Documentaries about classical music are valuable in at least two ways — as routes into a musical world for newcomers, and as insights behind the scenes of the more formal concerts and recordings for old hands. Three documentaries, all interesting in their different ways, illustrate the phenomenon.
The Art of Chopin was produced for the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth last year and is a sort of potted biography illustrated by clips from high-profile modern performances. Thus you see in action Yvgeny Kissin, Krystian Zimerman, Martha Argerich, Maurizio Pollini, Yuja Wang, Bella Davidovich, Ivo Pogorelich, Murray Perahia, and more, all looking very young, plus Arthur Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz and Sviatoslav Richter. It’s a little bit of a supermarket trolley, you feel, but marvelous for all that.
Continuity is provided by the American pianist Garrick Ohlsson, who won the International Frederic Chopin Piano Competition in 1970. He explains how Chopin expanded the possibilities of the piano, and at the same time combined a deep-rooted classicism with the new Romantic sensibility. A bonus disc has Ohlsson playing the two Chopin piano concertos with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra.
More memorable, however, is a film by Bruno Monsaingeon about another famous Polish musical figure, the pianist Piotr Anderszewski. You see him crossing Poland by train in winter, with a piano on board. He talks and plays, and in the process you get some way into the mind of this most introspective of artists.
Mozart turns out to represent his pinnacle of sensibility, and in one instance resolves for him a philosophical paradox. How could anyone express such profound feeling with such lightness of touch, he asks. And to hear him singing passages from The Magic Flute while playing a piano version of the orchestral accompaniment, exploding into ecstasies of wonder as he does so, is thrilling indeed.
But Anderszewski is anyway big on paradoxes. Poland is the Slavic soul in an impeccably cut French suit. The more you master something, the freer you are. And a barcarolle by Chopin is like a drunken gondolier, yet so beautiful (though elsewhere he proclaims he can only play Chopin in small doses).
This DVD, titled Piotr Anderszewski: Unquiet Traveler, is full of memorable phrases (plus phrases you sometimes think are meant to be memorable).
You see Anderszewski rehearsing a concerto by Brahms — once his favorite composer, and maybe he’ll come back to him one day — with Gustavo Dudamel. But Mozart! Ah, Mozart is life itself.
Thirdly there’s a very interesting DVD from Medici Arts about the Wagnerian tenor Max Lorenz. It’s called Wagner’s Mastersinger, Hitler’s Siegfried and centers on the 1930s in Bayreuth, the theater Wagner had built specifically for the performance of his operas. The artists who worked there were a mixed lot and included a fair share of gays and men and women of Jewish descent. They didn’t display much interest in politics, but the problem was that Hitler, unlike almost all his fellow Nazis, was a major fan, and attended performances rather frequently.
The leading Wagnerian tenor there was Max Lorenz, but his wife was Jewish and he was, in addition, something of a closet gay. Both these things could have spelled disaster under the Nazis, and indeed Lorenz was put on trial on one occasion for homosexual activity. On another, the SS arrived at their home to question his wife. But such was Lorenz’s celebrity, and Hitler’s enthusiasm for Wagnerian opera, that Hitler ordered the gay-related trail to be stopped, and Goering told the SS by phone from Berlin to leave Lorenz’s wife alone.
This DVD contains some wonderful clips. You see Lorenz being interviewed late in life (he died in 1975), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau saying that all modern tenors were “hot air” by comparison, and, best of all, you see Lorenz and Frida Leider singing part of the love duet from the second scene of Gotterdammerung. This is intensely exciting, and you appreciate immediately why Fischer-Dieskau and Rene Kollo today value him so highly, referring to his voice as “a clarion,” his habit of attacking notes “like a lion,” and so on.
You also learn that Lorenz’s relationship with his wife was genuinely loving, that he protected many Jewish colleagues from the Nazis, and that on some occasions he actually stood up to Hitler, and won, and that in later life he was the tutor of the American tenor James King.
The cycle of Shostakovich symphonies currently being issued on CD by Naxos is attracting widespread attention. They’re from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic under the young Russian conductor Vasily Petrenko, and their version of the Eighth Symphony has just won the symphonic category of this year’s International Classical Music Awards. At US$7.50, this item should be snapped up immediately.
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
Despite the intense sunshine, we were hardly breaking a sweat as we cruised along the flat, dedicated bike lane, well protected from the heat by a canopy of trees. The electric assist on the bikes likely made a difference, too. Far removed from the bustle and noise of the Taichung traffic, we admired the serene rural scenery, making our way over rivers, alongside rice paddies and through pear orchards. Our route for the day covered two bike paths that connect in Fengyuan District (豐原) and are best done together. The Hou-Feng Bike Path (后豐鐵馬道) runs southward from Houli District (后里) while the
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Mirror mirror on the wall, what’s the fairest Disney live-action remake of them all? Wait, mirror. Hold on a second. Maybe choosing from the likes of Alice in Wonderland (2010), Mulan (2020) and The Lion King (2019) isn’t such a good idea. Mirror, on second thought, what’s on Netflix? Even the most devoted fans would have to acknowledge that these have not been the most illustrious illustrations of Disney magic. At their best (Pete’s Dragon? Cinderella?) they breathe life into old classics that could use a little updating. At their worst, well, blue Will Smith. Given the rapacious rate of remakes in modern
RSS