Evgeny Kissin

A documentary about the relation between music and war.

With a career that includes a 35-year tenure as composer of the Berlin Philharmonic and record sales topping 200 million, Herbert von Karajan is one of the most legendary figures in 20th-century classical music. Comprised of archival footage, performance highlights and interviews with the likes of Anne-Sophie Mutter, Christa Ludwig and Seiji Ozawa, this retrospective chronicles the life and times of the iconic Austrian maestro.

The Italian Character: a film within music and about music. The Italian character is the story of one of the most renowned orchestras in the world, enriched by archive material of the last thirty years about the great conductors who have been performing on the most famous rostrum in Rome.

This is a film that encapsulates the essence of a great pianistic age that married virtuosity and musicianship with the most thrilling aspect of individual showmanship.

Oscar is the story of the life of the famous artist Oscar Rabin against the background of three decades of Soviet history; it is a story about a successful experience of standing up against a regime with the help of paint and brushes. It is the story of non-violent resistance against evil, of the boundaries of compromise, about how people try to maintain their inner freedom when they are living in a country that is not very free. The film uses many unique newsreels and other archival materials being shown for the first time. Along with Oscar Rabin, featured in the fim are Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Vladimir Sorokin, Evgeny Kisin, Boris Akunin, Maya Turovskaya, Vladimir Paperny, Erik Bulatov, Oleg Tselkov, Vitaly Komar, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Mihail Chemiakin, Igor Guberman, Donald Rayfield, and Adam Michnik.

Evgeny Igorevich Kissin was born in Moscow on the 10th of October 1971. He started to play the piano at the age of two, as soon as he was tall enough to reach the keyboard and he has not looked back from that day to this. His is a very rare story of continued success that has had the simultaneous blessing of critics, the public and musicians alike. This film by Christopher Nupen shows Kissin in preparation, interview, rehearsal and performance, with several dazzling performances shot live on stage, in true concert conditions. It also contains all the encores from Kissin's memorable Promenade concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London, in August, 1997—the first Prom concert by a soloist, it attracted the biggest audience in all the 103 year history, very nearly six thousand people. The music is by Liszt, Gluck, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Paganini, Kissin himself and Chopin, the composer for whom Kissin feels the closest affinity.

Switzerland's annual Verbier Festival has become one of the premier international musical celebrations, attracting a who's who of world-renowned artists to the Swiss countryside for more than two weeks of classical music performances. In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the festival, the world's greatest pianists gathered to play arrangements of classical favorites for four to 16 hands on one to eight pianos. Pianists Leif Ove Andsnes, Nicholas Angelich, Martha Argerich, Emanuel Ax, Claude Frank, Evgeny Kissin, Lang Lang, James Levine, Mikhail Pletnev, and Staffan Scheja perform works by Mozart, Wagner, Rimsky-Korsakov, Smetana, Sousa, and Gottschalk. Also featured is Bach's "Concerto in A Minor," performed with the Verbier Birthday Festival Orchestra: Renaud Capuçon, Sarah Chang, Ilya Gringolts, Gidon Kremer, Vadim Repin, Dmitri Sitkovetsky, Christian Tetzlaff, Nikolaj Znaider, Yuri Bashmet, Nobuko Imai, Mischa Maisky, Boris Pergamenschikow, and Patrick de Los Santos.

Pianist Yevgeny Kissin brings his inimitable touch to Tokyo's Suntory Hall in this 1987 concert, when the virtuoso was only 16. A stirring version of composer Sergey Prokofiev's Sonata no. 6 in A Major marks Kissin's longest contribution of the evening. Other selections include Sergey Rachmaninoff's Études Tableaux op. 39, no. 5 in E-flat Minor; Frédéric Chopin's Polonaise in F-sharp Minor; and Franz Liszt's Trois Études de Concert no. 2 in F Minor.

The best in the performing arts from across America and around the world including a diverse programming portfolio of classical music, opera, popular song, musical theater, dance, drama, and performance documentaries.