“I feel torn on the one hand by a compelling quest for the absolute, and on the other I’m possessed by desire to play, to create and destroy. The two can come together more or less harmoniously. The most perfect resolution of this paradox is the music of Mozart.” -Piotr Anderszewski

On July 28, Medici Arts releases Piotr Anderszewski: Unquiet Traveller (Voyageur intranquille), a film portrait of the iconic Polish pianist by acclaimed French filmmaker and violinist Bruno Monsaingeon (Glenn Gould Hereafter; Nadia Boulanger: Mademoiselle; and David Oistrakh, Artist of the People?). Anderszewski, who will appear on New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival at the end of July and beginning of August, will be present with Mr. Monsaingeon for a special showing of this film at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater on Saturday, August 1, 2009 at 4:30 PM.

In 1990, Piotr Anderszewski turned heads at the Leeds Competition with his performance of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations-a work he later recorded and Bruno Monsaingeon filmed. In 2002, this unusual musical thinker won the coveted Gilmore Award. For nearly two decades Piotr Anderszewski has been known for his insightful and skillful performances and recordings of music by J.S. Bach, Szymanowski (he was the winner of the Szymanowski Prize in 1999), Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin, among others.

In this film, Monsaingeon sought to avoid the typical interview format common to so many documentary portraits. Instead, he found a less conventional method of portraying this complex artist, much as he had done with Glenn Gould in Glenn Gould Hereafter. “This would be a ‘frontier’ film, on the borderline between documentary and fiction,” he remarks. “It would be set against a backdrop of a winter journey across Poland, then to Hungary (the artist’s two home countries), before travelling to Germany, London, Paris and finally to Lisbon, where he has recently settled … Like a modern-day troubadour, Piotr would not travel by airplane or car but in a private railway carriage hired for the purpose, which would be attached to various trains according to an itinerary dictated by places he wished to visit and his concert schedule … Everything that Piotr Anderszewski chose to reveal about himself would be narrated in voice-overs that would punctuate the various scenes we had planned to shoot.”

Of course, it was very important to keep the music center stage, Monsaingeon explained: “We were making a film about a fascinating musician, an enigmatic and multifaceted man; it was inconceivable to consider sacrificing the music for the sake of aesthetic visuals. It was essential that music remained the central theme of this adventure. A skillful combination of all these ingredients would provide the film’s emotional tenor. The musical repertoire selected for the rehearsals and concerts held during this journey consists of essential and often unusual pages by Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, and Szymanowski.”

On October 28, Naxos released The Christopher Nupen Films’ new documentary, Vladimir Ashkenazy: Master Musician. Nupen, dubbed “king of the music documentary” by Gramophone and a three-time winner at Midem in Cannes (2005, 2006, and 2008), has put together a revealing portrait of the Russian-born pianist and conductor. The film includes Vladimir Ashkenazy: The Vital Juices Are Russian (1968); a montage of Nupen’s composer films with Ashkenazy as conductor; and a performance segment featuring Rachmaninoff’s Corelli Variations, released for the first time on this disc. Additionally, the DVD features a short interview with Ashkenazy.

The Vital Juices Are Russian was shot in 1968 when Ashkenazy moved with his wife and son from London to Iceland. The title refers to a statement about the composer’s Russian-ness that he makes during the film. Mr. Nupen comments: “The portrait film was made at an important turning point in Vladimir Ashkenazy’s life and career, a time when everything was changing, much to do and much being done. Some piquancy was added by the fact that our young hero felt that he was struggling to come to terms with the great traditions of the West, because, as he says in the film, he felt inadequately prepared. At that time, the idea that he might, somewhere in the distant future, become an internationally-recognized conductor was not even on the horizon.”

Since the original film was made, Ashkenazy-possibly the most frequently-recorded pianist in history, with a discography of 56 pages-has also become an international conductor. The DVD includes a montage of sequences from Nupen’s composer films featuring Ashkenazy at the podium. Next is a short but revealing interview with the composer on music and musical gifts and, finally, a segment on Rachmaninoff’s Corelli Variations, which Ashkenazy discusses at length. The film concludes with a complete performance of the piece, filmed live at a public concert in Lugano.

Ashkenazy won the Queen Elizabeth of the Belgians Prize at age 18 and later won the Tchaikovsky competition. That was only the start, however; his career has continued to rise steadily from then until now. In 2007, he celebrated his 70th birthday, an event that inspired worldwide press celebrations and an eight-disc boxed set of CDs from Decca; the final disc is an 80-minute conversation between Ashkenazy and Christopher Nupen.

Christopher Nupen is the recent recipient of myriad awards, including DVD of the Month from both Classic FM and Gramophone; three German Record Critics’ Awards; the Diapason d’Or (France); and, most recently, the DVD of the Year Award (documentary category) from Midem at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes for Jacqueline du Pré - A Celebration. This is Nupen’s third Midem DVD of the Year Award in four years, an unprecedented achievement; it is the top international classical DVD prize awarded by the institution. Founded in 1968, Christopher Nupen’s company Allegro Films has produced significant documentaries on Vladimir Ashkenazy, Evgeny Kissin, Nathan Milstein, Franz Schubert, Andrés Segovia, Jean Sibelius, and Pinchas Zukerman. Through close relationships with these artists, Allegro Films has produced a series of intimate portraits recognized as classics, with a longevity rarely achieved in television programming.

 David Oistrakh, Artist of the People? (Medici 3073178) is the latest film by acclaimed French filmmaker and violinist Bruno Monsaingeon (Glenn Gould Hereafter; Nadia Boulanger: Mademoiselle). One of the greatest violinists of the 20th century, David Oistrakh (1908-1974) was largely self-taught, yet he became the true founder and undisputed master of the Soviet school of violin-playing, the most prestigious school of our times. The film includes rare archival footage (on and offstage) gathered over many years by Monsaingeon, whose fascination with Oistrakh dates back to his childhood. In addition to performances by David Oistrakh, Yehudi Menuhin, Mstislav Rostropovich, Sviatoslav Richter, Igor Oistrakh and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky (among others), the filmmaker spoke at length with Menuhin, Rostropovich, and the violinist’s son Igor.

Some of the stories related by Rostropovich and Menuhin chillingly reveal the exceptionally troubled circumstances in which Oistrakh lived. Despite being Jewish, Oistrakh refused to leave Soviet Russia even when emigration may have been possible. The interviews shed light on a man who, like his contemporary Dimitri Shostakovich, found ways to survive during the dark years of Stalin.

Because of the political climate of the time-Stalinism and the Second World War-Oistrakh’s career in Western Europe, America, and Japan blossomed relatively late. It was not until 1953 that he began to make regular appearances in the West, by which time he was already 45 years old-though his legendary reputation had already made him the subject of endless speculation throughout the Western musical world. His first proper international tours instantly confirmed the legend, and from then until his death in Amsterdam in 1974, he pursued a varied career in the concert hall, as a soloist and conductor, and as a teacher. Oistrakh’s genius inspired numerous composers to write for him. He premiered sonatas and concertos by Prokofiev, Khachaturian and Shostakovich, among others, and performed these works all over the world.

 Tony Palmer writes: “There are always dates which resonate forever in our lives … for me that date is May 30, 1962. By chance, I had been taken to Coventry Cathedral by a friend, John Culshaw, to hear a ‘big new choral piece’ by Benjamin Britten, whose entire works Culshaw was in the process of committing to disc by Decca.” The work to which Palmer refers, of course, is Britten’s War Requiem, one of the most important works to come out of the later half of the 20th century. Palmer went on to make a film in 1967 about the opening of the original Snape Concert Hall called Britten & His Festival. Britten was so taken with that film that after his death, his longtime partner Sir Peter Pears asked Palmer to make another, more substantive film in his memory.

 Benjamin Britten: A Time There Was (1979) is as much a love story as it is a biography. Pears’ commentary and conversation provide the central focus for the film, which also includes numerous musical excerpts from Britten’s operas and other works and features artists who include Leonard Bernstein, Kathleen Ferrier, Dame Janet Baker, Sviatoslav Richter (another Russian champion of Britten’s music), Julian Bream, Peter Glossop, John Shirley-Quirk, and others. The film also highlights the more personal side of the composer, with commentary from Britten’s housekeeper Miss Hudson, Rita Thompson (who nursed him through his final illness), his copyist and musical confidants Imogen Holst and Rosamund Strode, and the Mayer family who housed Britten and Peter Pears when the two left England in 1938 in objection to the war.

Palmer says, “I could never repay my debt to him, but I hoped (and hope) the film would enable others to share something of this strange, haunted man, and his enduring power for us. Humphrey Carpenter once played the Young Person’s Guide on his program In Tune on Radio3. Following the tumultuous fugue at the end, there was a long pause, and eventually Humphrey said: ‘That, ladies and gentlemen, is pure genius.’ Yes, it is.”‘