Info:
Duration: 43’ 09”
Narrated by Christopher Nupen
Year of production: 2015
In collaboration with:
BBC London
RSI Switzerland
ERR Estonia
YLE Finland
RTE Slovenia
“Trifonov has everything and more. What he does with his hands is both technically and musically unbelievable. And then there is his touch — so gifted with tenderness and at the same time he has the demonic element. I have never heard anything like this before”.
Those are the words of Martha Argerich, one of the world’s most respected pianists and one of the most difficult to please. Her words are echoed by Anne Midgette - one of the most demanding critics in the United States - who likens Trifonov to a modern day Liszt.
When making this film, Daniil Trifonov was 23 years old. Among the prizes he has won, both the Tchaikovsky and Rubinstein competitions, but is respected by many leading musicians for something much more than the prizes. His is not just another remarkable piano talent, Trifonov is a super-gifted musician for whom composing, improvising and performing flow seamlessly into each other in a way that is very, very rare. He has recently taken his own 17-minute piano sonata on tour and gave the first performance of his first piano Concerto in Cleveland, Ohio, in April of 2014. We were there to film it and it contributes a touching sequence to our film.
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It is a worthy successor to our films with Jacqueline du Pré, Daniel Barenboim, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Pinchas Zukerman, Itzhak Perlman, Evgeny Kissin and Gidon Kremer. We have also made films with the not so young Nathan Milstein and Andrés Segovia — more than 90 productions to date.
As we have done with such happy results in the past, we are also making a performance film as an adjunct to the portrait film, in which Trifonov plays, in the Teatro Vecchio in Castelfranco Veneto:
Chopin: Etude in F major Opus 10 No. 8
Scriabin: Etude No.9 in C sharp minor Opus 22
Rachmaninov: Variations on a theme of Chopin Opus 22
Johann Strauss/Daniil Trifonov: Overture to Die Fledermaus
Our Films on DVD
This DVD contains both a portrait film and an associated performance film offering an intimate view of the artist and his hardly-believable gifts. In conversation, he talks revealingly about his musical concerns but his modesty prevents him from saying anything at all about his extraordinary technique, "I am just playing the piano", he says. "There are people doing even more crazy things".
Danill Trifonov started to play the piano at the age of five, not because he wanted to play the piano but because he wanted to compose. That was unusual enough but it was only the beginning of a musical quest which led to his winning both the Tchaikovsky and Rubinstein competitions at the age of 20. The films contain a number of performances shot live on stage with cameras unusually close to the artist which adds considerably to the power of the images.
In the portrait film Trifonov plays music by Chopin, Ravel and Trifonov himself: part of his first piano Concerto, filmed at the world premiere performance which took place at the Cleveland Institute, in the United States, in April 2014.
In the performance film he plays music by Chopin, Scriabin, Johann Strauss (arranged Trifonov) and Rachmaninov - a performance of the rarely heard Variations on a Theme of Chopin, in the elegant Teatro Academico in Castelfranco Veneto, near Venice in Italy.
This DVD presents Vladimir Ashkenazy as pianist, conductor, musical guide and master musician - an intimate and engaging view of one of the world's most quietly successful musicians.
It contains the portrait film Vladimir Ashkenazy: The Vital Juices Are Russian, shot in 1968 when Ashkenazy moved with his wife and son from London to Iceland, an important turning point in his life and career.
Since that film was made, Ashkenazy the pianist (possibly the most frequently recorded pianist in history, his discography runs to 56 pages), has also become an international conductor of the highest rank and we include a montage of sequences from our composer films with Ashkenazy as conductor. It also contains a short interview with Ashkenazy who talks, in his modest but penetrating way, about musical gifts and their origins.
The DVD ends with a film about Rachmaninov's Corelli Variations. In it Ashkenazy discusses the piece at length, with great affection and some telling musical insights. It ends with a complete performance of the piece, filmed at a public concert in Lugano.
This DVD portrait celebrates the miraculous gift of one of the finest violinists of the 20th century. Nathan Mironovich Milstein, universally respected by every international musician of his time and genuinely liked by almost all of them. His career spanned 73 years, one of the longest in Western music, and ended with his legendary last recital in Stockholm with Georges Pludermacher.
Nathan Milstein was 82 at the time and still playing as the grandest of Grand Masters and as probably no other violinist has ever played at 82.
The two-hour portrait film is built around that historic event and pays tribute to this ‘quiet magician’ who never sort the limelight and rarely appeared on camera. The DVD also includes both the Kreutzer Sonata and the Bach Chaconne from that same recital which took place on the 17th of July 1986.
