Home
| Biography | Reviews
| Films | Opera
| Radio | Bibliography
| Contact TP
Tony Palmer Reviews
"No-one makes better films about
musicians than Tony Palmer."
David Chater, The Times
- a small selection -
All You Need Is Love
“It’s subtitled ‘The Story of
Popular Music,’ and it really is, in nearly 15 hours, on five discs… How
great must this be? See for yourself.” (EW Pick, “A” Rating)
-
Ken Tucker |
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
“Calling this five-disc,
17-episode walk through history of pop music ‘comprehensive’ is like calling
the Bible ‘important’… All You Need Is Love is a musical education in
a box.”
-
Ryan Dombal | BLENDER
“There's no shortage of ambition
in this 17-episode series directed in 1977 for British TV by music
journalist and filmmaker Tony Palmer. Subtitled "The Story of Popular
Music," this is the closest we will ever get to a definitive portrait of
such a sprawling topic.”
- Sean Axmaker
| MSN.com
“This rigorous and compelling
documentary series is a one-stop shop for the wisdom and development of
pop.”
-
Andrew Perry | MOJO
(UK)
“For an entertaining
and informative history of popular music up through the mid-70’s, you
could not do any better than this engrossing series.”
-
Curt
Fields | WASHINGTON POST
“The
idea of documenting the entire in-depth history of something as mercurial as
popular music is the kind of epic task that could make even Ken Burns
blanch. And yet that’s exactly what British journalist and filmmaker Tony
Palmer did in the mid-’70s, with the impossibly expansive
All You Need Is Love: The Story of
Popular Music.”
-
Bilge Ebiri | TIME OUT NEW YORK
“Tony
Palmer's "All You Need Is Love" was hailed in its day and looks even better
now, thanks to Palmer's blend of stock footage, electrifying performances
and thoughtful narration.”
-
Noel Murray
|
LA TIMES
“…it’s the definitive musical
history lesson for anyone interested in discovering just how dozens of
different threads of sound can come together into one massive, magnificent
musical tapestry.”
-
Neil Pond | AMERICAN
PROFILE
“…an impressive achievement,
scholarly, opinionated and entertaining, seamlessly blending archive and
fresh footage with an impressive cast of talking heads.”
-
Peter Kane | Q
MAGAZINE (UK)
“A treasure trove
for music lovers…”
-
Ethan Alter
|
GIANT MAGAZIME
“…Undeniably the
most ambitious attempt to document the changing face of popular music ever
to reach the TV screen.”
-
Terry
Staunton | CLASSIC ROCK MAGAZINE
“…An
astute, fine-tooth-combing through popular music in all its hues and ages.”
-
Linda Laban | BOSTON GLOBE
“…Holds your
interest throughout – though you’ll certainly need more than one viewing to
absorb it all.” (4 stars)
-
Gillian G.
Gaar | GOLDMINE
“It is difficult to
find fault with the overall concept or it’s long, winding, and ultimately
entertaining implementation.”
-
Lindsay
Planner | ALL MUSIC GUIDE
“It's a miracle that
the producers managed to secure all the music clearances for the DVD
release.”
-
Warren
Clements | GLOBE AND MAIL
“…A welcome look
back upon the long history of pop music as it evolved piecemeal... This is
Ken Burns before Ken Burns… Palmer's 14-hour-plus odyssey is filthy with
progressional details.”
-
Michael
Atkinson | IFC.com
“"Music buffs,
rejoice! British documentary TV maker Tony Palmer's energized and
enlightening history of popular music has finally landed on our shores."
-
Jonathan
Takiff | PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS
“…A very impressive
document on the history of modern music.”
-
Harry
Thomas |
SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS NEWS
“The show pops with
original and archival interviews”
-
Rich
Heldenfels
| AKRON BEACON
JOURNAL
“…an exciting five-DVD set from
the 1970s that tells the history of popular music. A gold mine of rare
footage, revealing anecdotes and exciting music making, it covers ragtime,
jazz, blues and gospel, moves to vaudeville and music hall, Broadway, swing,
R&B, country and folk, and finishes with rock. It shows their origins and
how each music tradition influenced the next. “
-
Chris Ball | CLEVELAND
PLAIN DEALER
“…It's absolutely
terrific -- a must-have for serious fans of music and documentaries.”
-
Michael
Giltz | HUFFINGTON POST
“…Unspeakably
ambitious, immensely satisfying and indescribably essential.”
-
Bernard
Perusse | MONTREAL GAZETTE
“The exhaustively
researched and brilliantly edited work, includes revealing glimpses at a
who’s who of modern music.”
-
Darryl
Sterdan | WINNIPEG SUN
“Tony Palmer has
created a gem of a DVD collection with this 17 part series about popular
music.”
-
Nick
Nicholson | FORT BEND STAR
“…The definitive
overview of 20th century popular music.”
-
Ken Sharp
| FMQB
“Unquestionably
necessary, All You Need Is Love is an inspiring, peerless document.”
-
Vish
Khanna | EXCLAIM
“All You Need Is
Love” is clearly Palmer’s most impressive video achievement.”
-
Robert
Silverstein | 20TH CENTURY GUITAR
“…a
copy of this belongs in every school and public library to act as a visual
and aural history course on both American and British pop culture for at
least the first 3/4 of the 20th century.
Nothing like this project will ever be attempted again, so this is the
best we can hope for. HIGHLY recommended!"
-
Steve Ramm
| IN THE GROOVE
“A visually rich
exploration…”
-
Randy
Williams | SANTA MONICA DAILY PRESS
“Music fans both
young and old will find this package interesting and enlightening.”
-
Ricky
Flake | SUN HERALD
“All You Need Is
Love” is the epitome of the phrase “something for everyone” and will hold
the interest of both young and old with its stories of vaudeville, the birth
of ragtime, The Beatles movement and the origins of country music.
-
Mark
Fisher |
TIMES WEST VIRGINIAN
“A worthy compendium
that takes the viewer through the early days of Vaudeville to jazz and the
birth of rock ‘n’ roll.”
-
Darren
Ressler | BIGSHOT
“The interviews are
solid, the newsreel footage to the point and the overall picture that
emerges is fascinating.”
-
Tom Von
Malder | COURIER NEWS
“…A remarkable
overview of popular music and the sheer scope of the program is
unbelievable.”
-
CURRENTFILM.com
“… A must for
serious music aficionados.”
-
Jeffery
Sisk | IN TUNE
“This is a set that
any student of music history will find informative and entertaining.”
-
Bob Bloom
| JOURNAL & COURIER
“…This is a
priceless education – and euphoric brilliance – worth every penny…”
-
John M
James | POSITIVLEY YEAH YEAH YEAH
“Each of the five
discs is a total joy from beginning to end.”
-
TOTAL
MUSIC
“Each episode brims
with intelligence and humor.”
-
Dennis
Seuling | VILLADOM TIMES
"… brilliant exposition … magisterial style … magnificent "
-
Sunday Times, 7th February 1977
"… a brilliant authoritative, historical study"
-
New York Library Journal
"… this beautifully–presented book and films
are something of a triumph … the first well–planned … history of the people’s music in the people’s century, infuriating, stimulating, long overdue: and hugely
welcome."
-
The Listener
Wagner
Opera News, November 1981
by Richard Hornak
"Wagner can be mentioned alongside such exceptional
film biographies as Gandhi, Reds and Abel Gance's Napoléon.....
Wagner is one of the most beautifully photographed motion pictures in
history."
The Guardian
The great thing about Tony Palmer’s film is that,
on its epic scale, it takes over from real life and makes you submit totally… Richard Burton was the very embodiment of Wagner… this film is one of the truly great experiences of the cinema.
Edward Greenfield
Die Welt
An absolute bulls-eye... wonderful... technically
brilliant.. musically and filmically on the highest level... it will surely set
out on a triumphant procession around the world.
Der Spiegel
A monumental film... a complete work of art...
truly visionary...
The Sunday Times
A remarkable event... hardly a minute too long...
a British Film of glory... takes the screen by storm... a big spirited work.
Tribune de Génève
The music is sumptuously played by the London
Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Sir Georg Solti... Vittorio
Storaro's photography is of the highest quality.
Corriere della Sera
Professionalism of the highest English
standard... a virtuoso piece, inspired, and quite simply colossal.
L'Unità
An incredible achievement... on the screen, just
as in the music of Wagner, the colour becomes action... an enormous and
brilliant production.
Music and Musicians Magazine
Musically magnificent, dramatically stunning and
visually awe-inspiring. Denbigh Richards
De Telegraaf
A winner all the way.
New York Daily News,
3rd June 1985
Wagner – You’ve Heard The Music. Now You Can See The Man For Nine Brilliant Hours
Tony Palmer’s Wagnerian–length cinematic tribute to history’s most important composer bursts with just the sort of larger–than–life scope befitting its subject.
Women’s Wear Daily,
3rd June 1985
'Wagner'
It is a work of such integrity, a landmark in the cinematic treatment of the way a man’s ideas govern his life, that one hesitates to suggest alterations as if it were something conventional.
New York Times, 16th June 1985
Wagner’s Life is in His Art
Positively indelible are a few scenes involving old stagers named Gielgud, Richardson and Olivier as the trio of court advisers.
'Wagner' is notable for the care it lavishes on the details of this strangely magnetic man’s extramusical as well as musical life.
Maria Callas
Daily Express, 3rd October1987
Breathing new life into Callas the magnificent
by David Fingelton
Tony Palmer’s truly superb film brings Callas back to life in an uncannily vivid way.
[...] He uses the arias and their words to illustrate the state of Callas' life and her feelings, at each given time the effect is electrifying.
[...] Do watch this marvellous film. It’s a deeply moving experience.
Financial Times, 5th August1987
Tony Palmer’s 'Callas'
by William Weaver
The Divina resists portrayal, but last week a capacity audience witnessed the world premiere of Tony Palmer’s persuasive Maria Callas.
[...] Palmer’s film made an immediate, profound impression. Much of the material was familiar, but Palmer used it with insight. He also found some unexploited footage.
Testimony
(Shostakovich)
Wales on Sunday, 19th March 1989
Men and women behind the myth
by Simon Mundy
Testimony has won him the Fellini Prize at the Europa Festival, the critics’ prize at Sao Paulo and Gold Medal at the 1987 New York Film and Television Festival, where that year he became the first director to walk away with the gold medals in all three of the categories in which he was entered.
[...] Palmer has hit an emotional nerve, being praised by critics and audience all over the world but arousing considerable antipathy from those who try to keep the orthodox publicity myths alive.
[...] In June both the National Film Theatre in London and the New York Institute of Broadcasting will be showing retrospective seasons of Palmer’s work, an unprecedented accolade for a maker of arts documentaries.
Films & Filming, June 1988
Testimony
by Derek Elley
It is one of those comparatively rare events
nowadays – a real piece of cinema. [...] Palmer’s prowess as an editor, his
knack of juxtaposing image and music – something which has remained his forte
since he first caused a stir back in the Sixties with Buddhist monks burning to
The Beatles – has a field day in Testimony. [...] Most importantly for
a movie about a composer (and something one often doubts with Russell), there is
always the feeling that Palmer understands the music. For a start he
puts to rest the hoary old cliché that the private Shostakovich is only to be
found in his chamber music – try listening to the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and
Fourteenth symphonies – but he also brings vividly alive musical details (like
the composer’s use of unison scoring) in colour sequences showing the
orchestra, as in the climax of the Fifth..... The best British film of the year
- truly remarkable.
Time, 12th December 1988
"I Am the Enemy You Loved" – Stalin and Shostakovich fight a duel in a powerful new film
by Michael Walsh
British director Tony Palmer’s new film, Testimony, dramatizes the view that Shostakovich was a closet dissident who was bitterly resentful of the system that shackled him.
[...] Palmer makes little pretence to literalism, preferring to relate the composer’s odyssey through stark images, shot mostly in black and white.
[...]
Testimony is a powerful drama, the tragedy of a man who had to betray himself in order to survive.
BBC Music Magazine, 1st April 2006
Shorn of the composer’s youthful iconoclasm or
any scenes of happier private life, this is the familiar tale of Shostakovich v
Stalin, but told with the individual flair of a born image-maker in black and
white scenes tellingly lit and interspersed with flashes of colour (mostly red).
Kingsley captures well the composers ironical tone as well as his nervousness
under fire… As a concentrated dose of pure anguish, it’s compellingly done.
In From the Cold?
(Richard Burton)
The Times, 21st September 1988
One man’s myth
by Celia Brayfield
Early in his career, Tony Palmer was one of a group of directors who created a new form of dramatic biography. With this film he has recreated the genre, exploring the extraordinary potential for complexity of a medium which is commonly dismissed as essentially simplistic.
[...] The original material of this programme was photographed magnificently and used with restraint. The editing was masterly, a textbook demonstration of how to create a compelling narrative from source material which varied from dull to sublime.
Daily Telegraph, 1987
The case for Burton
by Gillian Reynolds
Palmer’s extraordinary film not only kept faith with his subject, it did something altogether more unusual these days. It took an argument about what makes great art to a mass audience and did so with a passion and conviction which might have belonged to Burton himself. It made marvellous television.
Menuhin - A Family Portrait
Chicago Tribune, 12th August 1991
'Menuhin' a fine portrait of an artist
by Rick Kogan
This is a wonderful and emotionally charged biography of violinist Yehudi Menuhin.
[...] Filmmaker Tony Palmer has created something of a video biographical miracle.
[...] 'Menuhin: A Family Portrait' is a fascinatingly detailed portrait of the growth of an artist.
The Star–Ledger, 12th August 1991
Tales of musical mastery, family friction commingle in profile of
Yehudi Menuhin
by Jerry Krupnick
You will come away from these utterly fascinating two hours shaking from the emotional impact of its revelations; wondering how a filmmaker could capture and integrate this complex material.
[...] This is an extraordinary family portrait. […] It brings tears to our eyes. Just the glorious music alone is worth watching of this eye-and-ear-boggling film.
The Harvest of Sorrow
(Rachmaninoff)
The Times, May 1999
Great music and no monks
by Geoff Brown
Exile, a sense of longing and loss: over the decades these have dominated the most reflective of Palmer’s portraits of 20th–century composers. Think of Walton in At the Haunted End of the Day (1981), marooned in old age and sunshine in Ischia, light years away from the grit and grey of his childhood in Oldham. Think of A Time There Was (1980), Palmer’s second portrait of Britten, resonant with the bleak melancholy of the Suffolk coast, and the pain of losing life and loved ones.
[...] On reflection, lots of people could make a John le Carré film, but there is only one Tony Palmer to explore musicians' lives with passion, sensitivity and love.
Benjamin Britten and His Festival
The Daily Telegraph,
23rd November 1967
Brilliant film on Britten at Aldeburgh
by Sean Day-Lewis
This superb film by Tony Palmer, shot at (this) year's Aldeburgh Festival when the Queen opened... the Maltings at Snape, may well achieve the status of a classic, repeated again and again over the years… the brilliant editing (was) of the highest quality, making a natural partnership of music and picture.
A Time There Was
(Britten)
The Daily Mail, 7th April 1980
Public Fame, Private Torment
- by Martin Jackson
Tony Palmer proves once again he is a deeply intuitive, caring and thoughtful programme maker. This was a loving portrait of a most remarkable and gifted man.
Dallas Morning News,
18th September 1987
Trio of films on composers are works of art
by John Ardoin
Not only does (Palmer) make exemplary documentaries - he is a master of the medium - he takes us into the minds of men of music and explains why they accomplished what they did. This is the most absorbing film ever made about a composer, how he worked, what he thought and what made him what he was. It is as important as any book written on the man and his music.
Once At A Border...
(Stravinsky)
The Times, 8th April 1982
Clinging to miraculous icons
by Paul Griffiths
A wholly wonderful programme.... Much of this filmed portrait is
like a miraculous image, filled with the sense of Stravinsky as man and musician, above all as Russian and believer.
Financial Times, 13th April 1982
Tony Palmer's Stravinsky
by David Murray
Palmer's brilliantly organised (film)... All the virtues of the film seemed to stem from Stravinsky himself - and no higher tribute could be paid to the technical virtuosity of Palmer's film, which achieved miracles of compression, lucidity and respect.
The New York Times,
24th January 1988
An extraordinary portrait
by Allan Kozinn
This superb British documentary was one of the high points of CBS's music programming. It provided an excellent, thorough overview of Stravinsky and his music.
BBC Music
Magazine, 1st July 2007
Tony Palmer has given us many remarkable films
about composers, but this is probably the finest of them all...As an
introduction to Stravinsky it would be hard to beat. The initiated too will
learn plenty. Strongly recommended.
*****
Stephen Johnson
All My Loving
Daily Express, 4th November 1968
Sordid, splendid - it's a mad world
by James Thomas
With hideous, clamorous force, Tony Palmer's film about the pop world burst out of the TV screen last night - a disturbing piece of television...which no parent could afford to miss. It was certainly not a film which will die, a psychedelic experience which 10 years from now will be the definitive document of its time. How often does TV really make you sit on the edge of your chair?
Disc & Music Echo,
9th November 1968
"All my Loving" showed us all the horror of war
- by Vicki Wickham
'All my Loving' was magnificent - honest, accurate, unbiased and totally frank. As a comment on today, it was horrific and powerful, and as a protest it was stunning.
The Spectator,
8th November 1968
Loud loving
by Stuart Hood, former Controller of Programmes, BBC Television
I have no doubt that wherever it is shown the film will win professional acclaim. Remarkable for its virtuosity, its impact is inescapable. No wonder it has been the subject of passionate argument in the corridors of the BBC for months.
Hindemith - a Pilgrim's Progress
Daily Telegraph, 14th April 1990
The passion of Tony Palmer
by Gillian Reynolds
Magnificent - like no other documentary I have ever seen. The IBA (Independent Broadcasting Authority), to which the film was referred on possible grounds of blasphemy, sent it back with compliments and the sole stipulation that it must be shown with no commercials within its 41 minutes. It is a superlative work, the best and most resonant thing to be seen on Easter Sunday in years.
The Listener, 25th April 1990
Hindemith - A Pilgrim's Progress
- by Stephen Johnson
The combination of music and visual and verbal images struck me more powerfully than in any other Palmer film. I found the broadcast exhilarating, disturbing and very thought-provoking. It was a powerfully direct, visually superb, morally challenging statement - as one has come to expect from this director.
Symphony of Sorrowful Songs
(Górecki)
The Guardian, 2nd April 1993
In the shadow of the Nazi death camps
by Edward Greenfield
A major work of art in itself... Harrowing it may be, but this is required watching for anyone who has ever vegetated to music.
England, My England
(Purcell)
The Australian, 23rd November 1995
Sumptuous with a capital sumpt
by Phillip Adams
Just when the telly seemed to have run out of vision, just when 'the box' seemed the perfect name for that coffin of creativity, along comes something that looks and sounds like a masterpiece. The production is as wonderful to hear as it is to behold. And the images! This is sumptuous with a capital sumpt. Here is a production that puts the spec back into tacular. The cinematography is overwhelming. It will blow you out of your seat.
Independent on Sunday,
1st January 1996
Blue is the colour, Purcell is the name
by Michael White
Remarkable - not pristine in its period sensibility, but powerful in its gut response. Palmer has a rare gift for humanising distantly historical characters - the film touches some profound truths about the personalities behind the music. As the titles rolled, so did this critic's tears.
At the Haunted End of the Day
(Walton)
'NOW' magazine, 31st October 1980
A harmony of images and music
by Elkan Allan
Not many television programmes are works of art in their own right. This profile of Sir William Walton achieves the stature for which it aims. Visually, it is triumphant. The screen is kept vividly alive in quite a magical way. It is beautiful, dramatic, revelatory and illuminating. In short, a work of art.
Puccini
The Listener, 29th November 1984
Score for scandal
by Derwent May
Palmer tells the story like a Puccini opera - getting brilliant virtuoso performances out of all the principal characters, yet always holding (the film) at a high pitch of emotion, with wave after wave of crescendo.
Hero - The Story of Bobby Moore
The Daily Mail
by Ian Wooldridge
The most brilliant sports-associated documentary I have ever seen.
The (London) Times
by Alyson
Rudd
A beautiful and haunting work.
The London Evening Standard
by David Mellor
A powerful, noble film. I defy any man not to shed a tear when watching it. The taste and judgement (of the director, Tony Palmer) is apparent everywhere.
Toward the
Unknown Region - Malcolm Arnold, A Story of Survival
The Times
“Tony Palmer’s towering portrait of 83 year-old
Malcolm Arnold is one of those rare overwhelming films that capture the
trajectory of an artist’s life and personality – and what a personality –
while paying homage to the immensity of their creative achievement. This
complex, sad and subtle profile looks set, quite rightly, to win every award
going.”
The Sunday Times
by Paul Driver
"An amazing film, the most rawly truthful of its kind that
I've ever seen, though full of artistic subtlety. It's a totally dramatic
entity, because from start to finish you're aware of two antithetical
Malcolm Arnolds tugging in opposite directions and feel the tension between
them constantly - yet the film manages somehow to be celebratory in the end.
I think it must surely set the country alight when broadcast.”
Melvyn Bragg
“Tony Palmer has produced many great documentaries
which have rightly been acclaimed around the world. Malcolm Arnold is
another. Palmer at the top of his form and Arnold magnificently portrayed.”
BBC Music Magazine
by Stephen Johnson
"Astonishing....powerful....harrowing. It produced
shocked silence".
Classical Music
by Richard Fawkes
“A
remarkable portrait...unmissable. The reaction of those who have seen the
film has been one of stunned amazement".
Sunday Express
by Roger Lewis
“Wonderful.”
Classical Music Web
by Christopher Thomas
“Tony Palmer has created a film that I have no doubt will attain
legendary status not only amongst
Arnold fans but in the wider musical world
also. You simply cannot afford to miss it.”
Complete review on:
http://www.musicweb.uk.net/classrev/2004/Oct04/Unkown_region.htm
Margot
About The House Magazine, 1st
March 2006
Award-winning director Tony Palmer’s
film, originally commissioned by Melvyn Bragg and The South Bank Show, casts
a searching spotlight on a life that was at times stranger than fiction;
using reels of archive footage and interviews with those who danced with her
and knew her, it pieces together the story of one of the most iconic dancers
of the 20th century.
Time Out, 1st
December 2005
THE BEST DANCE DVDS
FOR CHRISTMAS: ‘Margot’, broadcast as a two-part ‘South Bank Show’, turned
out to be a TV highlight of last summer. What most people didn’t know at the
time was that these broadcasts didn’t comprise the totality of director Tony
Palmer’s three-hour documentary on legendary ballerina Margot Fonteyn. Now
the entire thing has been released on DVD by new company Digital Classics
DVD.
Dance Now, 1st
November 2005
There are few
subjects more appealing to a documentary-maker than a suffering artist. And
the greater the artist the more we want to see the price she paid when the
rest of the world wasn’t watching. In the case of Margot Fonteyn that price
was heavy, or so the film-maker Tony Palmer is determined to prove. His
compelling documentary, to be released on DVD this autumn, portrays the
world’s most famous ballerina as lonely, passive and exploited, a woman who
‘was deceived and betrayed by those closest to her’.
HMV Choice, 1st
November 2005
THE LIFE AND PERFORMANCES OF THE
BALLET GREAT CAPTURED BY DIRECTOR TONY PALMER: Tony Palmer’s typically
comprehensive documentary (his previous works include the universally lauded
Maria Callas and… Wagner) tells this tale [of Margot] and more. Coming in at
over two hours and featuring interviews with those who knew her best, Margot
is never less than compelling, and the mass of archive footage of Fonteyn’s
finest performances make it an absolute must-buy for any ballet lover, or
indeed anyone who wishes to recall when celebrity was inexorably attached to
a pure and elegant talent.
The Salzburg Festival
The Independent,
16th May 2006
The Salzburg Festival is a 195- minute
celebration of phenomenal music making, power glory and the Nazis. Palmer’s
film traces a compelling path across that space. And as this year’s Salzburg
Festival begins its celebration of Mozart, presenting all of his 22 operas,
this film may well prove a crucial part of the truth and reconciliation
process that has never been completed.
The New York Sun,
26th May 2006
Palmer’s trademarks are insight,
perspective and the hard-to-get interview. All of these are present in “The
Salzburg Festival”, true to say that this Englishman has done it again. This
is a rich, masterly, and stimulating film.
O Thou Transcendent
- The Life of Vaughan Williams
Review By Simon
Heffer :
O Fortuna! Carl Orff
and Carmina Burana
THE TIMES, April 11th 2009
by David Chater
“Tony Palmer is a giant among
documentary makers. His films about artists combine a profound understanding
of their work and an unflinching dissection of their characters. Here he
tells you everything you need to know about the Bavarian composer Carl Orff,
whose choral work Carmina Burana is performed somewhere in the world every
day. Orff was pursued by demons and wracked with guilt. He would wake in the
night screaming that he had seen the Devil. A former wife says he despised
people and was incapable of love. His conduct towards a friend arrested by
the Gestapo was despicable. The greatness of this film is that you get the
whole man, cancerous warts and all.”
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, April 9th 2009
By Simon Heffer
O Fortuna! Carl Orff and Carmina Burana
– A Magisterial and Brilliant Study
Tony Palmer film explores the life and
work of Carl Orff, the unknown Nazi composer of one of the world's most
popular classical pieces, Carmina Burana.
Carl Orff, the German composer of
Carmina Burana Photo: Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image
Every day, somewhere in the world,
someone puts on a performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. If you want a
recording of it, there are apparently 300 to choose from. Orff’s most
celebrated work – we should hesitate to call it his masterpiece, as there is
quite a lot else, much of it unheard, to choose from – is held in critical
disdain. It can be interpreted as pastiche, or cod-medievalism. It was
famously used as the soundtrack to an aftershave commercial in the 1970s, a
rather excellent joke about which launches O Fortuna! Carl Orff and Carmina
Burana, Tony Palmer’s film about the composer, shown last night on Sky Arts
2 (and to be repeated on the channel three times this week).
Palmer does not deal with lightweight
or inconsequential composers. He once made an eight-hour film about Wagner
(and it was still not long enough), and has been through most of the
interesting British masters (his film on Vaughan Williams was a hit last
year, during the half-centenary celebrations, and he has also produced
memorable and award-winning documentaries on Britten, Walton and Arnold).
Orff, as he shows during this two-hour exploration, is well worthy of
serious attention.
It is debatable whether Orff was more
interesting as a composer or as a man; the balance in Palmer’s film seems to
be towards the latter. He got through four wives (three of whom appear in
the film, as does his much-put upon daughter) and seems to have spent much
of his life in penury. As one wife says, he married because “he wanted to be
looked after”. He certainly made a business of using people. One morning he
visited the house of one of his collaborators to find that he had been
hauled off the previous day by the Gestapo for his involvement in a German
resistance movement.
When Orff was told this by the man’s
distraught wife, his first and it appears only reaction was to lament the
problems this might cause for
Orff.
Palmer quite rightly concentrates on
the question of whether Orff was a Nazi. This is an interesting point that
must be settled for all prominent artists who lived in the Third Reich, but
even more interesting in Orff’s case: he had Jewish ancestry, something he
never discussed and about which the authorities seemed to be unaware. One
expert interviewed in the film speaks of Orff jockeying to become the Third
Reich’s chief composer, once Richard Strauss had died. When he grovelled to
the regime, it was for what he considered to be high stakes. Whatever can be
said about his talent, his vanity was epic.
Orff’s daughter relates how when he
ditched her mother she, too, was simply remaindered out of his life.
Yet this most callous of men, who saw
paying lip-service to one of the most poisonous ideologies in history as an
acceptable price to pay for advancement in his artistic career, had at least
one other remarkable facet to his character. He was enormously interested in
musical education, and using music as a way to educate children. He offered
his services to the Hitler Youth, who, luckily for him, passed up the
opportunity. But his methods of using music as a vehicle for learning –
Schulwerk – were taken up by other teachers, and have proved especially
useful in teaching seriously handicapped children: so Orff, the Nazi
monster, turns out to have done something useful after all.
Aficionados of Palmer’s films will
recognise his usual methods, which take the viewer directly to the heart of
the subject, pull no punches, and contrast the excellence of the subject’s
art with the often vile aspects of his character. Orff’s music, which aside
from the well-known passages of Carmina Burana is certainly rather good, if
a little histrionic, is juxtaposed with pictures of the liberation of
concentration camps.
There is no compartmentalisation in a
Palmer film, and rightly so. Whatever the merits of the music, they must
stand against the milieu of the composer, and the consequences of the views
to which he subscribed. One is left in no doubt at the end of the film that
Orff’s reputation has been so constrained because of the company he kept in
the 1930s and 1940s. Film of him being feted as an old man by other giants
of the German musical establishment does not alter that perspective. His is
a reputation that will continue to struggle to get outside Bavaria – from
which, as an old interview with him that Palmer uses makes clear, he drew so
much of his inspiration – never mind Germany.
But Palmer’s film, a work of art in
itself, opens up so many new considerations about this strangely unknown
composer.
The Wagner Family
Palmer is one of the era’s best
art-documentary makers; The Wagner Family is a superb film.
Andrew Billen THE TIMES
An extraordinary achievement. A superb
piece of work.
Barry Millington EVENING STANDARD
A storming curtain-raiser. Palmer casts
narrative convention to the wind, instead immersing us immediately in the
bewildering genealogy of the Wagners. It’s an astonishing tale which
Palmer’s tells with all his usual brilliance.
Gabriel Tate TIME OUT
The half-sisters Katharina Wagner, 30,
and Eva Wagner-Pasquier, 34 years her senior. are the unlikely duo (that)
will inaugurate a new era (in Bayreuth). But neither should be resting
comfortably after they have seen the provocative first episode in the final
season of The South Bank Show. In Tony Palmer’s ferocious and coruscating
documentary, The Wagner Family, dark revelations are piled on from the first
minute to the last.
Neil Fisher THE TIMES
THE TELEGRAPH –
September 13th 2009
The South Bank Show:
the last bastion of civilisation on ITV
Tony Palmer's
magnificent new film on Wagner shows how much ITV will lose when the South
Bank Show finishes its run,
argues Simon Heffer
My article last week about
Jonathan Meades's superb work for television drew a number of comments from
readers about how such quality used to be relatively routine, but is now
remarkable. It is about to become more so. The final series of the South
Bank Show begins on Sunday on ITV. For 30 years it has shone ever more
brightly on a network that has progressively become less and less
distinguished in the quality of its output. Soon there will be no light at
all.
The final blow was struck by
ITV's bosses determining that they would simply not fund the programme in a
way that made it possible to continue with integrity. So Lord Bragg, whose
baby it is, decided to administer the humane killer. What a terribly
depressing estimation ITV must have of its viewers.
The final
season could not get off to a better start: a film by Britain's leading
director of musical documentaries, Tony Palmer, about the Wagner family and
the Bayreuth festival. Palmer has dealt with the life of the Master already,
and in appropriately epic form: a stunning eight-hour film made in 1983 with
Richard Burton in the title role and Vanessa Redgrave as Cosima. (It also
has a walk-on part for Sir William Walton, in one of those entertaining
tricks of originality with which Palmer marks his films.) This new film
deals with the theatre Wagner had built at Bayreuth and the festival he
inaugurated there in 1876, and how the legacy seems to have poisoned
successive generations of his family.
It is a subject that, like
most of Palmer's films, could have commanded the attention for two or three
hours: all the South Bank Show could manage was 48 minutes. That the
film seems to be over before the viewer has even sat back in his seat is a
tribute to how gripping it is, how perfectly constructed, and to its
astonishing narrative pace. It is also a reminder that to deal properly with
subjects as lacking in superficiality as most of the arts are, one needs
space and time. Luckily, Palmer is also a first-rate DVD industry. With
luck, a director's cut of three times the length of tonight's programme will
be available before long.
The quality of Palmer's
work, much of which has been showcased over the years on the South Bank
Show, will also remind viewers of how big the void will be on ITV once
this series finishes, and how little there will be on the network to
interest the sophisticated or intelligent. Three of his films particularly
stick in my mind. Thirty years ago, in the infancy of the South Bank Show,
he made A Time There Was, a penetrating, moving and intense account
of the life of Benjamin Britten, perhaps the only genuine genius produced by
the English musical renaissance. Shortly after that he made At the
Haunted End of the Day, an appropriately vigorous film about Sir William
Walton. Finally, there was his two-part film about Sir Malcolm Arnold, a
prolific composer wrecked by drink, which achieved an almost frightening
intimacy in shots of Arnold in addled old age snarling like a wounded beast.
Palmer has never taken the
easy road or avoided the difficult angle: his films about musicians are
searingly honest and stripped of sentimentality and special pleading. He
also understands the power of music as well as he understands the power of
film. That is why, 30 years on, his films have not dated at all, and are as
direct now as they were when first broadcast.
Yet once the South Bank
Show has gone, Palmer and his genius will be confined, it seems, to
satellite channels. He is as unsentimental about his trade as about his
subjects: he has gone on record as saying there was never a golden age of
television. However, he has also pointed to the decline of the BBC as a
serious cultural force in television, and has branded Mark Thompson, its
present director-general, as a catastrophe.
Palmer has the self-respect
and the self-confidence not to worry about burning his bridges in this way,
but it should matter profoundly to the rest of us that he has. Two years
ago, he made a superb film about Vaughan Williams, almost three hours long,
that really got under the skin of the music of one of our most popular
composers. The BBC were not interested: as Palmer himself has recounted, his
approach to the Corporation offering the film occasioned a reply from a
functionary stating that there was no interest at that moment, but that if
Mr Williams did any new work of interest, the BBC would be delighted to hear
about it and reconsider. Perhaps it is quite understandable why, after such
an absurdity, Palmer should have found it necessary to describe the man who
presides over such a culture as a "catastrophe".
His latest film is an object
lesson in why he is such a successful documentary-maker. There is a rich mix
of archive film and of contemporary interviews. They are woven together with
an expert understanding of the subject. No area is ever out of bounds: in
this case, the Wagner family's umbilical attachment to Hitler before and
during the Third Reich.
Winifred Wagner, the Master's
English daughter-in-law, supplied the writing materials with which Hitler
created Mein Kampf. Her children called him "Uncle Wolf", and when
the war came he got one of them a cushy job helping out at the local
concentration camp. Winifred, having been widowed at the age of 33, was
considered to have a tendresse for the Fuhrer. He attended Bayreuth
almost as an act of religious observance until 1940. Thereafter, until 1944,
the Nazis funded the event as a recuperation centre for wounded soldiery,
though the only opera Hitler would allow to be performed there was Die
Meistersinger von Nurnberg, which he considered to be sufficiently
upbeat and which ends with a paean to the magnificence of German culture.
Long after the war, long
after Winifred had been sent to outer darkness for her Nazi activities (for
which she had been lucky to escape serious punishment) and her sons had
taken over the running of the festival, she unwisely gave an interview in
which she said that if Hitler were to walk into the room she would greet him
like an old friend. The smell still lingers.
Enjoy this superb piece of
film-making: it signifies the end of an era in the commitment to using
mainstream television as a conduit of high culture. What comes next hardly
bears thinking about.
THE SUNDAY TIMES- September
6th 2009
Hitler planned invasion with 'Wagner' atlas
by Richard
Brooks
His passion for the operas of Richard Wagner is well
known. Now it can be revealed that Hitler planned the invasion of Poland with
the help of an atlas borrowed from the German composer’s grandson. The
Fuhrer turned to the Wagner family for assistance during one of his regular
visits to the annual Bayreuth music festival in the summer of 1938. Hitler
wanted to illustrate his plans for a possible Polish invasion while in
discussion with some of his henchmen. “He just asked for a geography map
and we found one which was my my brother’s,” recalled Friedelind Wagner, the
composer’s granddaughter. Her brother, Wolfgang, was a teenager at the time.
Friedelind went on to explain how Hitler drew a series of lines on the map to
show potential German troop movements. The invasion of Poland took place a year
later, and last week its 70th anniversary was commemorated. Unlike most of
her family, Friedelind was not sympathetic to the Nazi cause and fled to America
during the Second World War. She was interviewed by Tony Palmer, a British
documentary film-maker, before her death in 1991. Her recollections will be
broadcast for the first time next Sunday (Sep 13) on ITV1 as part of a South
Bank Show special on the Wagner family. “People knew that Hitler was a
huge fan of Richard Wagner’s music and so they were not surprised that he would
go to the (Bayreuth) festival,” said Palmer, who has uncovered footage of the
Fuhrer at the event. “But what most did not realise was that he also used
Bayreuth regularly as camouflage. In other words, people thought he was there
for the music but in fact he was there as much, out of the public eye, to plot
Nazi expansion plans.” While in Bayreuth Hitler stayed in a house owned by
Wagner family.
Next weekend’s programme also shows how the Fuhrer
was romantically linked to an English woman. The object of his desire was
Winifred Williams, an orphan from Hastings, who was adopted by a musical family
in Germany and later married off to Siegfried Wagner, one of the composer’s
sons. Hitler got to know Winifred in the late 1920s during his trips to
Bayreuth. The couple fell in love and there was serious talk of Winifred
divorcing her husband, who was gay. However, Hitler, as “a good Catholic”, felt
he could not be seen to break up the marriage.
Wigan Casino
Review on
Daily Express
Wigan Casino
directed by Tony Palmer showing
at Space in Hackney
By the time I left school at sixteen in
the late-seventies the big sound was disco. That said, the real hipsters
among the kids who underwent the same non-education as me were into
northern soul (rare mainly American and mainly 1960s records that
sounded like Motown but never made the pop charts). I first came across
northern soul in the mid-seventies because a school friend shared a
bedroom with an older brother who was obsessed with a handful of
northern soul platters. This big brother would come in from his factory
job, put Tainted Love (later a huge hit when it was covered by Soft
Cell) or some other northern favourite on a record deck, then flop on
his bed to listen to the music until his mum had made his tea. For some
reason this particular teenager also liked prog, so he was also the
first person to play me Greenslade!
By the end of 1976, I was into punk rock
(one of only two pupils in my school into that scene then), while a
couple of kids in my class were regularly going to Wigan Casino for its
northern soul all-nighters. I can remember them saying to me: “You
should come to Wigan, it’s great, we drop a load of blues and dance all
night!” My reply was: “Why would I got all that way to listen to
records? I like seeing live bands.” There were plenty of blues
(amphetamine tablets) around at punk gigs too…
And so that was that, I blew my chance to
go to Wigan – possibly the worst decision I made at the age of 14 or 15.
Tony Palmer’s 1977 TV documentary makes it very clear there was a truly
extraordinary youth culture blossoming there. Space put it this way:
“Wigan Casino documents an idiosyncratic scene based around the weekly
club night that ran from 1973 to 1981. From elegant slow motion dance
shots to fervent scenes of vinyl swapping, Palmer precisely captures the
bustle and energy, as well as the overarching subcultural strangeness,
of the Northern Soul phenomenon.”
If you have any interest in soul music
you should have seen Palmer’s incredible dance shots used by other
film-makers or simply posted on YouTube. But it is worth seeing those
scenes in context, with a record dealer talking about the prices paid
for northern vinyl and a girl who works in a hospital laundry explaining
that going to Wigan is the only meaningful thing she does in her life.
There is also an interview with the manager of The Casino and a couple
of elderly Wigan residents giving their take on life. Cut into this are
old photographs of industrial Wigan, and shots of factory machinery that
turn with an almost Brion Gysin-like flicker effect. The contemporary
scenes of Wigan, particularly images of terraced houses by a canal, make
it look every bit as derelict as the rest of England in the
late-seventies.
Wigan Casino may be a 32-year old piece
of TV, but it’s the best thing I’ve seen in an art gallery for some
time!
Holst - In the Bleak Midwinter
A
marvellous, epic film.
The Sunday Telegraph
Magnificent and mesmerising… a seamless blend of beautiful photography,
penetrating insight and sublime music.
The Times
Overwhelming, stunning…passionate and moving.
The Independent
A
masterpiece.
Barry Millington
THE
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH - 17th April 2011
Explore what lies beyond Holst's
Planets
Tony Palmer's brilliant film about
Gustav Holst reveals the range of that other strange brilliant man,
says
Simon Heffer
One
of the more tiresome misconceptions about English music is that Gustav Holst
is simply the man who wrote The Planets. In fact, that remarkable work is
neither the beginning nor the end of what he did and, magnificent though it
is, it is not even in my very humble opinion his finest piece of music. It
is, though, the pigeonhole in which many people who know only his name and
his most famous work have chosen to place him. It is time to yank him out of
it.
When
I wrote here in February about the retrospective of Tony Palmer’s films
about music that was being shown on the BBC, I mentioned that Mr Palmer had
one more to add to his oeuvre, on Holst. It is to be broadcast next Sunday
on BBC Four at 9pm, so if you are going away for Easter, do not forget to
set your recorder. It is a marvellous, epic film of almost 140 minutes’
duration, and tells the story of this strange, brilliant man who,
effectively, worked himself to death just before his 60th birthday.
Mr
Palmer uses a combination of contemporary and archive film but, as with all
his films, saturates the subject in the music itself. There are fine
performances of long excerpts from many of Holst’s works, not least by the
orchestra of the Royal College of Music, where Holst taught for many years.
Yet
the best thing about the film is how Mr Palmer brings out the diverse
influences that operated on Holst. He was deeply interested in what we now
call “world music”. The man who wrote what many would consider to be the
most English tune in existence – the part of Jupiter that was hijacked as
the music for the hymn I Vow to Thee, My Country – was also soaked in Indian
music and Oriental mysticism. He produced largely unknown but captivating
works, such as Savitri and his Hymns from the Rig Veda, as a result of it.
Yet
more powerful, in many ways, was the power over him of music from North
Africa. Holst was immensely susceptible to experience: he heard a man
playing a tune on a flute in a street in Algiers that consisted of the same
phrase repeated over and over again. It inspired Holst to write his suite
Beni Mora, in whose hypnotic finale, The Street of Ouled Nails, that very
phrase is used as the thread that runs through the movement.
Even
more important in Holst’s life was his politics. He and his friend Vaughan
Williams considered themselves socialists, though, I suspect, not in a way
that Ed Miliband would recognise. Vaughan Williams was a rich man who did
not need to work for a living; Holst was a professional musician who lived
entirely on his talents and, for part of his life, on subventions from
Vaughan Williams. His involvement with Morley College in London, where he
conducted scratch orchestras and choirs of working people, was typical of
his commitment to the unprivileged. This went side-by-side with his work at
St Paul’s Girls’ School in Brook Green, Hammersmith, where he taught the
daughters of the well-to-do and, incidentally, found the peace and quiet at
weekends and in the evenings to write much of his music. They still have a
room at the school called ‘Mr Holst’s Room’: it is rather astonishing now to
think that a composer of his greatness for so long earned a living as a
simple schoolmaster.
Holst’s political awareness, as Mr Palmer’s film shows, did not really take
off until he rented a weekend house at Thaxted, one of the most beautiful
villages in north Essex. His arrival there coincided with the outbreak of
the Great War, and a time of heightened suspicion in small communities. That
he was called von Holst at this stage (he was of German descent, and the
“von” was quickly dropped), and used to walk around the surrounding hills
inspecting the landscape, had him pulled in for questioning by the police.
However, once they realised he was about as English as they were (he was
born in Cheltenham in 1874, into a family of professional musicians) he was
allowed to go.
Holst
befriended the radical vicar of Thaxted, Conrad Noel, who was constantly in
trouble with the ecclesiastical authorities because of his refusal to
conform to the notion that the Church of England was the Tory party at
prayer. Holst imbibed the heightened, Left-wing atmosphere of this
apparently most conservative of communities in a way that simply
strengthened his commitment to write music for the masses to enjoy and to
perform.
The
Planets, which had its first complete performance in 1918, at last brought
him some measure of financial success and recognition. It is not the least
of Mr Palmer’s achievements that he takes this supposedly well-known work
and, thanks to the context that he fleshes out for it and the quality of its
performance in his film, makes us think about it afresh.
The
last phase of Holst’s life, from The Planets to his death in 1934, was one
of true greatness, not least in his choral writing, and there is much of
that in this film, too. A new warmth seemed to enter his writing. He was a
better orchestrator than Vaughan Williams (and VW knew it, asking Holst
always to look over his new works before he regarded them as complete). When
Holst died, he left an unfinished symphony, the scherzo of which was
published posthumously as a stand-alone piece: it suggests all too
frustratingly what genius still remained to be expressed.
I
wish Mr Palmer had had another hour for his film. Almost all of Holst’s
greatest works are in it, and properly presented. But there was no time for
my own favourite, his Hammersmith: Prelude and Scherzo, written in 1930.
Again, Holst had a real-life inspiration: he heard a boy whistling a tune as
he walked down Hammersmith Broadway one day, and it is the great theme that
emerges in the work, first played on a piccolo to imitate the boy’s whistle,
then taken up by the whole orchestra. The piece begins and ends with the
slow, relentless passage of the river under Hammersmith Bridge. Like so much
of Holst’s music, it is revelatory of the place that made him write it;
Egdon Heath, A Somerset Rhapsody and the Brook Green Suite are other
examples.
Mr
Palmer’s film deserves that adjective too. It is revelatory of a man too
many have come to know through one brilliant but well-worn piece of music.
Few who watch it will come away without wanting to know more, and explore
more widely. And it is, frankly, about time too. The neglect of Holst as one
of our musical masters has lasted far too long.
Home
| Biography |
Reviews
| Films | Opera
| Radio | Bibliography
| Contact TP
© Tony Palmer