Best movies like Crescendo

The daughter of a struggling musician forms a symphony orchestra made up of his unemployed friends and through persistence, charm and a few misunderstandings, is able to get Leopold Stokowski to lead them in a concert that leads to a radio contract.

Bugs conducts the Warner Brothers Symphony in Franz von Suppé's "Morning, Noon, and Night in Vienna" while reacting to a bothersome fly.

In the early 1960s two artistic giants, conductor Herbert von Karajan and director Franco Zeffirelli, joined forces to create this milestone production of Puccini’s masterpiece at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala. Filmed in that legendary opera house in 1965, with Zeffireli himself directing for the cameras, this “Bohème” has been acclaimed universally for its unique theatrical impact and visual splendour. Starring the young Mirella Freni in her carreer-making performance. – For the first time the full dimension of opera on film.

A young Irishwoman comes to the United States to live and work with her mother as a cleaning lady at Carnegie Hall. She becomes attached to the place as the people she meets there gradually shape her life. The film also includes a variety of performances from some of the foremost musical artists of the times: conductors Bruno Walter & Leopold Stokowski, solists Arthur Rubinstein & Jascha Haifetz, singers Lily Pons & Jan Peerce and bandleader Vaughn Monroe among many others.

Violinist Danielle Turner returns to her hometown for her final show of the tour. While home she sets out to repair her relationship with her sister, Heidi, but Danielle’s dream boyfriend, James the Conductor of the Orchestra, has a dangerous and obsessive wife, who is waiting to extract her vengeance on Danielle.

Walt Disney's timeless masterpiece is an extravaganza of sight and sound! See the music come to life, hear the pictures burst into song and experience the excitement that is Fantasia over and over again.

One of the most spectacular and renowned conductors of the 1930s, Wilhelm Furtwangler's reputation rivaled that of Toscanini's. After the war, he was investigated as part of the Allies' de-Nazification programme. In the bombed-out Berlin of the immediate post-war period, the Allies slowly bring law and order to bear on an occupied Germany. An American major is given the Furtwangler file, and is told to find everything he can and to prosecute the man ruthlessly. Tough and hard-nosed, Major Steve Arnold sets out to investigate a world of which he knows nothing.

A win on the football pools in postwar Britain changes lives. A happy family is turned into an unhappy argumentative lot until it is discovered the coupon apparently didn't get posted. A mild-mannered clerk worries about how to tell his overbearing boss he is quitting. A double-bass player finds life without the orchestra lacks something. The lure of the big money even turns some people into criminals, as when a coupon checker is tempted by his night-club singer girlfriend to cheat the company. Written by Jeremy Perkins

A jealous stump threatens two trees that are in love by starting a forest fire. When the rain comes and puts out the fire the forest revives and celebrates the wedding.

An orchestra assembles for a rehearsal in an ancient chapel under the inquisitive eyes of a TV documentary crew, but an uprising breaks out.

Musical film about the trials and tribulations of an idealistic drama teacher as she tries to put on the end of year show.

A group of travellers, each with a personal problem that they want to hide, arrive at a mysterious Welsh country inn. There is a certain strangeness in the air as they are greeted by the innkeeper and his daughter. Why are all the newspapers a year old? And why doesn't Gwyneth seem to cast a shadow?

Bugs Bunny vs. a famous opera singer at the Hollywood Bowl.

Making Overtures: The Story of a Community Orchestra is a 1985 Canadian short documentary film directed by Larry Weinstein. A small-town orchestra and choir are the focus of this loving and humorous portrait. The film unveils the musician's passion for performance, their imaginative fund-raising methods and collective will to survive. This film includes a colorful cast of characters ranging from students to seniors, from business executives to hog farmers. Holding it all together is the outrageously flamboyant conductor who inspires everyone with his endless enthusiasm. Making Overtures reveals how an entire community us enriched by its orchestra. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

Tonight We Sing is a 1953 musical biopic film, directed by Mitchell Leisen, based on the life and career of the celebrated impresario Sol Hurok. It stars David Wayne and Ezio Pinza.

Emma, a lesbian conductor, is confronted with a toxic relationship with her father.

After the death of her father and the loss of his fortune, Selina takes a job teaching school in the Dutch community of New Holland. She stays with the Pools and teaches young Roelf piano. He has a crush on her, but it is Pervus she marries. Dirk is their only child. After a few years Pervus dies. With a young child and only the farm, Selina begins her quest to grow high quality vegetables. She wants more for Dirk and guides his life until he graduates from college as an architect. As her vegetable label prospers, she sees Paula control Dirk's life as he moves away from creating and into sales, which is not where he wants to go.

A husband and wife act are hoping to find success on Broadway.

A young female journalist in London falls in love with a married orchestra conductor.

In December of 1944, Lionel Evans, an internationally renowned American conductor, is on a USO tour with his 70-piece symphony orchestra in newly-liberated Belgium. While fleeing from a German counterattack, Evans and his orchestra members are captured by a Panzer division and taken to an old chateau in Luxembourg. Despite orders to execute every prisoner, General Schiller, an avid music lover, commands Evans to give a private concert for him.

Composer Johann Strauss risks his marriage over his infatuation with a beautiful singer.

When a gold digger starts to get a little old to ply her trade, she teaches a younger woman all her tricks.

American conductor John Meredith and his manager, Hank Higgins, go to Russia shortly before the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Meredith falls in love with beautiful Soviet pianist Nadya Stepanova while they travel throughout the country on a 40-city tour. Along the way, they see happy, healthy, smiling, free Soviet citizens, blissfully living the Communist dream. This bliss is destroyed by the German invasion.

An escaped lunatic, a mysterious swami, and various lovers all have designs on a famous opera singer.

One of the first US born conductors to receive worldwide fame, Leonard Bernstein is an exceptional composer and certainly not only due to The West Side Story. Instead of concentrating exclusively on his most famous work, Thomas von Steinaecker sets out to paint a complete picture of Bernstein. Thus, the documentary focusses on the American’s less known later works and on three compositions in particular: his Mass, the musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the great final opera A Quiet Place. The film paints a vivid picture of the multitalented Bernstein, struggling with his role as composer and conductor, tackling the tension between successes and flops, between the politics of his time and his own liberal humanitarian claim. It looks back on Bernstein’s major achievements, such as his acclaimed conducting of Mahler and his involvement in the Young People’s Concerts, and it shows Bernstein’s work with young aspiring musicians as well as his political commitment.

An account of the life and work of controversial German orchestra conductor Herbert von Karajan (1908-89), celebrated as one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century.

When a woman steps onto the conductor's podium, she is always one of the first: the first to lead a world-class orchestra, the first to conduct the closing night of London's Proms, the first to win the German Conductor Prize. It seems as though the world of orchestral conducting might finally be ready to change its attitudes toward female conductors.

August 1942: Amidst the unimaginable suffering inflicted during the blockade of Leningrad by the German Wehrmacht, an orchestra director was given an almost impossible task: to stage the premiere of Dimitri Shostakovitch's "Leningrad Symphony". The performance became a symbol of the brief triumph of culture over the barbarism of war.

The Italian Character: a film within music and about music. The Italian character is the story of one of the most renowned orchestras in the world, enriched by archive material of the last thirty years about the great conductors who have been performing on the most famous rostrum in Rome.

Documentary on conductor Herbert van Karajan, focusing on his early adoption of audio and video recording technology and his impetus to make use of it to preserve his musical legacy for future generations.

On a distant island a man waits. Robbed of his position, power and wealth, his enemies have left him in isolation. But this is no ordinary man, and this no ordinary island. Prospero is a magician, able to control the very elements and bend nature to his will. When a sail appears on the horizon, he reaches out across the ocean to the ship that carries the men who wronged him. Creating a vast magical storm he wrecks the ship and washes his enemies up on the shore. When they wake they find themselves lost on a fantastical island where nothing is as it seems.

“The Conductor” is the first feature length film created entirely by the artist Jeremy Mann. It is a story told through a dreamscape metaphor of the eternal artistic struggle.

A concert-film using innovative cinematic techniques to set music to images. As conductor Herbert von Karajan didn't like the experimental style, he had the film re-edited severely before release.

Scattergood Baines, Coldriver's most popular citizen, neighborly counselor and sly old fox, entices a Broadway producer to Coldriver to see the gay musical extravaganza Baines is staging for the benefit of the U.S.O. He is also promoting the singing career of his latest local protégé, Betty Palmer. There are a few problems but the Sage of Coldriver manages to keep pulling the right strings.