Barrie Gavin

The music is not Beethoven's most familiar, but it is absolutely charming. The concerto is appealing in its melodic material and the intricate interactions among the soloists and orchestra. The Choral Fantasy features a long piano solo that Beethoven wrote for himself, plus a choral melody that sounds like a preliminary sketch for the last movement of his Ninth Symphony. Both works pose unusual balance challenges, to which Barenboim and the recording engineers rise impressively.

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Daniel Barenboim conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker in performances of Beethoven's 'Triple Concerto' and 'Choral Fantasy'. Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma are joined by Carola Höhn, Katherina Kammerloher, Andrea Bönig and Endrick Wottrich, amongst others.

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The Threepenny Opera proclaims itself "an opera for beggars," and it was in fact an attempt both to satirize traditional opera and operetta and to create a new kind of musical theater based on the theories of two young German artists, composer Kurt Weill and poet-playwright Bert Brecht. The show opens with a mock-Baroque overture, a nod to Threepenny's source, The Beggar's Opera, a brilliantly successful parody of Handel's operas written by John Gay in 1728. In a brief prologue following the overture, a shabby figure comes onstage with a barrel organ and launches into a song chronicling the crimes of the notorious bandit and womanizer Macheath, "Mack the Knife." The setting is a fair in Soho (London), just before Queen Victoria's coronation. In this production, Weill champion HK Gruber led the Ensemble Modern in a performance of Weill's complete original score, the first time it had been heard in Germany in many years. This production was broadcast on German television (3sat).

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Benjamin Britten's opera as performed by the English National Opera, with Philip Langridge in the title role.

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The opera takes place on the doorstep of a tenement on the East Side of Manhattan on two brutally hot days in 1946. The story focuses on two plotlines: the romance between Rose Maurrant and her neighbor Sam Kaplan; and on the extramarital affair of Rose's mother, Anna, which is eventually discovered by Rose's irritable father, Frank. The show portrays the ordinary romances, squabbles and gossips of the neighbors, as the mounting tensions involving the Maurrant family eventually build into a tragedy of epic proportions. Broadcast on BBC Two on New Years Day, 1993, this production was performed by the English National Opera and conducted by James Holmes.

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The story of Kurt Weill 's relationship with the American popular theatre. During his years in exile on Broadway, the composer of Mack the Knife and The Alabama Song, who personified decadent Berlin, found a new life in New York, creating such standards as September Song and Speak Low. Director Barrie Gavin describes the film as "the history of an artist ... struggling to write music which could have real meaning for the society he had just joined." Weill is remembered by the conductor Maurice Abravanel and the actor Burgess Meredith and there are extracts from several of his works.

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Sir Neville Marriner conducts this 250th Anniversary performance. Soloists include Sylvia McNair, Anne Sofie Van Otter. The performance is supported by an informative background film "For Ever and Ever", explaining the circumstances behind the composition and the work's early impact, featuring contributions from the popular Handel scholar Professor H.C. Robbins Land and from Sir Neville Marriner himself. Recorded in 1992, this performance of Handel's awesome "Messiah" took place on the 250th anniversary of the initial rendition of the piece. Recorded at the Point Theatre in Dublin, Ireland, this is an especially poignant rendition as it takes place in the city where it was originally performed in 1742.

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Composer H.K. Gruber collaborates with director Barrie Gavin on a commissioned short film to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the death of Mozart. Gods create Man, Music and Mozart.

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Bizet's masterwork, Carmen, directed for stage by the Spanish actress Núria Espert. Royal Opera House in Covent Garden in 1989.

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A documentary on the life and work of the composer Sofia Gubaidulina.

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Com: BBC for documentary 'Sound on Film'.Derived from music and dance filmed in Transylvania.

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Friend, instructor and student of Picasso, a welder at Renault, a painter and goldsmith – Julio González was all of these. The Catalonian gained fame as the father of modern iron sculpture and as the creator of linear sculptures. Using a welding torch, he began making sculptures from iron and developed a formal language reduced to basic elements. Film-maker Barrie Gavin travelled from Paris to the Riviera via Barcelona, re-tracing González’ footprints. He visited art experts such as Margit Rowell and friends such as Hans Hartung, and in doing so introduces us to the life and work of one of the greatest sculptors of the 20th century.

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One public housing flat in Moscow stood out above all others: the home of George Costakis, the foremost collector of early 20th century Russian avant-garde art. Its walls were crowded with banned and forgotten works by artists such as Malevich, Tatlin, Kandinsky, Chagall, Lissitzky, Rodchenko, and Kliun; public figures such as Edward Kennedy, Stravinsky, and Alfred Barr visited. Barrie Gavin met the collector in 1982 at his home in Athens. Costakis, a Greek born in Russia, passionately shares his story and those of the great Russian avant-garde artists. Their works are his legacy – without him, they would not have survived the political upheavals in Russia.

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In 1906 the young Bela Bartok set out to discover the forgotten music of his people. He found a vast treasure of folk music all over Eastern Europe, and he called his discovery 'a miraculous circumstance'. In this film the late A. L. Lloyd retraces Bartok's journeys through Hungary and Romania to rediscover that treasure of native music.

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The Baronet of Ruddigore, Sir Despard Murgatroyd, has inherited a family curse which forces him to commit a crime every day — or die in agony. He hates the curse, doing his heinous misdeeds as early as possible and good works for the rest of the day to compensate!

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Film of Morton Feldman's short opera (libretto by Samuel Beckett).

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This BBC Bristol documentary, Narrated by Bert Lloyd looks at the Gaelic music of the Outer Hebrides. It won the Silver Harp award. Directed by Barrie Gavin.

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Portrait of the composer, Peter Maxwell Davies, set in the context of the islands of Orkney. George Mackay Brown is featured reading his own verse and there are quotations from the works of Edwin Muir, Robert Rendell and the ancient Orkneyinga Saga. Extracts from the composer's works include pieces from Ave Maria Stella, O Magnum Mysterium and the final scene from his opera The Martyrdom of Saint Magnus.

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Documentary film on Arnold Schoenberg

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A portrait of Eric Lyons and Span, under the scrutiny of Ian Nairn, as well as the residents of their estates.

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1968 interview with Lord Harewood.

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Made for BBC Television in 1967, this 20-minute documentary features a rare interview with the director and a unique demonstration of his lighting techniques.

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A monthly series of highly personal documentary films in which individuals are given a platform to discuss issues close to their heart.

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An opera by Benjamin Britten, on a libretto by E.M. Forster and Eric Crozier, adapted from the story by Herman Melville. Billy Budd is a young sailor aboard a British man-o'-war, persecuted by his master-at-arms, Claggart. Accused of mutiny, Budd accidently strikes Claggart dead, leaving Captain Vere with no choice but to hang him.

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A documentary about the life and work of the composer Hans Werner Henze followed by a performance of Requiem

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A. L. Lloyd

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"Grainger is music's natural man... a noble savage of music." That quote describes Percy Grainger, the Australian-born composer and pianist. Grainger is remembered as the composer of Country Gardens but there was much more to him than this well-known tune. He was a great pianist who hated playing the piano, a famous composer convinced his best works were neglected, a man of deviant behavior remembered everywhere with respect and love. His contradictory character is explored through his letters, interviews with those who knew him, film and archive recordings, and his music.

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In 1915 the Russian artist Malevich declared a Black Square on a White Background an icon of his times and thus founded a new form of art, liberated from objects – Suprematism. Supported by the Bolsheviks at first, his ‘formalistic’ art was soon considered counterrevolutionary. 50 years later, in 1989, the first comprehensive Malevich retrospective outside Russia was held in Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum. It is here that Barrie Gavin outlines the artist’s creative phases and his life story. In doing so, he discovers the most diverse ‘isms’ of the 20th century and one of the most significant pioneers of abstract art.

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Charts a journey through various `memory' productions such as murals, monuments, TV histories, commemorations etc, and in so doing questions the role that historical memory plays in our society.

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Documentary on 84-year old Marevna; painter, friend of Picasso and one-time mistress of Diego Rivera; and her daughter by Rivera, Marika; former dancer and actress.

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Humphrey Burton introduces two Omnibus USA reports on the arts in New York... that is the arts in the streets, away from the museums and the concert halls. One film is 'Saturday in Soho', an impression of artists, dancers and musicians' work and of the Soho area in general. The second is 'Watching My Name Go By', a showcase a kind of graffiti cult game played by 11 to 17-year-olds. It's illegal and dangerous - and while some New Yorkers think it's a kind of art, others think it's kind of disgusting.

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BBC documentary about the rise of the New German Cinema and several of its most important figures.

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Perhaps this is Robert Vas' most personal film; a portrait of his country - Hungary - as seen through the eyes of an exile. Robert Vas escaped from his homeland after the brutal crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising by the Russians and he was never able to return. He portrays his country through the writings of Hungary's national poets and illustrates the film with images of the Revolution and of the society it would become in the years immediately following 1956. The film was transmitted on the 20th anniversary of the crushing of the uprising.

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