Originally screened in November 1962 as the 100th programme within the BBC’s ground-breaking Monitor series, Ken Russell’s ‘Elgar’ has lost none of its power to entrance, stimulate and provoke. Not having seen the film for a good many years, I was bowled over afresh by the perfect marriage of music and pictures, especially during the scenes shot on and around Elgar’s beloved Malvern Hills (against which the purposeful stride of the Introduction and Allegro for strings acts as a marvellously apt backdrop). Any minor factual anomalies along the way pale into insignificance when set against film-making of such poetry, wit and imagination, evocatively photographed by Ken Higgins and superbly edited by Allan Tyrer. Pioneering, too, in as much as it was made at a time when Elgar’s reputation was at a comparatively low ebb; what’s more, the scenes early on with the Powick asylum band and Elgar and his friends playing as a wind quintet resurrect music unperformed since it had been penned it nearly 90 years previously.

Indelible images come thick and fast: Elgar’s burgeoning love for Alice is exquisitely conveyed by the delicate interplay of four hands on the keyboard performing the piano-duet arrangement of Salut d’amour; the jaw-dropping transformation of Worcestershire Beacon into the cross-topped hill at Calvary (to the strains of ‘Sanctus fortis’ from Gerontius); or the composer on his bicycle rushing through the dappled woodland and heather. Russell’s assembled cast tackle their non-speaking roles with unerring dedication, and Huw Wheldon delivers his own cogent narration with striking eloquence. Like Russell’s later ‘Delius: Song of Summer’ (11/01), the result is an undisputed classic of British television.

Extras include a commentary featuring the director in conversation with author and annotator Michael Kennedy. The latter also introduces rare home-film footage of the Three Choirs Festivals of 1929, 1930 and 1932 (during which we also see Elgar relaxing in the garden of Marl Bank, his last home in Worcester), as well as a November 1931 Pathétone movie-reel of the 74-year-old composer conducting the LSO in Land of Hope and Glory the day after the official opening of Abbey Road studios (‘Please play this tune as though you’ve never heard it before’). Not to be missed.