Grierson Awards/BFI

This awards ceremony was a welcome reminder of just how many outstanding documentaries are still being produced for British TV. It's not easy of course; docs depend on mavericks to make them, at least that's the impression I got at the BFI yesterday. But mavericks don't always do what TV bosses want - they eschew the safety of formats and often go over budget. But God, do we need them if TV is still going to mean something. On the evidence of last night, it's not TV that's dumbing down but the scheduling.

London Music Masters/Jennifer Pike

I've been doing a tiny bit of filming for London Music Masters, a charity that helps kick start the careers of young professional violinists. One beneficiary has been Jennifer Pike who yesterday presented an afternoon concert at the Wigmore Hall. Charming, especially the Brahms sonata that was full of amazingly lush, almost jazzy chords that really took me by surprise.
But by far and away the best part of LMM's remit is its work in schools via the Bridge Project. With their financial support violin tuition is taught to primary children who wouldn't normally have the means to learn an instrument. I've seen similar programmes at other schools and the results have always been very impressive. As well as acquiring musical skills, confidence, concentration and communication levels also improve. What other subject does this?

ETO/MusBook TV

Please take a look at the new MusBook tv page. http://www.musbook.com/tv/

It's still work in progress but we're kinda getting there. Up this week is a promo I recently shot for English Touring Opera. It's just started its Handelfest tour around the UK, an ambitious project that celebrates Handel's operatic legacy as part of the 250th anniversary of his death. Lead by director and self confessed Handel nut, James Conway, the ETO have bravely incorporated a number of lesser known works into the mix - Teseo and Tolomeo to name two. Definitely worth a look especially if you're a bit Messiah-ed out and keen to discover another side of Handel.

Alex: A Passion For Life/Channel 4

A rare Channel 4 foray into the world of classical music this time pegged to the moving story of Alex Stobbs. Now a choral scholar at Cambridge University this documentary witnessed Stobbs on-going battle with his debilitating cystic fibrosis while attempting to pull off a performance of Bach's mammoth St Matthew Passion. His enthusiasm for conducting has probably done more for his day to day survival than any thing else. It was especially painful then to see his confidence knocked at the start of a rehearsal after the leader asked him to give a clearer beat. Thankfully he quickly recovered.

Anyway, a nice film about the power of music and one man's exceptional determination to do the thing he loves despite the odds. One slightly jarring thing was to hear the beautiful Bach interspersed with rather banal library music throughout. A strange juxtaposition which kind of watered-down the special quality of Bach's music. Much better to have ditched the wall-paper and let the Bach really sock home as and when it occured.

Conductors

I see conductors have been getting a bit of a kicking in the Guardian today. They're an easy target, I suppose the musical equivalent of a cabinet minister. And it's true, quite a lot of them are paid a ludicrous amount of money. But I'm not sure they're as reviled by orchestral musicians as the article suggests. A friend of mine plays in the RPO and despite their gruelling schedule he loves the job primarily because he gets the chance to work with conductors like Charles Dutoit and Daniele Gatti. If a long-serving rank and file musician can still be inspired by the man (or woman) on the podium then clearly there is still a role for good, well paid, conductors.

Twin Spirits

Sting and wife Trudie Styler star in this affectionate portrayal of the tortured love life between Robert and Clara Schumann. Reading correspondence from the very beginnings of their love affair through to Robert's tragic descent into madness, Sting and Trudie do a pretty good job conveying the frustration and tenderness at the heart of the Schumanns' relationship. The letters are interspersed with Robert's music, sung with gusto by Simon Keenlyside and Rebecca Evans, leaving you in no doubt about his agonised passion for Clara.

It's a lovingly made, if slightly old fashioned, piece of TV. As I understand it, the director John Caird, shot it during an actual performance. I can see the practical reasons for doing this, but in the end it did rather hamper the overall look of the film. The already cramped stage didn't allow much room for cameras to move around which rather constrained Caird's shot selections. These tended to linger an awful lot on Sting and Trudie who at times looked like tongue-tied guests at a dinner party. Another slight distraction was the curious decision to air-brush Styler's face. This is one of the problems, if it is a problem, with High Definition film because it doesn't leave much to the imagination. But then I'd sooner see a few wrinkles than a pink puffy cloud which is what Styler resembled by the end of the film.

Maxwell-Davies Prom/RAH

By far and away the highlight of the evening, Maxwell Davies's new violin concerto was a brilliant evocation of a windswept Orkney (I didn't see the programme notes so if it isn't about that it certainly sounded it) full of swoops, swirls and crashes - all sewn together by Daniel Hope's lyrical, sometimes folky violin that ebbed and flowed through Maxwell Davies's landscape of technicoloured darkness.

It's a pity Sibelius's 5 Symphony that followed contained none of the same drama. Of course it does but this account by Gary Walker glossed over much of the score's detail. Dull.

And here's what I said on the BBC Proms blog
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio3/2009/09/samara-catches-up-with-a-perfo.shtml