Reiner Moritz is among the most experienced and distinguished of filmed music producers, the ideal figure, you would have thought, to direct a documentary on the history of classical music on television. Alas, those hoping for a chronological survey of the subject will find themselves tossed about like a sweet paper on a windy street. We are presented with what feels like a scrapbook of arbitrarily chosen clips glued into its pages by someone after a long lunch. The narration (a disengaged John Hurt) fails to paper over the joins. There is no discernible narrative flow as we switch from abruptly terminated footage of New Year’s Day concerts in Vienna (2011 and 1963) to an abruptly terminated excerpt of BBC TV’s first broadcast (1936) – poor (uncredited) Adele Dixon barely gets to open her mouth – interpolated in extenso by talking heads (2012) lamenting the present state of music on television or the challenges and rewards of performing on television. Some of the archive footage, to be fair, has rarely been seen (Sargent and Constance Shacklock in 1957, Poulenc playing Satie in 1963, Messiaen rehearsing in 1977) and the comparative clips of Owen Wingrave in 1970 and 2001 are telling, Karajan’s important contribution to the medium less so.

Popular music, despite the film’s title, makes an appearance – all 3'42" of it – represented by The Pink Floyd [sic] and Thelonious Monk (why?). But neither the history nor the technological developments of this fascinating subject are handled anything like adequately. The film is, in short, a mess. It’s a subject for someone to return to – with a bigger budget and a more clear, objective view of it.