Saturday 2nd March 2013
| Howard Goodall's Story of Music (6/6) |
In the sixth and final episode, composer Howard Goodall looks at the popular age - the last hundred years in music. It has been a period when classical music, as it is now generically styled, seemed to many to be in retreat, crisis or even terminal decline. Howard Goodall believes that rumours of its death have been exaggerated. While some cutting edge works proved too challenging to win the hearts of a mainstream audience, the DNA of classical music, as it had been constituted since the time of Monteverdi in the 1600s, is alive and well in musical theatre, in the cinema and in much popular music. Beginning with Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue, a jazz-classical hybrid first performed in 1924 that became a much-loved standard - despite its sniffy reception by highbrow critics at the time.
Indeed it was popular music, after the First World War, that was more likely to comment directly on the things that were on most people's minds - the rise of fascism, and the racism aimed at African-Americans in the USA. Works like The Threepenny Opera, Porgy and Bess and Billie Holiday's signature song Strange Fruit, and later, West Side Story, pushed the boundaries of the seriousness that popular styles could convey.
And it was popular song, after the Second World War, that was more likely to protest about racism and inequality, and the Vietnam War, in the hands of Bob Dylan, Marvin Gaye and others.
The Beatles, meanwhile, had utilised a bewildering variety of different styles and techniques, some rediscovered, some invented by themselves. With George Martin and the engineers at Abbey Road, they explored and instituted new possibilities offered by recording technology. And, thanks to albums by The Beatles and others, styles from other cultures began to become better known in the west. 'World music' had begun and is still going strong.
But classical music during the Second World War had connected with a mainstream audience, in works like Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony - written as his home city endured an apocalyptic siege - and Aaron Copland's optimistic ballet, Appalachian Spring. If some of the wilder shores of experiment had failed to carry the mainstream audience with them, these works once again connected leading composers and the public. The circle was complete with the arrival, in the 1960s and 70s, of minimalism - and composers like Steve Reich, Philip Glass and John Adams. Reich, in particular, who was inspired by Balinese drumming music, and who also became the godfather of 'sampling', was enormously influential on cutting edge 'popular' music. A term that was fast becoming increasingly misleading and irrelevant. Philip Glass wrote a Low Symphony based on music by David Bowie - exchange was now a two-way street, and what's more it was an exchange between equal partners.
The damaging split between what had been seen as diametrically opposed opposites - classical and popular - has in our own time, finally begun to close.
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Sunday 3rd March 2013
| Boxing at the Movies: Kings of the Ring |
Danny Leigh explores the elemental drama of the boxing movie. For over 120 years, boxing and film have been entwined and the fight film has been used to address powerful themes such as redemption, race and corruption. Film writer Leigh examines how each generation's fight films have reflected their times and asks why filmmakers from Stanley Kubrick to Martin Scorsese have returned time and again to tales of the ring.
Interviewees include former world heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis, Rocky director John G Avildsen and Thelma Schoonmaker, editor of Raging Bull.
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Monday 4th March 2013
| Britain on Film |
In 1959 Britain's biggest cinema company, the Rank Organisation, decided to replace its newsreels with a series of short, quirky, topical documentaries that examined all aspects of life in Britain. For the next ten years, Look at Life chronicled - on high-grade 35mm colour film - the changing face of British society, industry and culture. Britain on Film draws upon the 500 films in this unique archive to offer illuminating and often surprising insights into what became a pivotal decade in modern British history.
This episode looks at the films that recorded one of the great boom industries of the 1960s. Having left behind the austerity of the immediate post-war period, Britain's increasingly affluent population took full advantage of the new leisure opportunities that made affordable newly-emerging recreational activities at home - as well as exciting holiday adventures abroad.
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Tuesday 5th March 2013
| The Railway: Keeping Britain on Track (4/6) |
The West Coast Mainline is the busiest route in Europe - linking London to Glasgow with Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool in between.
Despite an unprecedented £9bn upgrade just a few years ago, already this line is straining under a jam-packed schedule and ever growing passenger numbers. Quite simply, this line is full up. With 4,000 trains on the route every day, signal boxes that still rely on Victorian lever technology, and the window for maintenance smaller than it has ever been, the staff are under pressure just to maintain the status quo - and when engineering upgrade work happens to fall on the FA Cup final weekend, the railway staff find themselves even more unpopular than usual.
With so many trains squeezed on this route, just a small problem can quickly throw the line into chaos. When a train breaks down in the middle of the line, train manager Matt has to roll up his sleeves and go trackside to check the train, while the staff on the customer information point at London Euston face down the increasingly frustrated passengers.
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Wednesday 6th March 2013
| America's Poor Kids |
In the United States, child poverty has reached record levels, with over 16 million children now affected. Food banks are facing unprecedented demand, and homeless shelters now have long waiting lists, as families who have known a much better life sometimes have to leave their homes with just a few days notice. This World asks three children whose families are struggling to get by to explain what life in modern America really looks like through their eyes.
Told from the point of view of the children themselves, this one-hour documentary offers a unique perspective on the nation's flagging economy and the impact of unemployment, foreclosure and financial distress as seen through the eyes of the children affected.
| First Among Equals: the Laurie Cunningham Story |
The story of Laurie Cunningham, who became the first black footballer to play for England at any level when he was selected for an under-21 international against Scotland in 1977. This marked a watershed moment in British culture, inspiring a generation of young black players not only to believe they belonged in the country, but that they could represent it. Featuring interviews with Vincente Del Bosque, Cyrille Regis, Viv Anderson, Peter Reid, Ian Wright, John Barnes, Paul Ince and many more.
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Thursday 7th March 2013
| Britain's Secret Shoppers (4/5) |
Justin Preston wants to turn shy Brits into happy hagglers. He helps a couple try to bring down the cost of a posh dinner and a room in a swanky hotel in Mayfair.
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Friday 8th March 2013
| American Master: a Portrait of John Adams |
John Adams is the living composer who is most widely performed today. This visually rich portrait of the composer by award-winning film maker Mark Kidel explores the influences that have shaped Adams's unique music, from minimalism to jazz and from the Indian raga to the European classical tradition.
| Russell Brand: From Addiction to Recovery |
Ten years ago Russell Brand was addicted to heroin, his career was unravelling and he was told he may only have six months to live. The story of how he battled to stay clean of drugs is at the heart of this eye-opening and searingly honest, personal film in which Brand challenges how our society deals with addicts and addiction.
It comes in the wake of the tragic death of his friend Amy Winehouse, which was the spur to this exploration of the 'condition of addiction' which, he believes, is misunderstood and wrongly treated. Brand meets a whole range of people from whom he draws insights - scientists at the cutting edge of research into the psychology of addiction, those involved in innovative recovery treatments and drug addicts themselves.
Is addiction a disease? Should it be criminalised? And is abstinence-based recovery, which worked for Brand, a possible way forward? In this documentary Brand challenges conventional theory and practice as well as government policy in his own inimitable style, confronting the reality of addiction head on. Along the way he draws on his own experience to try to help one of the addicts he meets to take the first steps towards recovery. Armed with his own heartfelt beliefs and new insights gained during his journey, Brand has the opportunity to change the hearts and minds of policy makers when he is invited to give evidence before the Home Affairs Select Committee investigating the efficacy of current drug addiction treatment in the UK.
| The Ballad of Mott the Hoople |
Documentary telling the bruised and battered, but triumphant, tale of one of the UK's most cherished rock 'n' roll bands, Mott the Hoople.
Originating from Herefordshire, the band were thrown together in 1969 and signed to Island Records by the increasingly erratic manager/producer Guy Stevens, in a bid to find a band that would combine The Rolling Stones rhythmic power with the melody and lyricism of 'Blonde on Blonde' era Bob Dylan.
The documentary charts their journey from cult struggling touring band to their successful transformation into 'glam rock players' thanks to the intervention of David Bowie who gave them their biggest hit, 'All The Young Dudes', and their subsequent collapse after the addition of Mick Ronson to their line-up.
Mott the Hoople's story is brought to life through a combination of rare and unseen archive footage, their magnificent music and the testimony of band members Ian Hunter, Mick Ralphs, Verden Allen, Dale Griffin, Luther Grosvenor aka Ariel Bender and various other associates and witnesses, including boyhood fan Mick Jones of The Clash and Queen's Roger Taylor.
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