Info:
Duration: 73’ 13”
Narrated by Christopher Nupen
Featuring:
John Williams
Gidon Kremer
Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana (conducted by Lawrence Foster
Niccolo Paganini created perhaps the most elaborate and enduring legend of all instrumental soloists in the history of Western music but as so often with legends, the excitement and the chatter obscured the true figure both of the man and of the artist.
In this film, Allegro Films looks at the legend and the strange man who created it all with his dazzling combination of technical brilliance, supreme showmanship, Italian melody and unbridled manipulative skill; a man whose extraordinary personality unsettled even the most sophisticated and educated of minds and provoked wildly contradictory opinions.
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Paganini exploited all of it and used the legend to make himself not only the most talked about performer of his time, but also the wealthiest by a long, long way. In time this provoked envy and resentment and, finally, a pitiable isolation. But through all of it he served his gift with commitment and dedication. Despite his enduring ill health he drove himself forward with an energy that astonished almost all who came into contact with him, and as only a man with an unshakeable faith in his destiny could possibly do. Along the way, he wrote a great range of original and memorable music, changed violin playing decisively and created the age of the romantic virtuoso. By the end, however, his unbending quest for gold and for glory had robbed him slowly of almost everything else.
Paganini died in Nice on the 27th May 1840 in the company of his only son Achilles, who had become his constant companion, his aide and translator and his greatest solace in his isolation and illness. He was 57 years old.
Our Films on DVD
A film about the man who made himself the most talked about, the most famous, the most successful, the richest, and the most controversial classical soloist that the world of music has ever known.
The film on this DVD presents Paganini's music, filmed 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.
While being hailed as the greatest performing musician of his time, Paganini was denounced again and again by knowledgeable critics as a charlatan in league with the devil and an avaricious man with scant respect for those who responded so enthusiastically to his unforgettable gift - and contributed so readily to his vast personal fortune.
In time this provoked envy and resentment and, finally, a pitiable isolation. By the time of his death, at the age of 57, his unbending quest for gold and for glory had robbed him slowly of almost everything else.
The bonus track is a sequence called Gidon Kremer, Perfectionism and the Thirteenth Caprice from Christopher Nupen's film Gidon Kremer: Man of Many Musics.
This DVD contains two of the most famous Schubert films — each entirely different from the other in style, content and spirit.
The first, The Trout, presents a youthful explosion of exuberant talent; starting with Schubert himself — who wrote his Trout Quintet when he was 22 years old. His lead is picked up and brought to life by five extravagantly gifted young musicians when they were barely older than Schubert had been when he wrote the piece. Their names: Daniel Barenboim, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Jacqueline du Pré and Zubin Mehta.
The film was shot in a single week in August of 1969 and culminates with a performance of Schubert's Trout Quintet, filmed live on-stage at the new Queen Elizabeth Hall, on the south bank of the Thames, in London.
The second film, The Greatest Love and the Greatest Sorrow, looks at Schubert's astonishing achievements in the last 20 months of his life - after the death of his god, Beethoven. He asked the question, "Who would dare to do anything after Beethoven”? The answer, of course, was Franz Peter Schubert, in the music which he wrote after Beethoven's death.
This DVD celebrates the musical quest of one of the great symphonists of the twentieth century; Jean Sibelius, as seen through his music, his letters and the words of his wife Aino, who was with him for more than sixty-four years. His quest was not an easy one. Living through the great turning point in Western music, many of his concerns were strikingly similar to those of Schoenberg and Stravinsky but each chose a different path.
Sibelius once said that while his colleagues were serving multicoloured cocktails, he offered only pure spring water. The metaphor is a good one but, as so often with artists who take an untrod path, critical opinion has fluctuated wildly. In 1935 Sibelius was voted the most popular composer of all time by the members of The New York Philharmonic Society, a view that was echoed by many of the leading critics and composers in England.
By the 1950s critical opinion had relegated Sibelius to a position of minor importance.
Views are changing again and the time seemed right for an intimate look at what Sibelius himself felt that he was trying to achieve. The film in two-parts on this DVD is an attempt to do just that.
