The portrait film, Vladimir Ashkenazy: The Vital Juices Are Russian , includes sequences with Itzhak Perlman, Daniel Barenboim, Edo de Waart and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. It features music by Beethoven, Chopin, Csar Franck and Stravinsky.
Vladimir Ashkenazy has had a particular affection for the music of Rachmaninoff throughout his professional life, and his performances have long had the ring both of authenticity and of deep commitment. This is not surprising in a Russian-born and Russian-trained musician of Ashkenazy's stature, but it is worth remembering that for many years after his emigration from the Soviet Union his interest in Russian music was somewhat eclipsed by his concern to master the music of the Western European traditions.
This Christopher Nupen film belongs to a long line of memorable portraits of the great performers. It is the product of a close friendship between a dedicated filmmaker and one of the finest violinists of the twentieth century, and it contains the only portrait film ever made with Nathan Milstein. It was shot in the autumn of the longest career in the history of solo violin playing; seventy-three years lay between Milstein's first appearance with Glazunov conducting and his last recital in the Berwaldhallen in Stockholm in 1986. That legendary recital provides most of the music for this film. Milstein's partner was the French pianist Georges Pludermacher, with whom he had worked for more than twenty years.
Nathan Milstein was an astonishing eighty-two years old at the time of the recital, yet he still played as the grandest of grand masters, and as surely no other violinist has ever played at that age. This film will be of interest to virtually every student of the violin.
Remembering Jacqueline du Pr focuses on her music. The first half is filmed mostly in rehearsal situations where she is at her most revealing and exuberant. The second half features performances at the highest level, including the closing five minutes of the Elgar Cello Concerto in the legendary Philharmonia/Barenboim performance of 1967.
Who was Jacqueline du Pr? focuses on her personality as seen through the people who knew her best. It sets the record straight, corrects some of the more distorted myths and keeps this vibrant personality alive in the world in the way only film can do.
This Christopher Nupen film belongs to a long line of memorable portraits of the great performers. It is the product of a close friendship between a dedicated filmmaker and one of the finest violinists of the twentieth century, and it contains the only portrait film ever made with Nathan Milstein. It was shot in the autumn of the longest career in the history of solo violin playing; seventy-three years lay between Milstein’s first appearance with Glazunov conducting and his last recital in the Berwaldhallen in Stockholm in 1986. That legendary recital provides most of the music for this film. Milstein's partner was the French pianist Georges Pludermacher, with whom he had worked for more than twenty years.
Nathan Milstein was an astonishing eighty-two years old at the time of the recital, yet he still played as the grandest of grand masters, and as surely no other violinist has ever played at that age. This film will be of interest to virtually every student of the violin.
This Christopher Nupen film belongs to a long line of memorable portraits of the great performers. It is the product of a close friendship between a dedicated filmmaker and one of the finest violinists of the twentieth century, and it contains the only portrait film ever made with Nathan Milstein. It was shot in the autumn of the longest career in the history of solo violin playing; seventy-three years lay between Milstein?EUR(TM)s first appearance with Glazunov conducting and his last recital in the Berwaldhallen in Stockholm in 1986. That legendary recital provides most of the music for this film. Milstein's partner was the French pianist Georges Pludermacher, with whom he had worked for more than twenty years.
Nathan Milstein was an astonishing eighty-two years old at the time of the recital, yet he still played as the grandest of grand masters, and as surely no other violinist has ever played at that age. This film will be of interest to virtually every student of the violin.
This video contains a Christopher Nupen film about the most charismatic performer in the entire history of Western classical music ?EUR" also the most talked about, the most controversial, the most famous and the most successful classical soloist that the world of music has ever known.
The story is astonishing, exciting, wildly unusual and, at the end, deeply touching. It is one of the most extraordinary tales in the history of music and it is told with all the Nupen finesse and commitment that have won him DVD of the Year Award four times in the past six years.
In the recording, Christopher Nupen looks at the legend and the strange man who created it with his dazzling combination of technical brilliance, supreme showmanship, Italian melody and unbridled manipulative skill ?EUR" a man whose extraordinary personality unsettled even the most sophisticated and educated minds and provoked wildly contradictory opinions.
It presents Paganini's music, shot and edited in the style developed by Christopher Nupen and his colleagues for their prize winning DVDs about Sibelius, Schubert and Tchaikovsky and combines it with extracts from Paganini's letters and quotations from both his admirers and his many detractors.
This video is an intimate account of the formative years in the life and career of one of the leading violinists of our time.
Itzhak Perlman fell in love with the sounds of the violin at the age of 3 1/2, but he contracted polio a few months later and was soon to learn that it would be impossible, with his handicap, for him to pursue a high-level career as a violinist.
Not only has he succeeded in doing what the world thought quite impossible, but he has done it on a level that few have matched. It is a heartening story of the spectacular triumph of talent, determination, character and tenacity over seemingly insurmountable odds, producing truly glorious results along the way.
In an introduction which lasts about 25 minutes, Ashkenazy introduces Rachmaninov's Corelli Variations with examples at the keyboard and with many revealing touches about his own attitude to Rachmaninoff and to this music. The film ends with a complete performance of the variations recorded at a public concert which Ashkenazy gave in Lugano, Switzerland. There are few, if any, pianists on the concert platform today who are able to surpass his mastery of this music.
Tracing the development of an exceptional musical talent from childhood to the beginnings of musical maturity, Karim Said is a lively fellow with a very endearing gift. He is a true musician, similar in some ways to Edwin Fischer or to Karim's mentor, Daniel Barenboim
Born in Amman, Karim studied percussion with his father and piano with Agnes Victorovna Bashir (alumna of the Gnessin School, Moscow). He has been applauded by established musicians and juries in several countries and already won nine international prizes. His distinguishing characteristics are his naturalness, both in his music and his personality, his humour, his intelligence and a total lack of pretence but, above and beyond these things, it is the way in which his music gets through to his audiences and touches people, that sets him apart.
The program seeks to capture all of these qualities and to watch his youthful progress in a story with which a great many people will be able to identify worldwide.
The films follow an artistic journey that was not an easy one. Living through the great turning point in Western music, many of Sibelius' concerns were strikingly similar to those of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Each followed a different path, however, and it is not surprising that their reputations should be caught up in the massive shifts of fashion that characterise the turmoil of twentieth century music.
Christopher Nupen offers an intimate look at what Sibelius himself felt that he was trying to achieve. To quote Nupen: "His music has lasted and I believe that it will continue to last, whatever fashion may do...his voice is inimitable, unmistakable and for me unforgettable. My first encounters with it opened up a whole new world that remains with me."
As with Nupen's films on Respighi, Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky, the orchestra is the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy. They are joined in this film by Elisabeth Sderstrm and Boris Belkin.
The films follow an artistic journey that was not an easy one. Living through the great turning point in Western music, many of Sibelius' concerns were strikingly similar to those of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Each followed a different path, however, and it is not surprising that their reputations should be caught up in the massive shifts of fashion that characterise the turmoil of twentieth century music.
Christopher Nupen offers an intimate look at what Sibelius himself felt that he was trying to achieve. To quote Nupen: "His music has lasted and I believe that it will continue to last, whatever fashion may do...his voice is inimitable, unmistakable and for me unforgettable. My first encounters with it opened up a whole new world that remains with me."
As with Nupen's films on Respighi, Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky, the orchestra is the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy. They are joined in this film by Elisabeth Sderstrm and Boris Belkin.
How many people remain in good shape, both mentally and physically, at the age of 106? The answer of course, is very few but, as I write this on her 106th birthday, Alice Sommer Herz is among those exceptional few.
And how many have the gift of forgiveness? And how many are free of hatred? Gigi Sommer has both of those qualities. I have never met anyone else with her depth of perception and natural wisdom.
She was imprisoned, with her six-year-old son, in the Theresienstadt concentration camp and saw unspeakable atrocities. She lost both her mother and her husband in Nazi death camps but she does not hate her persecutors. That is not because they are anything other than monstrous criminals but because she has the wisdom to know that all hatred hurts the soul of the hater, not the hated and Gigi Sommer's inspiring soul is among the things which she has kept intact and unblemished through her hundred and six years.
She was a pianist of distinction, played more than 100 concerts in the Theresienstadt camp and is in no doubt that music saved both her sanity and her life and the lives of many others in those unimaginable circumstances. She elaborates on this theme in the film.
Ask her what she has learned in her long life and she says, "To recognise the difference between what...
This Christopher Nupen film is about the music and the artistic intentions of Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, one of the greats and a composer with an immediate appeal for many millions of people.
In this film the focus is on Tchaikovsky's concern with his own fate in Manfred and the last three symphonies and his extraordinary relationship with Nadezhda von Meck as told in his revealing correspondence with her.
This Christopher Nupen film is about the music and the artistic intentions of Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, one of the greats and a composer with an immediate appeal for many millions of people.
The prime focus is Tchaikovsky's lifelong preoccupation with the idea of fate as a controlling influence in our lives.
The women in this film are both the women in his personal life (his mother Alexandra, his governess Fanny Durbach and the Belgian singer Desiree Artot) and the vulnerable young heroines in his early music (Katerina Kabanova in The Storm, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Francesca in Francesca da Rimini, Odette in Swan Lake and Tatyana in Evgeny Onegin).
The title is taken from a poem by a 12-year-old girl, Eva Pickova, written in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Her words provide both the title and the climax?EUR"in a setting for two choruses and orchestra by the American composer Franz Waxman, in his touching work The Song of Terezin.
It is a film is about many things. It is about freedom and captivity, about emancipation, acculturation and assimilation; it is about the roles played by Moses and Felix Mendelssohn in the dream of fruitful, unproblematic integration of the Jews into German society after their liberation from the ghettos; it is about Richard Wagner, his ferociously anti-Semitic essay Das Judenthum in der Musik (The Jews in Music) and his influence on the thinking of the Third Reich but, most of all, it is a film about how much music can mean to people, even in the direst of circumstances, or particularly in the direst circumstances.
