Christopher Nupen discusses his latest documentary, Paganini’s Daemon: A Most Enduring Legend.

The first thing to say about our Paganini film, which is released on DVD this week, is that it was shot and lit by an Aussie cameraman — David Findlay. David has lit almost all of my films, ever since we first met on March 10, 1966, on the first day’s shoot of my first film.

We made a film together for the BBC about my friends Vladimir Ashkenazy and Daniel Barenboim: a film which presented them to the television public for the first time. It was shot in three days and edited in three weeks.

We have worked together ever since because I have never seen a lighting cameraman do better. His lighting, his composition and his camera work show gifts of the highest order; they bear witness to a glorious artistic sensibility — and endless hard work, invested in polishing those gifts.

The prizes came, not because the film is so well made, but because it brought an exuberance into music programming that had not been seen before. Picking up the spirit of the time (and the new equipment) and feeding on the ebullience of our...