Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16953 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-08-27
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Black & White, Classical, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: German, English, French
• Dubbed in: French, German
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 108 minutes

Amazon.com
The Art of the Piano is a feature-length, 106-minute documentary that presents in refreshingly straightforward fashion a portrait of 20th-century piano playing. The format is simple: short segments on virtually all of the great pianists who have ever been captured on film, augmented by extracts from interviews, sometimes with the pianists themselves, or with later conductors and musicians of international stature, including specially filmed contributions from Daniel Barenboim, Sir Colin Davis, Evgeny Kissin, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, and Tamás Vásáry. The narration by John Tusa offers an overview of piano music through the century, though the heart of the film is the great quantity of rare archive historic footage, with extracts from performances by Gould, Horowitz, Paderwski, Rachmaninoff, Richter, Rubinstein, and many others. The interviews are short, but offer considerable insight, while the film of so many revered pianists brought together is a literal eye-opener, especially for those who have previously only known these masters from LP and CD. This is, like the companion program The Art of Singing, as close to definitive as a single film can get, even going so far as to include footage from the "silent" era with sound from corresponding recordings. --Gary S. Dalkin, Amazon.co.uk

Customer Reviews

Indispensable, BUT....
Indispensable of course because there is so little footage available of the great pianists. But the producer/editor seems to think that we like seeing performances of pieces faded out after a few bars, so he has plenty of film time for spoken thoughts from others. Unfortunately, since the commentaries are mostly a monumental waste of time (in the genre "He played incredibly well..." "He was a great virtuoso" - I mean "Duh"), the failure to allow the pianists to play to the end of the pieces is inexcusable and infuriating.

Good news is that Decca has just released a DVD also of the great pianists; I don't have it but I'm hoping they didn't wreck it with vacuous verbiage.

It's Even Better on DVD
Having owned the videotape of this program I was pleased to get the new DVD version. It has additions to the tape. For one thing, although conducted primarily in English, there are English subtitles for those bits that are conducted in languages other than English. And there are also Japanese, Spanish and French subtitles for those who wish them. Some of the film footage is simply magnificent and extremely rare. For instance, one sees the elderly Francis Plante playing brilliantly; born in 1839, he had actually heard Chopin play! There is some tendency to cut away from music footage in order to continue the voice-over narration, and that is understandable, but it is also occasionally frustrating. Some have complained that there are only two female pianists represented - a long and impressive bit with Dame Myra Hess, and an uncredited bit underneath the credits with Annie Fischer - but then there are plenty of other male pianists who could have been included, too. The makers of the film only had two hours with which to work, so one can understand the omissions. There is a minimum of fawning, a fair amount of substantive information - both plusses. For those of us who are fascinated by both piano technique and ever-changing pianistic styles this DVD is indispensable. It was wonderful to see lengthy bits featuring, among others, Benno Moiseiwitsch, Josef Hofmann, Claudio Arrau, Emil Gilels, Sviatoslav Richter, Arturo Benedetto Michelangeli, György Cziffra, Alfred Cortot, Arthur Rubinstein and to have interviews with current musicians like Sir Colin Davis, Stephen Kovacevich, Daniel Barenboim, Piotr Anderszewski, Tamás Vasáry, and Gary Graffman.

Recommended.

Scott Morrison

Nearly perfect.
"The Art of Piano" is a brilliant, fascinating look at over one hundred years (from Plante to Richter) of pianism, with rare footage of some of history's greatest pianists performing live or discussing their art. For me, the most compelling footage was that of Cortot, Backhaus and Arrau, but nearly every second of this film is filled with compelling performances. Each pianist featured in "The Art of Piano" is a great artist, with a unique style and interpretation of music, but there is one drawback for me: this film is incomplete. Where are Schnabel, Gieseking, Serkin, Kempff, Katchen, Lhevinne, Cliburn and countless other great 20th century pianists? This film a treasure for all music lovers, but it is too exclusive for me to give it five stars. Hopefully there will be sequel that covers all those left out in part one.