With respect to the documentary’s director/auteur Angelo Bozzolini, it doesn’t do what it says on the tin. If you aim to tell the history of an orchestra, it’s a good idea to tell us how and when it was founded, perhaps a mention of its music directors before 1992, and, were one to be quite frank, why it has only achieved international standing since the arrival of Antonio Pappano in 2005. But there is no mention of Bernardino Mollinari, who directed the orchestra after its founding in 1908 from 1912 to 1944, or Fernando Previtali (1953-73). There are archive clips of Giulini and Bernstein, and brief contributions from Valery Gergiev, Evgeny Kissin, Denis Matsuev, Lang Lang and Lisa Batiashvili, who all say what a lovely orchestra it is.

We are told that the documentary ‘portrays the planning and performance of a great project, it shows how the sound ripens from the first rehearsal to the final applause of a sold-out music hall.’ It doesn’t. There are some vivid rehearsal sequences of Brahms’s Violin Concerto with Pappano and Janine Jansen but these hardly amount to the claim made in the booklet.

Various orchestra members are seen off duty (jogging, bee-keeping) and on tour, explaining how they became musicians, their work ethic, national musical characteristics, and revealing their recurrent nightmares (dreams common to all performing artists). Like the star soloists and the music played in the film, they are not identified by name. There are fine tributes to (and a charming interview with) Yuri Temirkanov, but the centre of attention is always and understandably the orchestra’s genial musical director.

It’s all exceptionally well filmed and edited but what the film reveals about the Italian character beyond what we know already I leave to you to judge. I don’t think we learn much by seeing a solitary young trumpeter playing a mournful solo on top of a snow-capped mountain peak or a double-bass player playing her instrument at the bottom of a swimming pool.