DOCUMENTARI
- Mar 12, 2023
- 0 min read
Mendelssohn Unknown
Film written by Angelo Bozzolini and Roberto Prosseda. Directed by Angelo Bozzolini.
With Riccardo Chailly, Steven Isserlis, Lang Lang, Kurt Masur, Roberto Prosseda, Charles Rosen.
This up-to-date documentary about Felix Mendelssohn is based on the original letters of the composer and his sister Fanny, combined with numerous evocative period images. Through a blend of music and words, the most distinguished Mendelssohn specialists of today guide viewers through the composer’s fascinating life and career. The various themes covered include his training, his religious and cultural identity, his journey to Italy, his rediscovery of Bach, his years in Leipzig, the relative neglect of his music following his death, his readmission to the canon of Germany’s greatest Romantic composers, and the recent unearthing of many unpublished works.
Released on DVD by Euroarts.
BONUS:
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy:
Song Without Words, Op. 19 No. 6 ‘Venetian Boat Song No. 1’
Song Without Words, Op. 30 No. 6 ‘Venetian Boat Song No. 2’
Sonata for violin and piano in D minor (1823, reconstructed 2005 by Alessandro Solbiati)
Capriccio in E flat minor (1823)
Variations brillantes for cello and piano by Mendelssohn and Joseph Merk (1830, cello part reconstructed 2008 by Gabrio Taglietti)
Roberto Prosseda, piano
Steven Isserlis, cello
Sonig Tchakerian, violin
Bonus performances recorded live at Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza, Italy, 11 June 2009, for Settimane Musicali al Teatro Olimpico.
Directed by Pietro Tagliaferri
Frydryk Chopin
Film written by Angelo Bozzolini and Roberto Prosseda. Directed by Angelo Bozzolini.
With Bobby McFerrin, Daniel Barenboim, Martha Argerich, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Charles Rosen, Alexander Lonquich, Adam Harasiewicz, Janusz Prusinowski Trio and others.
Released on DVD by Euroarts.
The documentary offers a carefully studied use of the epistolary of the “protagonist”, based on letters written and received by Chopin. The writings are interpreted by the two renowned actors Fabrizio Bentivoglio and Margherita Buy. Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) was born in Żelazowa Wola, near Warsaw, in a setting far from the limelight of the great musical tradition, but at the same time he absorbs the winds that blow in from that very tradition. His education is the fruit of Polish culture and cannot be separated from that, but he also feels the influence of the three main cultures of the time: Italian, Austro-German and French.This documentary describes the places that provided the basis for the young composer’s imagination, from the capital Warsaw to rural Poland, where Chopin spends part of his childhood and is formed as a man and a musician, on to Paris, theatre of the second half of the musician’s life. The film evokes the atmosphere of the Polish countryside: Żelazowa Wola, Szafarnia, Torun are described through documentary footage that restores the suggestiveness, which is still alive today, of the folklore Chopin was so attached to. Without of course forgetting Warsaw which, with the world’s most important piano competition, preserves the memory of one of the most important figures of European culture.
AWARDS: Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, (DVD Release) Germany.
Franz Liszt: The Pilgrimage years
A film written by Angelo Bozzolini and Roberto Prosseda. Directed by Angelo Bozzolini
Released on DVD by Euroarts
The most extraordinary virtuoso in musical history must surely be Franz Liszt. This documentary, featuring many leading Liszt experts (including Charles Rosen, Leslie Howard, Antonio Pappano and Evgeny Kissin), concentrates on his earlier years when he was travelling across Europe almost non-stop, fuelling the phenomenon described by Heine as ‘Lisztomania’. It was also the time of his elopement with Marie, Comtesse d’Agoult, in a move that scandalised polite society as much for its unorthodox nature as for its moral dubiety. These were the years of artistic journeying to which Liszt would one day return in the evocative musical colours of his Années de pèlerinage.