Yes, it's Daniel Harding, with Michelle Delunsch, Marlin Miller and Marie McLaughlin, in a rather clinically stylish production by Luc Bondy: it has some great moments, but I don't think it's the best I've ever seen: that Aberdeen International Youth Festival production by Gidon Saks I've talked about before achieved so much more with no set at all, and a very convincing cusp-of-puberty Miles actually played by a woman, although I was never aware of the fact at the time.  It was quite obvious that the children were no longer innocent, and the tension between that and the Governess' conviction that they still were applied masses more tension.... 

One of the greatest directors, period, 'tisnow.... One of the few videos I have that's here rather than in storage is a South Bank Show about his production of Carmen - a shortened version with reduced orchestration and a cast of about half-a-dozen, which I must transfer to DVD in full (part of it has already turned up coupled to the other treasure on that tape). Back to Turn of the Screw: I'm hoping to find my tape of the TV broadcast of the Scottish Opera/McVicar production from the mid-90s next time I can get into the second store - by far the best televised production I've seen, if I can trust my memory.

I'm going to see "O Thou Transcendent: The Life of Ralph Vaughan Williams" on the big screen at the British Film Institute on Wednesday.  It's more me than their forthcoming Clint Eastwood season, frankly.

I'll be glad to check at which churches RVW was organist.

I posted this on the Ursula Vaughan Williams thread last night on return from the South Bank, where I saw O Thou Transcenent on the Big Screen.  What I said was this:

I was deeply moved and must read Michael Thing's biography and get to know the Sea Synphony, in IGI's perferred version.*

I can't remember when I was last at the flicks and (some) of the audience applauded at the end.  Followed by the crashingly insensitive choice by the BFI of Eric Flaming Coates' Knightsbridge March as canned music as we left.

Sex, religion and a bit of politics.  All human life was here.

Also the contrast between RVW as life affirming ecstatic visionary (in the left hand corner Rowan Williams) or bleak nihilist (in the left hand corner Stephen Johnson and M A Turnage).

Johnson was extremely cogent - I liked his description of the finale to the 6th as unresolved Amens.

Maybe we can only realise the wonder of life if we have stared into the abyss.

Ursula had the last word, looking much older than in previous clips, and identified in the subtitle by the one word Ursula, she said he was a lovely man, and I love him. That's how it ended, in the present tense.

* Done downloaded from itunes.  Not ideal sound and no words, but it was to hand.

Big thank you for that, IGI, as ever.  How you can bring yourself to log on here in the middle of moving is quite beyond me.  Thanks a lot.

St Barnabas' South Norwood where RVW was briefly organist is now flats, I noticed.

Re. Oh Thou Transcendent, Tony Palmer is a guest on Iain Burnside's Radio 3 show on Sunday morning.