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A major glossy magazine that used to be devoted largely to music -- but long ago fell under the spell of Hollywood celebrity -- still continues to cover music, specializing in listicles that seem designed mainly to provoke ire in those who care more about music than does said magazine (named after a classic blues song, in case you can't guess without a hint). This summer it unleashed a list of songs that, with that aging publication's ironically weak sense of history, managed to overlook the vast majority of the history of song. To put it bluntly, if you're claiming to discuss the best songs ever written and you don't even mention Franz Schubert, you're an ignoramus. My ire over this blinkered attitude towards music history festered for months, so I finally decided to do something about it by writing about some of the timeless songs omitted in the aforementioned myopic listicle.

Janice Watson/Dagmar Pecková/Peter Auty/Peter Rose/London Philharmonic Choir & Orchestra/Neeme Järvi Antonin Dvořák: Stabat Mater, Op. 58 (Lpo) Dvořák’s Stabat Mater was born out of personal tragedy; its inspiration, if that is really the right word in the circumstances, was the death of all three of the composer’s children. This beautiful, heartfelt masterpiece is not heard as frequently in concert as it should be, but has been very well served on recordings.

Before Järvi’s arrived, I had three: the classic 1976 Deutsche Grammophon recording by Rafael Kubelik, Giuseppe Sinopoli’s lush 2000 concert recording (also on Dg), and Telarc’s last recording of the choral conductor par excellence, Robert Shaw. All are superb, but Järvi offers such a different yet compelling take on the piece that this recording, from an October 9, 2010 concert at London’s Royal Festival Hall, can also be highly recommended.

One thing that sets it apart is that,...

When Beethoven died on 26 March 1827 in Vienna, he had been ill for over three months, in which time he completed no compositions. It was the culmination of a long string of illnesses; his work was seriously interrupted in 1811, 1812, 1816-17, 1821, 1825, and from December 1826 to his death. (His extensive meddling in the lives of various relatives had also interfered with his musical productivity.)

We ran an Anniversaries piece for Beethoven's birthday in 2010 that looked at recordings of his symphonies. Now, to mark the anniversary of his death on, we look at his piano sonatas. Beethoven transformed the sonata nearly as much as the symphony, his 32 canonical works (which doesn't include the early C major sonata and F major sonatina without opus numbers or the three "Elector" sonatas Wo47) in the form varying greatly and achieving, especially in the last five or six, an epic, questing quality that's highly personal.

But even...

We've all been saddened this week by the death of Ken Russell, the film-maker everyone loved except, it seems, for the UK film industry. I first became aware of his work when I was a piano-obsessed teenager. Back then, though my parents were perfectly happy for me to go through piano exams galore and to listen to Liszt as long as it was played by Alfred Brendel, they would not – absolutely never, ever – let me see Lisztomania.

Even as I carry on updating the entry on Doc NYC, there's quite a lot besides going on in the field of nonfiction filmmaking. Last week, both the International Documentary Association and Cinema Eye Honors announced the nominations for their respective awards, and yesterday, Cinema Eye unveiled "a new, periodic award called the Hell Yeah Prize, to be given to filmmakers who have created works of incredible craft and artistry that also have significant, real-world impact. The inaugural Hell Yeah Prize will be presented to Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky for their HBO Documentary Films trilogy Paradise Lost, which played a critical role in securing the release from prison of the wrongly prosecuted and convicted West Memphis Three."

And the other day, when I pointed to Dennis Lim's review of Travis Wilkerson's An Injury to One (2002), "one of American independent cinema's great achievements of the past decade, just issued on DVD by Icarus Films,...

Title: Pianomania Directed By: Lilian Franck, Robert Cibis Written By: Lilian Franck, Robert Cibis Cast: Stephan Knupfer, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Lang Lang, Alfred Brendel, Till Fellner, Julius Drake, Ian Bostridge, Rudolf Buchbinder Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 10/20/11 Opens: November 4, 2011 There are pharmacists who do nothing all day behind the counters of Duane-Reade and Walgreen’s and Rite Aid but read the prescriptions, take some good guesses from the physicians’ handwriting on the drugs to be issued, and put the pills into an automatic counter. Then there are pharmacists hired by Gsk and Squibb and the other biggies who do intensive research into new products, racing for the cures. Similarly,...

From the epic to the intimate, classical music has been at the centre of some of the most ambitious films at the Cannes festival

I've been especially interested this year in the striking use of classical music in scores for films in contention for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival.

Particularly brilliant, I thought, was the use of a single phrase of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto in Luc Dardennes's The Kid With a Bike. The film, which pleased me enormously for the economy, even severity, of its storytelling and editing, was similarly sparing with its music. The same, fleeting four bars – which lingered in the brain unresolved – were used on several occasions, and it was the only music in the film. It became an elegant punctuation mark, but because it hovered, always arrested in its motion, it helped lend the film an atmosphere of quiet tension. It was...

Set the Piano Stool on Fire, already picking up an unofficial following and due to get its public premiere at the Curzon Mayfair next month, is one of the most fascinating films about pianists ever made. One of its protagonists is caught in the act of bowing out (at 80) after a long career as (arguably) Beethoven's leading exponent, the other is coming in at 18: the tutorial relationship between Alfred Brendel and Kit Armstrong is fraught with significance.

[Our thanks to Frako Loden for offering her perspectives on these three entries at Berlin & Beyond 2010.]

Pianomania (Austria/Germany: Lilian Franck / Robert Cibis, 2009) screened at the 2010 San Francisco International Film Festival [where it won the Golden Gate Documentary Award] and plays at Berlin & Beyond on October 26. For those who love piano and the mysteries of sound, this documentary will be a treat. It's also a 90-minute-long commercial for Steinway & Sons, being a profile of its master tuner Stefan Knüpfer and a career that matches the exacting artistry and high professional standards of the pianists he serves--big names like Lang Lang, Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Alfred Brendel. Knüpfer is remarkably patient and diplomatic with the extremely minute, sometimes incomprehensible demands of the artist preparing for a big performance at a major concert hall. He tunes the piano also to accommodate the hall's acoustics, the recording of the performance and the instrument's own peculiarities. The problem always arises of how to verbalize a problem with sound, how to express in words something that one hears or even can't hear.

Opera star Joyce Didonato was a double winner at the 2010 Gramophone Awards in London on Friday, October 1, taking home the prestigious Artist of the Year title. The American mezzo-soprano beat the likes of Placido Domingo and Lang Lang in an online fan vote to scoop the top prize, while she also walked away with the award for best recital for her rendition of Rossini's "Colbran, the Muse".

Argentine cello player Sol Gabetta was named Young Artist of the Year, while Dutch star Andre Rieu was awarded the Specialist Classical Chart title. British group The Cardinall's Musick landed the Recording of the Year accolade for its take on William Byrd's "Infelix Ego", and celebrated Austrian pianist Alfred Brendel was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement award.

Joyce Didonato began her professional career in the 1998-1999 season singing with several regional opera companies in the United States. She most notably appeared as the main heroine,...

At the centre of Pianomania is a fair-haired, mild-mannered man wearing rimless spectacles who tunes concert pianos in Vienna for Steinway. Movies being what they are today, you expect some 15 minutes in that this innocuous figure will throw himself in front of a celebrated musician on the stage of the Vienna Kunsthaus, disarm a would-be assassin and turn out to be a retired secret service agent just waiting to be called back to active service. In fact, it's more interesting than that. It's a genuine Austrian documentary subtitled "The Search for the Perfect Sound" about Stephan Knüpfer, a celebrated figure in musical circles, whom we see preparing the pianos for, and working very seriously with, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Alfred Brendel and Lang Lang, and for a little light relief, working on japes with the comic music duo Richard Hyung-ki Joo and Aleksey Igudesman. The directors tell us nothing about Knüpfer's background or career,...

Mother (15)

(Bong Joon-ho, 2009, S Korea) Kim Hye-ja, Won Bin, Jin Ku, Yoon Jae-Moon. 130 mins

After his mutant tadpole movie The Host, Bong brings us another Korean monster: a middle-aged herbalist with a will of steel and some serious overprotection issues. Her simple-minded son has been fitted up for a schoolgirl's murder, and in a society of inept cops, exploitative lawyers and generally corrupt townsfolk, only mommie dearest believes he's innocent – and sets out to prove it. It's a mystery thriller to make Hitchcock proud, and a delectably warped parable of blood running thicker than water.

The Expendables (15)

(Sylvester Stallone, 2010, Us) Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li. 104 mins

Now that the 80s beefcake reunion has actually happened, does anyone care? Probably enough to make this a guilty-pleasure night out, and that's all it really asks for. With a last surge of testosterone coursing through their wrinkled physiques, our senior...

A fine documentary about Stefan Knüpfer, not so much a piano tuner as a creative collaborator. By Peter Bradshaw

In keeping with its subject matter, this high-minded documentary from Robert Cibis and Lilian Franck has elegance and exactitude. It is about an almost impossibly rarefied world, and yet with austere charm, and a very likable central figure, the film helps us to understand something of this world. Stefan Knüpfer is a piano tuner employed by Steinway to be a specialist point-man or liaison officer working directly with soloists who are preparing for important concerts or recordings. Knüpfer is no mere tuner: he is a creative   collaborator, a person who must be prepared to engage in the most demanding, in-depth discussions with the musician about the tone and timbre of sound required from the instrument for each piece, to feel instinctively what the maestro wants, and then provide it. It means...

Celebrated British playwright Tom Stoppard has been awarded Japan's top arts prize, taking home a cheque worth $158,000 (£105,335).

The star was named among five recipients of the Praemium Imperiale, alongside Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto, Austrian pianist Alfred Brendel and fellow Brits Zaha Hadid, an architect, and sculptor Richard Long.

The prestigious accolade, which is supported by the country's imperial family, is one of the most lucrative honours in the arts world.

Stoppard is known for his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, as well as movie screenplays for films like the Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love.

He will be presented with the award by Prince Hitachi, brother of Japan's Emperor Akihito, in a ceremony in Tokyo on 22 October.