The result was indeed a magic moment of music and a landmark in the career of Krystian Zimerman. In this episode, “Leonard Bernstein and Krystian Zimerman Interpret Brahms”, Zimerman gives a rare interview, and for the first time in a TV documentary, speaks in detail about the background to the concert recording and why the collaboration with Leonard Bernstein radically changed the course of his artistic life.

Eminent colleagues including Hélène Grimaud and Igor Levit as well as close confidants of Leonard Bernstein such as the conductor Marin Alsop and his former assistant Charlie Harmon also tell us what makes this concert a great moment for them.

Founded six years earlier by Daniel Barenboim and the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra attracted international attention and became famous almost overnight.

With this performance, the orchestra set a clear signal, not least through the choice of programme. Beethoven’s “Symphony of Destiny” represents a vision of human reconciliation, while Mozart’s “Sinfonia concertante” impressively underscores the possibility of peaceful coexistence through music, with soloists on bassoon, horn, oboe and clarinet originating from Israel and Syria and Egypt.

This great moment in music is reflected not only in the legendary concert recording. Documentary passages about the origins of the orchestra and the closeness and fellowship of the musicians as well as the pictures taken during the spectacular Ramallah trip transform the film into tangible musical history. In newly filmed conversations, Daniel Barenboim, Mariam C. Said and a selection of musicians cast their minds back over their experiences of this momentous evening. Prominent personalities who are friends of the orchestra, including actor Christoph Waltz, cellist Yo-Yo Ma and singer Waltraud Meier, explore the question of what music can achieve in such a context.

Sir Kenyon remarks: “Cancelling a Proms concert is no minor undertaking. Even after the death of Lady Diana, we chose to go ahead with the performance. And the people came.” Christoph Eschenbach and Hélène Grimaud are also prepared to perform.

The hall begins to fill. The mood is sombre. For Hélène Grimaud, the events have laid a leaden cloak of sadness and shock over the evening “They gave a concert of peace,” comments pianist Sophie Pacini. And indeed, after sounding the opening G major chord with trembling fingers, Hélène Grimaud begins to play increasingly freely. “This moment of catastrophe and tension and questioning inspired her to a musical moment that was increasingly captivating.”

In the 2nd movement of Beethoven’s concerto, her playing is even vocal. The Royal Albert Hall is charged with excitement. The Proms audience holds its breath in shared emotion. It is a collective and communal experience that Orchester de Paris violist Estelle Villotte recalls more than two decades later. “I cried on my viola during the concert. But Christoph Eschenbach and Hélène Grimaud carried me through.”

The dance-like and playful third movement is a liberation. For a moment at least, the terrible images from New York appear outshone by Hélène Grimaud’s playing. And the mood changes. At the close of the piece, the audience responds with a standing ovation.

Broadcast date on ARTE: 10/04/2022 at 6:15 pm

In 1989, Nigel Kennedy’s recording of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons causes a turmoil in the world of classical music. The press call the musician the “punk violinist” while others treat him with scorn. However, the record goes on to sell more copies than any other classical album before or since. Kennedy succeeds in transcending the reservations of an audience that considers classical music too elitist or aloof. The film tells of the incredible rise of an outsider into superstar and of a Vivaldi interpretation that has achieved cult status.

When Nigel Kennedy presents his vision of a new classical album to the record company EMI, he is met with broad scepticism. Certainly, with his wild hair and an outfit that mixes punk, gothic and new wave, he’s far from the typical classical musician. But manager John Stanley senses an opportunity: “If Kennedy is permitted to be who he is, you could sell millions of records.” And he’s proven right.

The film takes viewers back to 1989 when Kennedy and the English Chamber Orchestra shook up the music scene with their recording of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. With daring and verve, Kennedy appeals to an audience that was otherwise averse to classical music, resulting in album sales of over three million and an entry in the Guinness Book of Records.

Early on, the protege of Yehudi Menuhin stands out as a rebel: in the day he studies at the renowned Juilliard School and at night he plays in the New York jazz clubs and learns the art of improvisation, among others from Stéphane Grappelli.

Kennedy recalls: “The classical world felt like a straitjacket. I had to change something or else I had to get out. There was nothing to lose.” During the recording of The Four Seasons, he strives to free himself both from historically informed performance and the Russian School of playing. He seeks out and finds an interpretation that is inarr keeping with the times. With his playing style and arresting appearance, he breaks with the conventions of the classical concert business. The controversy is even discussed in the UK Parliament.

In the concert recording – filmed in the manner of a pop concert – the London audience sits at the edge of the stage in jeans and jumpers. The outfits of the orchestra musicians and the stage lighting change depending on the season. Star violinist Maxim Vengerov tells us what is revolutionary about Kennedy’s playing, and fashion designer Esther Perbandt gives her own view: “He’s an individualist. He doesn’t dress like this to market himself.” Nigel Kennedy says of himself: “I can only be who I am. And that’s how I am.”

With his groundbreaking recording, Kennedy helps young musicians to question the limitations and precedents of the classical music world and he pushes the door wide open for an audience to discover Vivaldi’s famous music.

When the singers Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle step on to the Carnegie Hall stage on March 18, 1990, an aura of history pervades America’s most renowned concert hall. On this occasion, the two sopranos – considered among the world’s very best – will go on to create a monument to the Afro-American musical tradition and make a powerful musical statement in an era of conservative rollback in the United States.

An incredible atmosphere of expectation pervades the evening of the concert in March 1990. The tension crackles in all corners of the venue: the big question is whether these two competing divas will manage to sing with and not against one another. Although the spirituals are well established as a concert repertoire, letting loose the full force of classically trained voices on these intimate and simple melodies is considered a risk. Can the spirit of the music, which was created in order to give strength, courage and consolation to people in oppression, be honoured and preserved by these virtuosic voices? Not least because they are singing for an audience poised on outrageously expensive opera seats.

In the end, the two divas take Carnegie Hall by storm, and critics and audiences duly pay tribute: it is a musical festival of charisma, virtuosity, vibrancy. A true show. Jessye Norman dominates the stage with her authentic timbre and a colourful African costume, while coloratura soprano Kathleen Battle is still able to hit the very finest of high notes. As they tackle a repertoire that in their youth marked the beginnings of their musical careers, a magical unity arises between the two contrasting artists.

Peter Gelb, producer of the concert and now general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, remembers the circumstances in which the unique concert event came about. Queen Esther Marrow, founder of the Harlem Gospel Singers, and Jocelyn B Smith, now a resident of Berlin, reiterate the spiritual and political dimensions of this singular evening.

Listening to the concert today a full three decades of disillusionment later, it is against a backdrop of the Black Lives Matter movement that has emerged as a reaction to unceasing police brutality against black people in the US. Having completed their own chapter of the civil rights movement by helping normalise the appearance of non-white singers on the opera stage, these two singers could never have anticipated such a rollback of society.

During the concert, we are treated to gripping duets such as Scandalize my Name as well as classics like Swing low sweet Chariot. In the documentary film, we capture the concert in its musical-historical and political dimensions then and now, and above all try to impart the joy and uniqueness of an authentically Afro-American form of expression and a performance that went on to gain worldwide recognition.