The Sound and the Fury: A Century of Music is the BBC's stab at presenting 20th century classical music in its historical and social context. In just three hours.
Obviously, the programme makers have had to be selective, and a US bias in both the music explored and the talking heads who explain it ultimately make the series less of a historical overview than an attempt to contextualise contemporary American art music, in the fashion of Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise
Nevertheless it's worth seeing, at the very least for the amount of rare footage dug up. Stravinsky discussing The Rite of Spring and Gershwin playing tennis with Schoenberg are amongst the early highlights.
The first of three episodes was sneaked out last night - watch here if you missed out.
