Tony Palmer

The great composer of The Planets, Gustav Holst also taught himself Sanskrit, lived in a street of brothels in Algiers, cycled into the Sahara Desert, and 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". He hated the words used to his most famous tune "I Vow to Thee My Country" because it was the opposite of what he believed, and died before the age of 60 - broken and disillusioned.

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Tony Palmer directs this 1970 documentary about Scottish bass player and former Cream member Jack Bruce. The film tracks Bruce's life from his childhood in the Gorbals to the height of his fame with Cream and beyond.

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Celebrated filmmaker Tony Palmer follows Leonard Cohen on his 1972 European tour. The film, after extensive re-editing from its initial version, opened in London in 1974. It was shown on German television, but it disappeared for decades and was considered a lost film. Its original version, restored by the director, was released on DVD in 2010 and had its first theatrical release in 2017.

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There's no doubt that Richard Wagner who built it was the most influential composer in the whole of the 19th Century. But his family has survived a mixture of lies, deception, fraud and dangerous political alliances.

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Tony Palmer examines the life and legacy of the German composer, Carl Orff.

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Award-winning filmmaker Tony Palmer directs this riveting documentary on the life and times of influential English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. With archived performances by conductor Sir Adrian Boult and stirring musical passages from "The Tallis Fantasia" and "The Lark Ascending," among others, Palmer's film also features interviews with Vaughan and his beloved wife, Ursula.

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Shot over the course of a year, this intimate portrait of provocative composer John Adams presents scenes of the artist at work and at play against the backdrop of dramatic American landscapes that reflect the themes of his music. Though he has a number of credits to his name, Adams is best known for his unconventional opera "Nixon in China," which explores the former U.S. president's meeting with Mao Zedong in 1972.

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A short concert film for television which blends edited footage from a 1975 Tangerine Dream concert with music from the group's "Ricochet" album released that same year.

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A biographical look at the career of the acclaimed Margot Fonteyn. As a little girl called Peggy Hookham growing up in Shanghai, she told her mother she would one day become the greatest dancer in the world. Still performing at the age of 67 despite being almost unable to walk, hers is a story of courage and tenacity, of unbelievable devotion to her art and to those whom she loved. Those who ultimately left her penniless and alone, to be buried in a pauper’s grave.

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A documentary portrait of composer Malcolm Arnold. Broadcast in two parts on The South Bank Show but premiered in its entirety at the Royal Festival Hall

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A celebratory look at the life of football legend Bobby Moore.

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Explores the life and career of American soprano Renée Fleming. Share an intimate visit with Renée behind the scenes, at home and on stage as she rehearses and performs in Verdi’s Otello and Requiem, and sings Strauss, Mozart, Dvorák, Korngold, Ellington, Gershwin, Puccini, Massenet, and Rachmaninoff. Other world-class artists featured in this fascinating personal portrait include: Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, Sir Peter Hall, Valery Gergiev, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Katarina Witt, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Ben Heppner, Daniel Barenboim, André Previn, and Gianfranco Ferré.

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In 1945, the new Polish government asked for the heart of Chopin previously buried in Paris. A woman called Paulina Czernika approached the government claiming to have some love letters from the composer to her great-grandmother, the Countess Delfina Potocka.

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Richard Wagner's operatic retelling of the story of the search for the Holy Grail receives a lavish production in this video, which records performances held in Bayreuth, St. Petersburg, and Ravello, Italy. Internationally renowned tenor Placido Domingo leads the distinguished cast; Tony Palmer directs.

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The life of composer, conductor, pianist and Oscar-winner Andre Previn, filmed during a year which culminated in the world premiere of his first opera, A Streetcar Named Desire, in San Francisco. Wherever he went, the camera followed. To Tokyo for a concert with Kiri Te Kanawa. To Philadelphia for a teaching session in the Curtis Institute. To Tanglewood for an incredible jazz improvisation recording of Gershwin Variations. To New York to play with the Ray Brown Trio at the Blue Note Club. To Vienna with the Vienna Philharmonic. To Washington DC for a concert with the Emerson Quartet. To Boston for a conductor's masterclass with, among others, Daniel Harding. And, of course, the rehearsals and first performance of Streetcar with the incomparable Renee Fleming and director Colin Graham.

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Tony Palmer tells the life story of Sergei Rachmaninoff through the use of home movies, concert footage, and interviews. John Gielgud reads from Rachmaninoff's diaries in a voiceover.

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Though perhaps best known for his star turn in Broadway's "The Phantom of the Opera," Michael Crawford has more than 30 years' worth of credits to his name. He also has plenty of stories to tell, as Tony Palmer's witty documentary reveals. Clips from rehearsals, performances, films and home movies illuminate Crawford's reflections on "Phantom," the Vegas spectacle "EFX," "Barnum," his work with Benjamin Britten, international success and more.

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This is Palmer's highly controversial portrait of Brahms - a film that exploded the familiar image of 'stodgy old bearded Brahms' - a man whose first musical experience had been playing an upright piano in the brothels of Hamburg where he had grown up, and who at the end of his life 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'. It is a celebration - of Brahms' unabashed, life-enhancing, sexually explosive music. Warren Mitchell portrays the composer

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The story of Henry Purcell.

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This emotional film by the award-winning director Tony Palmer includes a performance of the “Third Symphony” by The London Sinfonietta alongside powerful footage of Górecki at Auschwitz and Birkenau.

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Interviews, footage and photos profile violinist Yehudi Menuhin as prodigy, musician, husband, father and teacher.

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After years working in Brazil, middle-aged engineer Martin Boyner returns to Switzerland to marry his longtime friend, the recently widowed Rose Sellars. En route, he encounters an old acquaintance and soon finds himself entranced by and then caring for her seven emotionally abandoned children. The oldest girl, Judith, quickly beguiles Martin with her unsettling blend of innocence and maturity. And suddenly Martin's orderly blueprint for the future is thrown into disarray as Judith's youth and spirit transform his routine life into a dangerously passionate new equation.

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Tony Palmer’s study of the German composer Paul Hindemith.

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The story of the great Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) and his life and career during the rule of Stalin.

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Tony Palmer's award-winning feature-length documentary profile of Richard Burton.

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The story of the last years of Handel.

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In Torre del Lago, by Lake Massaciuccoli, Puccini is writing "The Girl of the Golden West" when his wife Elvira accuses him of a dalliance with their maid, Doria Manfredi, a young women from town. Although the maestro is frequently unfaithful, he denies the affair; Elvira insists she's right and publicly hounds Doria. Between scenes in this domestic drama that turns tragic, we watch a Scottish company rehearse and stage "Turandot," Puccini's last opera. The film finds parallels between the two stories and suggests that in the opera, Puccini expresses love for his wife and guilt in Doria's fate. Three local gentlemen provide a spoken chorus as Puccini's score plays throughout.

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A huge panorama of Wagner's life and work, from before the 1848 Revolution, through his exile in Switzerland, his rescue by the besotted King Ludwig II of Bavaria to the final triumph at Bayreuth.

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This autobiographical film about the most important and influential composer of the 20th century includes documents, photographs and film never seen publicly before. Stravinsky's three surviving children talk about their father and there are contributions from the late Madame Vera Stravinsky, his music associate Robert Craft, Marie Rambert, Balanchine, Nadia Boulanger and many friends. Included in the film are important performances: Les Noces has never before been heard in this, its original form, and the choreography of Petrushka was specially recreated for the film by the Bolshoi and was not seen in this form since 1911. Finally, there is priceless film of Stravinsky himself in this unique film.

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Gustav Von Aschenbach, a passionate composer, arrives in Venice as a result of wanderlust and there meets a young man by whose beauty he becomes obsessed.

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A documentary by Tony Palmer on English composer Sir William Walton (1902–1983), made shortly before his death. The film includes the only full-length interview ever recorded with Walton. Filmed at his home on Ischia and in Oxford, London & Oldham, it includes contributions from Laurence Olivier, Sacheverell Sitwell and Lady Susana Walton. Specially performed extracts of his music are conducted by Simon Rattle in his first substantial contribution to television when he was in his early 20s, with Simon Preston, Julian Bream, Yvonne Kenny, Yehudi Menuhin, Iona Brown, John Shirley-Quirk, Elgar Howarth & Ralph Kirshbaum, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Grimethorpe Colliery Band, Christ Church Cathedral Choir, Oxford & Los Paraguayos.

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