In July, 19-year-old pianist Benjamin Grosvenor made his debut at the Proms to great acclaim, wowing both audiences and critics with his performance of Liszt's Piano Concerto No 2 in A Major. The youngest ever soloist to perform in the First Night of the Proms, he returns to the Royal Albert Hall on August 6 to take on Britten's Piano Concerto.
In 2005, Imagine discovered this musical prodigy in the making. Alan Yentob talked to the 12-year-old Grosvenor about his success the previous year, in the piano section of The Young Musician of The Year Competition. This is another chance to see that documentary.
Imagine: Being a Concert Pianist gets under the lid of this extreme form of musicianship. Celebrated pianists, including Yevgeny Kissin, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Chinese wunderkind Lang Lang, talk intimately about their lives, their work and their motivation. The film gives a frank and personal perspective on a profession for which the only real qualification is genius, richly illustrated with specially recorded rehearsal and performance.

Tchaikovsky’s musical scores are lyrical, romantic and deeply emotional. This film endeavours to put the composer in context alongside Tolstoy as one of the most celebrated Russians of his time, examining his continuing significance in Russia today, and visiting locations which were important in Tchaikovsky’s life. His life is scoured to reveal an abortive marriage, his true feelings about homosexuality and how this may have been expressed in his music. Contributors include pianists Mikhail Rudy and Yevgeni Kissin, violinist Maxim Vengerov, conductor Valery Gergiev, ballerina Natalia Makarova, opera director Graham Vick and the Tchaikovsky-loving tram driver, Valentina.
GREAT COMPOSERS – THE SERIES
This landmark series presents the lives and works of seven musical giants from the Baroque era to the twentieth century. It examines the backgrounds, influences and relationships that make these seven composers part of the very fabric of the history of western music. Each composer’s life and work is presented through extensive performance sequences, and through interviews and comment from some of today’s greatest artists and most respected authorities.

It is about freedom and captivity, about emancipation, acculturation and assimilation; it is about the roles played by Moses and Felix Mendelssohn in the dream of fruitful, unproblematic integration of the Jews into German society after their liberation from the ghettos; it is about Richard Wagner and his influence on the thinking of the Third Reich but, most of all, it is a DVD about how much music can mean to people particularly in the direst circumstances. The title is taken from a poem by a 12-year-old girl, Eva Pickova, written in the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

The rise to fame of young Russian pianist Evgeny Kissin has seldom been equalled in the classical music world. Celebrated film-maker Christopher Nupen's film shows Kissin in preparation, interview, rehearsal and in several dazzling performances shot live on stage, in true concert conditions, where this artist is undoubtedly at his best.
It contains footage from Kissin's memorable BBC Proms concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 1997, the first solo recital in the history of the Proms. It also includes sequences with Kissin's mentor from the age of six, Anna Pavlona Kantor, who has become like a member of his family, and remains a guiding friend to this day.
The following pieces are played by Evgeny Kissin in this documentary:
Liszt - Transcendental Etude No. 10 in F minor
Gluck - Orfeo Euridice
Beethoven - ecossaise
Haydn - Sonata No. 16 in E-flat Major
Liszt - Nocturne No. 3
Liszt - Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12 in C minor
Chopin - Nocturne Op. 27 No. 2
Chopin - Sonata No. 3 in B-flat minor
Beethoven -- Turkish March
Chopin - Grand Waltz in A major
Paganini/Liszt -- La Campanella
Schubert - Moment Musical in F minor
Beethoven - Rondo a Capriccio
Chopin - Mazurka in A minor No. 4
Chopin -- Waltz No.14 in E minor

Noone less than the Hungarian Béla Bartók once declared: "Competitions are for horses, not artists!" Using the example of the Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, the documentary film "Why Competitions" looks into the question whether the competitive spirit that dominates music competitions is conformable with objective and ethical precepts, whether the prize winners actually benefit from their success and what happens to those who are often being stigmatized as "losers". This documentary film about the most important piano competition in the world was produced on the occasion of Frederic Chopins 200th birthday and does without a narrator. Instead it lets the participants and jury members have their say, some of who have learnt to keep their distance to their experiences, yet most of them are unable to forget and accept the fact they had to suffer injustice even after 60 years.
The film focuses on the scandal following the elimination of the Croatian pianist Ivo Pogorelich who did not pass to the final round at the competition in 1980, which caused the world-famous Argentinian pianist Martha Argerich to leave the jury in protest, thanks to which Pogorelich became a star overnight. 1980 also marked a turning point in Polish history: A few months before the competition began the trade union "Solidarnosc" was established, enabling the young competitors to witness an important historic event. For many of those young pianists this was their first encounter with the Communist reality of post-war Poland, which leads in the film to the question, to what extent a competition can enrich the lifes of its participants beyond merely providing a vehicle for an international career. Even the isolated Polish audience benefited from the competition, for this was one of the very few opportunities to enter into contact with the political outside world. Of course the Communist Regimes tried to make the competition into a battle between the West and the East, which made it extremely difficult for Soviet participants who did not fulfill their regime`s expecactions to launch an international career.
The film is divided in several chapters with each of them dealing with another competition year. In 1980 it was Pogorelich who took center stage, in 1975 the three Soviet competitors who instead of winning the competition only took 2nd, 3rd, and 4th prize were "penalized" by the Soviet Regime and thus prevented from making a career after the competition. The last chapter deals with the general question whether music competitions can be just and useful. Never before has such a wide range of world-famous musicians and eminent pedagogues spoken on this subject so candidly. With some ugly truths about corruption and bribery being revealed by these respectable persons, the question remains: Why do these people often chose to remain an integral part of the international competition circuit?