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.”‘

The tragic story of Doria Manfredi and her relationship with Giacomo Puccini was suppressed for almost 80 years by either Puccini’s publisher, Ricordi, or his family (or both). Tony Palmer’s Puccini juxtaposes a dramatization of this tragic story with footage from his controversial 1984 production of Turandot for the Scottish National Opera. (The production was lambasted by the critics, but the entire run was sold-out, with tickets going on the black market for £100).Written by Charles Wood (Wagner), the film features a superb cast, including actress Virginia McKenna as Elvira Puccini, and the late Sir Robert Stephens in the title role. The Scottish National Opera cast includes the extraordinary Scottish soprano Linda Evans Gray in the role of Turandot, American baritone Williard White as Timur, and British baritone Alan Opie as Ping. Sadly, this was Ms. Gray’s last performance, as her career was cut short in 1984 by physical and emotional problems. She withdrew from the production and suspended her promising opera career. Ms. Gray was a student of the famed British soprano Dame Eva Turner, and her short career included a legendary performance as Isolde with the English National Opera, as well as appearances at Glyndebourne, with the Welsh National Opera and at Covent Garden.

Doria Manfredi was a maid who worked for the Puccini family when they lived in the small northern Italian village of Torre del Lago. She was wrongfully accused by composer’s insanely jealous wife Elvira of carrying on an illicit relationship with the womanizing Puccini. Manfredi, who, after death, was proved completely innocent, was so distraught by the charges that she committed suicide by poisoning herself. She died a horrible and painful death. Puccini’s wife was later found guilty of “public defamation” and sentenced to five months and five days in prison.

The story of Doria Manfredi was brought to the attention of filmmaker Tony Palmer by Edward Greenfield, distinguished music critic of The Guardian, after a new section about Manfredi was added in the mid-1970s to Moscoe Carner’s 1958 Puccini: A Critical Biography. Palmer sought out Carner, who was intrigued by his fascination with the Manfredi story. Palmer and Carner both saw the parallels to Puccini’s last opera Turandot in “the loveless woman who kills for love, Turandot (Elvira); the slave girl who kills herself, Liu (Manfredi); the village gossips, Ping, Pang and Pong; [and] the village elder who accepts his guilt in the tragedy, Timur.” Carner believed that the psychological trauma resulting from Manfredi’s death may have made it impossible for the composer to complete the opera, despite the long-held belief that he simply died before he had a chance to finish it. According to Palmer, Carner indicated that Puccini may have ceased his attempts to finish Turandot in 1922, a full two years before his death. This, if true, gives the famous Toscanini story an especially eerie quality. (Toscanini stopped the performance at Liu’s death during its 1926 premiere at La Scala and said, “At this point, Puccini laid down his pen.”) Was the composer simply too distraught to finish an opera whose libretto had originally called for a “happy ending”?

Featuring famed British actor Trevor Howard (Brief Encounter, The Third Man, Ryan’s Daughter, Gandhi) and written by award-winning playwright John Osborne (Look Back in Anger, The Entertainer, Luther), Tony Palmer’s God Rot Tunbridge Wells was originally broadcast on British television in 1985 to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Georg Frederic Handel.

The film derives its title from a letter Osborne claims Handel wrote after a visit to the Tunbridge Wells Ladies’ Music Circle, who had invited him to hear a performance of “their Messiah.” Handel allegedly retorted “I always thought it was my Messiah.” He accepted the invitation, only to make a quick escape after the first hour. When he returned home, he allegedly shot off an angry letter describing the horrid experience, signing off with the line “so God rot Tunbridge Wells.”

Early reviews of the film were dismal, with critics asking what John Osborne could possibly know about music-and even savaging poor Trevor Howard (this was his last major film), who was very hurt by the film’s early notices. At first, only the music escaped criticism: the film features performances by Sir Charles Mackerras, the English Chamber Orchestra, Emma Kirkby, James Bowman, Elizabeth Harwood, John Shirley-Quirk, Simon Preston, Anthony Rolfe-Johnson, Valerie Masterson, and Andrei Gavrilov.

However, the tide eventually turned, and critics began to understand that Osborne had “attempted to strip away what felt like centuries of bad Handel performances …and reveal a composer who had burst upon London like a tornado and not only shaken the smugness of Georgian England to its roots, but laid the foundations of an entirely different tradition of British music making-bold, brassy and brilliant. ”
 

NOTE:
The essay below was written by the award-winning filmmaker Tony Palmer, whose superb catalog is a legend (as is he). Naxos of America began distribution of his films in January; however, some of the films which he references in his essay are not–as yet–distributed by us (the Margot Fonteyn, Britten, Stravinsky, Richard Burton and Testimony–his [...]

“I don’t think a composer can really be great without a unique sense of harmony. Maybe it is the presence of Tallis in that piece that drives the harmonic movement—it’s that, it’s the very wide-spread tessitura (very high with the very low) so you get the feeling you are in a cathedral, which is a magical quality if it’s well-played … Imagine, I’d never heard an orchestra before and this incredible and wide-spread resonant chord filled the hall …”
—John Adams on Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis

2008 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. In Tony Palmer’s new film, “O THOU TRANSCENDENT”: The Life of Ralph Vaughan Williams (TPDVD106), he pays tribute to this remarkable composer and
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