BBC: The Genius of Mozart (2004)

The story begins with the composer's father Leopold with whom Mozart conducted a passionate and tortured correspondence. It is Leopold who knows Mozart's secrets. And there is another voice: that of the music itself. Music is the key to unlocking the emotions of Mozart, starting in this film with the great piano works. Without this key, how can we ever understand the emotions that gave birth to some of the most beautiful sounds the world has ever heard? The first great phase of Mozart's brief life was that of the travelling child prodigy - gifted as a performer and writer of music - who grew into the genius who, working within the restrictions of his time, began to rewrite the musical rules.But there was another facet to Mozart - the adult thinker aware of the bigger picture, passionately attached to the progressive values of the Enlightenment - impressively well-read, a speaker of most European languages (even a little English), an Austrian Catholic, a Freemason and above all a composer at the height of his formidable powers, determined to succeed in the most difficult and lucrative area of all - Opera. Towards the end of his life, Mozart mastered the language of instrumental and orchestral writing - and how both love and loss provoked in him an extraordinary burst of creativity. This was essentially crystallised in three ambitious works that changed the future course of music: his last, great trilogy of symphonies - numbers 39, 40 and 41 - which he wrote in six short weeks.