Concert magic: featuring Yehudi Menuhin

The Power of illumination In the newspaper business they have a saying that one picture is worth a thousand words. No matter how hard you try to describe a person or a scene, your portrayal can never come close to the accuracy of a camera. In the case of a musician, you could say that a minute of re...

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Weitere Verfasser: Beethoven, Ludwig van 1770-1827, Bach, Johann Sebastian 1685-1750, Wieniawski, Henri 1835-1880, Liszt, Franz 1811-1886, Chopin, Frédéric 1810-1849, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix 1809-1847, Paganini, Nicolò 1782-1840, Schubert, Franz 1797-1828, Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilich 1840-1893, Locatelli, Pietro Antonio 1695-1764
Format: Elektronisch Video
Sprache:English
Veröffentlicht: [Place of publication not identified] BBC Produktion Berlin [2005]
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Zusammenfassung:The Power of illumination In the newspaper business they have a saying that one picture is worth a thousand words. No matter how hard you try to describe a person or a scene, your portrayal can never come close to the accuracy of a camera. In the case of a musician, you could say that a minute of recorded sound is worth any number of words. How else can you convey a violinist's tone to someone who has never heard him? And if you have film of him, your task is made yet easier. Film cannot wholly replace the thrill of seiing and hearing a concert, but it can be a reasonable substitute. Strangely, film-makers were slow to appreciate the possibilities of capturing live music on celluloid. Many great musicians of the 1930s left us very little film of their playing or none at all, even though the means existed to make excellent documentary studies.
When, soon after the Second World War, Yehudi Menuhin was approached by the Hollywood producer Paul Gordon, the violinist immediately saw the potential of having some of his performances caught on film for posterity. He was so enthusiastic that it seems he worked for Gordon's Concert Film Corporation for very little money, banking on the movie making a profit and paying him royalties, such as he received for his sound recordings. His father, a much better businessman, was appalled, especially as he felt that Yehudi was dirtying his hands in having anything to do with Hollywood. The film, entitled Concert Magic, and featuring other artists besides Menuhin, was shot in the last months of 1947 at the studio formerly used by the comedian Charles Chaplin. Released about a year later, it was reasonably well received, but never caught on. Television was beginning to take over this sort of territory, and as a medium it was better able to present musical performances with immediacy and flair.
Concert Magic has been virtually unseen for many years. Yet Paul Gordon and his namesake Paul Ivano, the cameraman on the project, did an excellent job of presenting short pieces of music in a direct, unfussy manner. The film is very watchable, even though the other solo performers are not in Menuhin's class: the Polish pianist Jakob Gimpel, one of three brothers who at one time played as a trio, is some-what matter-of-fact in the way he delivers his solos; and the US contralto Eula Beal does not suggest that she is going to become a household word (nor did she). There is the usual quota of Hollywoodisms: the way the selections are introduced seems calculated to put a mass audience off, rather than convert it to classical music, and silly mistakes creep in. The pianist Adolph Baller -- whose fingers were broken by the Nazis but who managed to recover well enough to be Menuhin's accompanist for a number of years --
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