The Golden Age of Piano
by Peter Rosen
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DVD details
Actor: Claudio Arrau, David Dubal, Glenn Gould, Myra Hess, Van CliburnDirector: Peter Rosen
Brand: DUBAL,DAVID
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), PCM Stereo; Chinese (Subtitled); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); German (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), PCM Stereo
Format: Black & White, Classical, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 115 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-04-08
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Decca
DVD Reviews of The Golden Age of Piano
DVD Review: Like "Art of Piano," could be better, but worth owning
Summary: 4 Stars
This DVD makes a nice supplement to the "Art of Piano" documentary. Both could have been longer and both could have had more depth. But at least this one has some of the breadth that the former misses. An interesting introductory section on the development of the piano and the virtuosi who played it give the rise of 20th century pianism more context. We see some woderful clips of Cortot, Brailowski, Landowska (not really a pianist, but interesting nonetheless), Myra Hess and Rudolf Serkin. We get information we never had in A of P, such as how Hofmann made the very first piano cylinders, for Edison, just days after the latter perfected his recording device. (For curators of the offbeat, he may also have invented the windshield wiper.) We get a recording (the only one, barely distinguishable) of the voice of Brahms, made by Thomas Edison. We get more of Arrau than we did in A of P. Strangely absent from *both* productions is the man many consider the father of 20th century pianism, Artur Schnabel. Also absent in this one is Rachmaninoff, or at least bio and film about him. We do get mention of him, and see others play his works, but the man is absent himself. Some of the material, but not as much as you might expect, is duplicated from A of P. Even the Paderewski footage, though from the same concert, is of different works in that concert. The Hofmann is exactly the same only because this is the only footage extant of the man. Horowitz is seen performing the same Scriabin Etude from the same concert (his famous televised Carnegie Hall recital of 1968) in both, when there is plenty of Horowitz footage out there. One minor complaint is no dates for any of the footage is given in either the documentary or the booklet. I, for one, would like to know a lot more about the Cortot/Debussy film we see, a very early attempt at a "music video." Fascinating stuff!
The disc comes with a tacked-on bonus: Claudio Arrau performing one of his specialties, the Beethoven G Major Concerto, with Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Academy of Music. While I am a big admirer of Arrau, this performance was near the end of his life and he was not in top form, to put it politely. (Listen to his EMI recording of the 4th with Galliera or his Philips 1964 with Haitink for examples of how Arrau owned this piece.) Muti makes the fine Philly Orch sound like an (admittedly polished) anonymous house band, for what's what they often were in his hands. The performance is enjoyable, but not essential. Still, since there aren't many videos out there of either artist, it's nice to have this.
The documentary's narrator, noted piano authority David Dubal, is stiff and wooden and seems to be stuck in a 1978 fashion warp. He's not the best host, and tends to read every line as though it were portentous and profound, but at the same time, he's no worse than the grating British narrator on the Art of Piano doc. The structure of the documentary is a bit odd: after starting with the deaths of Horowitz, Arrau and Serkin, stating that they were the end of the great Romantic era of piano playing, we flash backwards to the beginning. We then work back to the three pianists who began our story, so it seems that we're wrapping up after them. But no, the filmmaker then inexplicably tacks on about five minutes of black and white footage of Van Cliburn, never even mentioned till then, performing his signature piece, the Tchaikovsky Concerto. *Then* the documentary ends!
Description of The Golden Age of Piano
No Description Available.Genre: Music Videos - Classical
Rating: NR
Release Date: 8-APR-2003
Media Type: DVD
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