Customer Reviews

Jan Peerce, Marian Anderson & Andres Segovia [VHS]

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This video is a truly great historic document showing middle-aged Artur Rubinstein at his best. He performs in his home to a small select audience. Featured are the C# minor Mazurka, the C# minor Scherzo, the F# Nocturne, The A-flat Polonaise, and an unfortunately short fragment of the F# minor Prelude. Although the pre-stereo era recording leaves much to be desired, Chopin's musical genius is vividly portrayed, and Rubinstein's beautiful singing tone, his impeccably elegant phrasing, his ability to communicate emotional meaning, and his masterful grasp of the overall structural integrity of each piece comes through loud and clear. The camera work is artistry as well, showing with great sensitivity Rubinstein's incredible freedom of movement at the keyboard, while conveying an idea of his great sense of purpose and absolute dedication to music. The film left me in a state of awe and appreciation, with the wish that there were many more like it.

Peerce and Conner perform several "comic" arias. I find them a bit silly, but fun and enjoyoing themselves. Marian Anderson's voice is so moving and powerful. Her vocal power, dignity, professional integrity and grace are in such contrast to today's solo vocalists, simple, dignified, and powerful. Certainly one of the most powerful femmale voices of this century. The maestro Segovia is seen performing in his Paris studio. Opens with a Bach prelude, then performs a dazzling Sor, theme and variations piece which is truly breathtaking. He discusses his love of music and desire to share the guitar with lovers of music around the world. He then plays Torroba's Sonatina and wraps up with El Noi de la Mer, a Catalan folk song. A simple but truly beautiful guitar piece, lullaby like but deeper and more soulful than any lullaby I know of.

This is the great Segovia as I have always imagined him, focused, relaxed, and making more music from a simple box of wood with a hole in it and six nylon strings. His performances are seemingly so effortless for him. Truly inspiring.

In the background of Segovia is a display of the Eiffel tower on an overcast day. I can not tell if it is a window or painting in the background (the clouds don't seem to move. What a view! Now that's a room for serious music making.

These pieces include historical footage of informal appearances of Heifetz and Piatigorsky. There is more about Heifetz, including a little about his lifestyle in California, playing ping-pong, tennis and enjoying the good life with his wife, in his studio in Beverly Hills. Too bad it is in black and white, and the filming is so grainy that we cannot see the beautiful view from his studio window. The documentary narrative shows Heifetz in his practice room, warming up, tuning his violin and going through some exercises. It also talk a little about his 1731 Strad and his 1742 David Guarneri the latter which he prefers in his concert playing. And cuts between him performing on stage and going back to his studio to perfect his playing technique, listen to recordings.

The next segment is a staged "impromptu" performance at Pomona college where an insistent professor asks Heifetz to answer a few questions from some college students. One question leads to another, and soon the master is obliged to play for them. Importantly, in this section, we hear Heifetz speaking and announcing his own pieces, as well as a few acted parts.

Included in the video are:
Chaconne (vitali)
Prelude in E-Major (Bach)
Girl With the Flaxen Hair (Debussy)
Scherzo Tarantella (Wieniawsky)
Twenty-Fourth Caprice (Paganini)
Sweet Remembrance (Mendelssohn)
Sonatensatz (Brahms)
Hungarian Dance No. 7 (Brahms)
Melodie (Gluck)
March from Love for Three Oranges (Prokofiev)
Polonaise (Wienawsky)
Hora Stacatto (Dinicu-Heifetz)

The next section is a staged skit about the great cellist Gregor Piatigorsky in a recording studio. There is a slightly lighthearted reporter who meets him at the airport, drives without her eyes on the road who is supposed to interview him. Piatigorsky plays at the Cello repair shop, the rehearsal, and then finally the recording. He really makes the cello sing, and is a rather big man in build, handling the cello with ease.
Included are:

Bourees #1 and #2 from C-Major Suite (Bach)
Slow Movement from Cello Sonata (Chopin)
Masques from Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)
Romance (Anton Rubinstein)
Waltz (Tchaikowsky)
Introduction, Them and Variations (Schubert-Piatigorsky)

All in all, these pieces are very interesting and informative, as well as slightly entertaining. The best is being able to see the technique of the masters, how they hold their bows, finger positions, and the way they play. The sound is not so good, due to the age of the recording, with the low sampling typical in old movies, but we can still see the speed and dexterity as the fingers fly across the strings and bows skip and zip. Closeup shots are done to show the bow angle, hold, finger positions which is helpful to the student to know the proper posture.

Highly recommended, and one of the few videos to show Mr. Heifetz and Piatigorsky. 88 minutes black and white.

Marvellous! Enchanting! Okay, the quality of the sound is not brilliant but it is not that bad either. Yes, the performances are framed in some very wooden Hollywood-esque scenes (Rubinstein in the studio, Rubinstein at home discussing pieces with the studio boss, Rubinstein at home with friends) but even they are charming for their innocence and good nature.

The playing is brilliant, all the more so because, despite Rubinstein's own laments that his technique wasn't good enough, it is clear that his technique was incredible to the point of being irrelevant since his musicality was free to perform the pieces in any way he saw fit. That sort of freedom from technical problems is very rare, and I would go so far as to say that not even the unique Horowitz always had it. The performances are superb and this video is a real treat. If you a Rubinstein fan then you must buy this. If you don't know anything about classical music or Rubinstein then buy it and you will enjoy it thoroughly, the music is beautiful.

Heifetz and Piatigorsky all on 1 Video! This briefly goes into the practice methods of Heifetz and briefly into how he prepares for concerts and such. But most of the video shows him playing pieces. Although there aren't any concertos or other cool pieces that heifetz is supreme at that he plays, he does play paganini's 24 caprice(not the "original" one purists such as ricci play, but great nonetheless), wieniawski's scherzo tarantella(The best i've ever seen, better than kyung hwa chung, milstein). I give it 4 stars because i wish they put in some more meat into the video, meaning more pieces.

The video seems staged(its supposed to be an impromptu concert by him), but who cares about the story, all we care about is his actual playing!

This is the best video of Segovia! It is done the way all classical guitar videos should be done. The maestro playing his guitar. No trees, flowers, buildings, or other junk that usually plague classical guitar video.

Look, if you like Rubinstein (and I do), you can't help but enjoy this. The playing is pretty good, when he gets down to it. What's cringingly embarassing are the Hollywood-style setups meant to supply pretext for the music. It's almost surreal in parts (checkout the gardener appaluding in the window; I don't know what it was, but I bet it's illegal to smoke it these days). About the kindest thing you could say about it is that it's a period piece. Still, no serious Rubinstein afficiando should be without it. The uninitiated will hit the stop button mid-way, scratching their heads.