This landmark BBC series, narrated by Kenneth Branagh, presents the lives and works of 7 pivotal figures in Western music, with outstanding performances, dramatizations, and insightful interviews with respected artists and scholars.
Directed by Kris Rusmanis. Mahler was scarcely recognized as a great composer until the middle of the 1960s, when his music started to make a massive impact. In 1991, thirty recordings of his symphonies were released in one month. This film explores Mahler's life: his childhood, surrounded by tragedy and abuse; his driven adulthood, torn between life as a composer and conductor, and his passionate and pained love-life. This program examines the supreme expression of philosophical inquiry in music, embracing religion, the revolutionary and the mundane. Reconstructions, archive footage, radio interviews, artifacts, private scores, letters, contracts and sculptures are used, along with interviews with many prominent artists and writers. Set in Vienna, Budapest, Hamburg and the Czech Republic.
