Cobos Films BV

During the unique world tour of the RCO celebrating its jubilee in 2013 we meet musicians and concertgoers. The tour develops not just into a journey across the globe but also as a trip to the core of classical music, a quest for the palette of emotions which only classical music can arouse. In 2013 the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra tours the whole world to celebrate its 125th anniversary: 50 concerts spread over 6 continents. Unbounded passion and love for music brings musicians and concert goers together. Documentary maker Heddy Honigmann lands with the orchestra in Buenos Aires, Soweto and St Petersburg and shows how the ensemble succeeds in gaining the hearts of people with a different cultural background. A journey to the kernel and the power of music which knows how to touch unexpected emotions and which helps to overcome the pain of living.

Imperfect Harmony is a film about musical control, explored through a clash between two maestros: avant-garde rebel and Holland’s best-known composer, Louis Andriessen, and chief conductor at Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Mariss Jansons. Half a century ago Andriessen vowed he would never compose for a symphony orchestra again. But, against all the odds and after much deliberation, he has agreed to do so. The occasion is the Concertgebouw Orchestra’s 125th jubilee year concert and the commission is a present from the Concertgebouw to the orchestra.

On 22 July 2011, a bomb attack in the centre of Oslo and a shooting spree on the island Utoya took the lives of 77 people. It was the senseless, brutal act of one man: Anders Breivik. WRONG TIME WRONG PLACE tells the story of 5 individuals who were present then and shows the role of coincidence in this tragedy. A sequence of small, trivial happenings marks the thin line between life and death. Two minutes earlier or later can be of decisive importance. WRONG TIME WRONG PLACE is a film about the bargain with fate. However much one tries to influence fate, in the end coincidence calls the shots.

World-renowned conductor Andris Nelsons, music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, arrives in Amsterdam to conduct Shostakovich’s powerful 5th Symphony before the city’s renowned Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.