Norman Lebrecht

A man searches for his childhood best friend, a Polish violin prodigy orphaned in the Holocaust, who vanished decades before on the night of his first public performance.

Yo-Yo Ma narrates a documentary about the remarkable cellist Jacqueline du Pré, whose life and career were cut short by multiple sclerosis.

The stories of Jewish cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who survived Auschwitz, and of star conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, who worked with the Nazis, provide insight. The film centers around two people who represent musical culture during the Third Reich - albeit in very different ways. Wilhelm Furtwängler was a star conductor; Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the cellist of the infamous Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz. Both shared a love for the classical German music.

The struggles of the world’s Jewish people over the course of several centuries are expressed and explored through the music they inspired in this documentary from the BBC and Opus Arte. We Want the Light brings together harrowing tales from Holocaust survivors with performances of music by such legendary composers as Mahler, Bach, Mendelssohn, and Brahms. Interviews with: Alice Sommer Herz, Jacques Stroumsa, Evgeny Kissin, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Zubin Mehta, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Toby Perlman, Michael Haas, Elyakim Ha’etzni, Norman Lebrecht, Margaret Brearley, Paul Lawrence Rose, Daniel Barenboim, Yirmiyahu Yovel, Uri Toeplitz & Anita Lasker-Wallfisch. Featuring: Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, Cologne Cathedral Children’s Choir & Cologne Opera Chorus.

Documentary about the state of the conducting world in the 1990s. Broadcast as part of the BBC OMNIBUS strand of documentaries.

A documentary featuring the making of the July 1987 recording of Gustav Mahler's Second Symphony conducted by magazine publisher Gilbert Kaplan, who developed a passion for this piece of music at an early age and has conducted the symphony with major orchestras.