic - to this day, it is not possible to perform Parsifal in Israel - and thus provided the Nazis with some powerful cultural propaganda, because for Hitler, Parsifal, the hero of the opera, was pure Aryan blood. When the film was originally released on DVD, the Germans censored 30 minutes of the film which they considered ‘political’, ‘uncomfortable’ and ‘irrelevant’. This is the original version, uncensored, as approved by Domingo.
“It succeeds in exploring the legend of Parsifal quite brilliantly, while making it brutally relevant to us today.” John Ardoin, Great Performances (PBS)
Interviews: With Placido Domingo, Wolfgang Wagner, Robery Gutman & Karen Armstrong
21.00 eur Buy

Tony Palmer's Film of Frank Zappa - 200 Motels

Tony Palmer's Film of  Frank Zappa - 200 Motels
ID: TPDVD127
CDs: 1
Type: DVD
Collection: Documentary
Subcollection: Rock, Pop

Region Code: NTSC. Code 0, Plays in all territories
Presentation: Wide Screen
Screen (Picture) Format: 16:9, Aspect ratio
Sound Format: Dolby Digital Stereo
Duration: 98 mins


DVD Release Date: 04/20/2010
Original Release: 1971


Director: Tony Palmer, Frank Zappa
Cast: The Mothers of Invention, Theodore Bikel, Ringo Starr, Janet Ferguson

Frank Zappa; Tony Palmer; Ringo Starr; Theodore Bikel; Jerry Good; Herb Cohn; Keith Moon; Jimmy Carl Black; Martin Lickert; Calvin Schenkel; Mara Kam; Richard Harrison; Barry Stephens; Murakami-Wolf Films.; Bizarre (Firm); Mothers of Invention.; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.; Tony Palmer Studio (Firm)

A psychedelic precursor to music videos, in which The Mothers of Invention, a touring musical group, wreak havoc in Centerville, a stereotypical American town. The first color movie made on videotape and then transferred to film, it includes many visual effects.
In attempting to summarize the infamous history of FRANK ZAPPA’S 200 MOTELS, three quotes mentioned in Amos Vogel’s book, Film as a Subversive Art, come to mind which also address early malignment of the film.
For the music’s ribald, bawdy lyrics, which caused a live performance of 200 MOTELS to be banned from the Royal Albert Hall in 1971, Goethe wrote to Johann Eckermann, “Only the perverse fantasy can still save us.”
For co-director, Tony Palmer, who publicly disowned the film in an article he submitted to the British Sunday Observer for what he wrote off as a shamble and misguided scrap heap, Nathanael West wrote, “Your order is meaningless, my chaos is significant.”
Of note, Palmer withdrew his repudiation of the film recently by placing his name above the film’s title on last April’s DVD release (We’re Only in It for the Money, Mr. Palmer?).
And lastly, for Zappa who had no formal filmmaking training and for his prescient useage of videotape (200 MOTELS was the first feature film shot on video; director Palmer threatened to erase the master videotapes, which producer, Jerry Goode, later did in order to “balance the film budget”), then transferred to 35mm film using 3-strip Technicolor process, filmmaker Jean Cocteau wrote, “What one should do with the young is to give them a portable camera and forbid them to observe any rules except those they invent for themselves as they go along.”
21.00 eur Buy

Tony Palmer's Film About Benjamin Britten - A Time There Was...

Tony Palmer's Film About Benjamin Britten - A Time There Was...
ID: TPDVD125
CDs: 1
Type: DVD
Collection: Documentary
Subcollection: Biography Movie

Region Code: NTSC. Plays in all territories
Menu screens: English
DVD Format: DVD
Color mode: Colour broadcast system
Screen (Picture) Format: Stereo, 16:9 aspect ratio.
Presentation: Wide Screen
Duration: 103 mins

Made at the request of the Britten Estate, this film - thought to be the definitive portrait of the great composer - tells of one of the most profound love affairs of the 20th Century, between Britten and his lover and life-long companion and inspiration, PETER PEARS. At a time when it was illegal to be openly homosexual, Britten & Pears faced up to a hostile world with unflinching dignity, producing a string of masterpieces that, together with the works of Vaughan Williams, established English music as internationally pre-eminent in the middle years of the 20th century.Among the music featured is extracts from: ‘Peter Grimes’; ‘Billy Budd’; ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’; ‘ The War Requiem’; ‘Curlew River’; ‘Death in Venice’; ‘The Nocturne’ & ‘The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra’.with: BENJAMIN BRITTEN; PETER PEARS; LEONARD BERNSTEIN; SVIATOSLAV RICHTER; JANET BAKER; JULIAN BREAM; HEATHER HARPER; IMOGEN HOLST; JOHN SHIRLEY-QUIRK; RUDOLF BING & HENRY MOOREThe music conducted by STEUART BEDFORD and played by THE ENGLISH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
21.00 eur Buy

Tony Palmer's Film About Menuhin - A family Portrait

Tony Palmer's Film About Menuhin - A family Portrait
ID: TPDVD120
CDs: 1
Type: DVD
Collection: Documentary
Subcollection: Biography Movie

Directors: Tony Palmer
Region Code: NTSC. Plays in all territories
Color mode: Colour broadcast system
Screen (Picture) Format: 16:9
Language: English
Duration: 105 mins
Description: 1 videodisc (105 min.) : sd., col. ; 4 3/4 in.

Yehudi Menuhin made his debut in Paris at the age of eleven. At fifteen he recorded the definitive performance of the Elgar Violin Concerto, conducted by the composer. Menuhin is acclaimed as one of the great violinists of the century. He was the first artist to play with the Berlin Philharmonic after the overthrow of the Nazis, and the first major Western classical soloist to play jazz and Indian music. A dedicated teacher, the former child prodigy established his own school where he coached young musicians. In this profile of Menuhin, filmmaker Tony Palmer keeps pace with the busy violinist: conducting the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra; working with his own chamber orchestra in Greece; recording with his son Jeremy. Newsreel footage of nine-year old Menuhin and interviews with his family offer an intimate view of a virtuoso.

Menuhin, a name that was legendary for over 60 years, and remains so today. A good man and a great violinist, whose childhood was blessed with happiness and success unparalleled even among child prodigies. At least, that was the legend. The truth was painfully different. The violinist who inspired Einstein to remark; "Now I know there is a God in heaven", was also a man of whom his sister could say: "We have done more harm to people we love than we ever believed ourselves capable of doing to people we didn't love".

Filmed in Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Moscow, New York, San Francisco and Switzerland, and using much material not seen previously from Menuhin's own archive, this heart-rending and multi-award winning film included all the members of Menuhin's family living at the time, who struggle to piece together what had really happened to the son of Russian/ Tartar parents who was defiantly named Yehudi - ‘the Jew'.
21.00 eur Buy

Tony Palmer's Classic Film: Warren Mitchell as Brahms and the Singing Girls

Tony Palmer's Classic Film: Warren Mitchell as Brahms and the Singing Girls
ID: TPDVD117
CDs: 1
Type: DVD
Subcollection: Biography Movie

Source: TONY PALMER FILMS
Region Code: NTSC, Plays in all territories
Screen (Picture) Format: 16:9
Color mode: Colour
Digital re-mastering: Isolde Films 2009
Presentation: Wide Screen
Sound: Dolby Digital Stereo
Language: English
Duration: 90 mins

Starring:
Warren Mitchell as Johannes Brahms
Lori Piitz as Clara

Directed:
Tony Palmer

Music conducted:
Peter Leonard with NDR Symphony Orchestra and Choir

90 minute film directed by the acclaimed, award-winning director Tony Palmer and starring Warren Mitchell.

Brahms’ first musical experience had been playing an upright piano in the brothels of Hamburg; at the end he lived a bachelor in Vienna

I had long admired Warren Mitchell as an actor. In spite of being crippled to some extent by his most famous creation, Alf Garnett in 'Til Death Us Do Part, brilliant though he was, one always felt instinctively there was an extraordinary actor struggling to get out. And sure enough, when I saw him as Willy Loman in Miller's Death of a Salesman at the National Theatre, I knew (as did everyone else who was lucky enough to see him) that I was in the presence of greatness.

He threw himself into the part of Brahms will enormous gusto. He recognised that this was to be no ‘ordinary' composer portrait, and when the shit hit the fan as the English critics initially rubbished the film, he was its most vigorous advocate, for which I have always been grateful. What had offended more-or-less everyone was the film's affirmation that the familiar image of the stodgy old Brahms was a million miles from the truth. His first musical experience had been playing an upright piano in the brothels of Hamburg where he had grown up, and at the end of his life (in fact for the last 15 years) he had lived a bachelor in Vienna having his every need satisfied by the prostitutes of the city whom he always affectionately described as his ‘little singing girls'. None of this was thought either factually correct or (worse) relevant to his music - which of course is nonsense.

"Palmer at his most ridiculous",was one of the kinder reviews. Of course, the musical establishment was outraged. The Head of Music at the BBC (which of course refused to show the film) was heard to say "the film was disgusting."

Indeed it is, and I am glad it is so because it helped explode the myth of ‘stodgy old (bearded) Brahms' as perpetuated by dreary films such as Song of Love with Robert Walker, or Spring Symphony with Nastassja Kinski, or all those turgid, mawkish documentaries about the supposed ‘love affair' between Clara Schumann and Brahms. I've counted three made by the BBC alone. In spite of some success around the world, this film has still never been shown in Britain.

And, surprise surprise, some years after the film was finished, a new biography of Brahms by Jan Swafford, the American composer and musicologist at Boston Conservatory, was published ‘proving' (if that is the word) that everything I had ventured about Brahms' life turned out to be essentially true.

But this film is not about scoring points; rather it is a celebration of unabashed, life-enhancing, sexually explosive music. Warren Mitchell, who was more-or-less the same age as the Brahms he portrays in the film, rose to the challenge with fire in his belly. He loved all the naked girls, and who would not? Brahms did, and that's what made him the great composer he is.
TONY PALMER
21.00 eur Buy

Tony Palmer's Film About Callas - M. Callas: La Divina - A Portrait: 30th Anniversary:

Tony Palmer's Film About Callas - M. Callas: La Divina - A Portrait: 30th Anniversary:
ID: TPDVD103
CDs: 1
Type: DVD
Collection: Documentary

Region Code: NTSC Plays in all territories
Medium:DVD Video
Presentation: Wide Screen
Sound: Dolby Digital Stereo
Language: English
Subtitles: French, Italian, German, Spanish
Color mode: Colour
Screen (Picture) Format: 16:9, Aspect Ratio
Duration: 92 mins



There are so many astonishing facts about Maria Callas...

First, she was born not in Greece but in Manhattan and went to school there. Second, considering her colossal influence and in contrast to the pumped-up, preposterous, overpaid pipsqueak divas of today, her actual international career was tiny - 18 years at most. Third, and in spite of her reputation, her cancellation record was the lowest of any great singer of her day. Fourth, she rarely looked at the conductor during an opera, simply because she could not see him - she was very short-sighted, and often appeared (partly as a result) to be in a trance while on stage. Fifth, she was betrayed by most of those intimate with her throughout her life, and eventually abandoned by many of those who should have known better and who claimed to have loved her. Sixth, she died almost penniless - even her grotesquely rich long-time lover, Onassis, whose marriage to Jackie Kennedy she only discovered by watching the 6 o'clock news, had invested her money in half a cargo boat, which sank. Paradoxically, although she died 30 years ago, her records today outsell every other recorded classical artist, and single handedly keep EMI Classics afloat. Last, hers was not the most beautiful voice of her time, as she frequently admitted. Some days it worked; other days it just didn't.

In the end, those who met her in Paris in the seventies agree that she was one of the loneliest, most desperate of women they had ever encountered, slowly drugging herself to death. "Every day, thank God, is one day less", she told Di Stefano. A summons to tea (for half an hour at most) often lasted until the early hours, with the guest or guests pleaded with not to leave.

It was pathetic and horrible, but it was Callas. It was always Callas, and that was the secret and the magic. We witness on stage a broken woman who sings nakedly from her heart, about herself and her life, who acts with such incredible power and unashamed truth that we stagger back before what we know, in our hearts, is all of her. No artifice here; no vulgar posturings to which her absurd imitators - and there are many - aspire. Gheorghiu, Battle, Garrett - they cannot touch her hem.

Maria - just a woman, who often spoke of Callas in the third person, in trouble, asking, begging sometimes, for our understanding and our love. She deserves it, because there was no greater singing actress in our time. And she was only 53 when she died.Tony Palmer
21.00 eur Buy

 
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