The Golden Age of Piano

Rating:
Summary: Definitely a Second Choice to 'The Art Of Piano, But...
Review: Certainly a second choice to "The Art of Piano".

For Hoffmann, we have exactly the same footage. For Cortot, it's called a mixture of film and music: we see some girls dancing instead and we only have a glimse of Cortot on the piano for literally a couple of seconds--a great disappointment for Cortot's fans! We have a litte bit, just a little bit more of Paderewski and there is also one for Serkin which is very impressing indeed, and one for Grainger too. For a fan of either of them, he sure doesn't want to miss it. ( For Rubinstein, or Horowitz, or even Serkin we have better DVDs commercially now available.)

Here we have long narrations on things like the development of the piano and marginally relevant background of the pianists covering even the history of recording industry, the relevancy of all these things are quite controversial.

What is most objectionable is the the narrator himself. For BBC productions, we see a lot of new faces and most of them are either prominent musicians themselves or those directly related to the musicians in question. Here we always have the same voice, a funny voice and most of the time we can't see the face, and when we see it, it's an uncessarily long face of a nobody, and worst of all, his comments are highly personal and more often than not, quite misleading.

But, we have more than adequate compensation in that we have Arrau playing Beethoven's No. 4 Concerto...

Rating:
Summary: A Very Food Supplementary to The Art Of Piano
Review: For Hoffmann, we have exactly the same footage. For Cortot, it's called a mixture of film and music: we see some girls dancing instead and we only have a glimse of Cortot on the piano for literally a couple of seconds--a great disappointment for Cortot's fans!

We have a very short clip of Paderewski and Serkin which is too short to be impressing. The same for Grainger too. For a fan of either of them, he sure doesn't want to miss it. ( For Rubinstein, or Horowitz, or even Serkin we have much better DVDs commercially now available.)

Moreover, we have long narrations on things like the development of the piano and marginally relevant background of the names of pianists, covering the history of recording industry. Often the voice of narrator goes aheads and keeps along with the piano making the listening time of the latter so little. What is most objectionable is the the narrator himself. For BBC productions, we see a lot of new faces and most of them are either prominent musicians themselves or those directly related to the musicians in question. Here we always have the same voice with an accent plus a long face, and his comments are very biased and misleading.

But, we have more than adequate compensation in Arrau playing first a sonata and then Beethoven's No. 4 Concerto. Here his "paws" are extrememly well depicted. In contrast, we have very rigid and curved fingers of Landowska.

Rating:
Summary: could have been a lot better
Review: I was really concerned about buying this as I found no review for this product anywhere in the internet. Also, this DVD contains a subset(almost) of artists featured in "the art of piano". As expected, most of the clips were the same as that you'd see featured in "the art of piano"( Rachmaninoffs' prelude played by hoffman, appassionata played by Myra Hess ).
If you thought that "the art of piano" did not do justice in its featuring of the greats, this is not for you.
The only consolation is you get to see a complete Beethoven's work being handled by Arrau. In the feature section, Arrau is shown playing Liszt!!!( a bad choice. I would expect czzifra or one of the lizst speacialists playing Liszt)
My advice would be, if you do not have "the art of piano", then buy that before you start thinking about this DVD.

Rating:
Summary: Incomplete, but fine
Review: This DVD makes a nice supplement to the "Art of Piano" documentary. Both could have been longer and both could have had more depth. But at least this one has some of the breadth that the former misses. An interesting introductory section on the development of the piano and the virtuosi who played it give the rise of 20th century pianism more context. We see some woderful clips of Cortot, Brailowski, Landowska (not really a pianist, but interesting nonetheless), Myra Hess and Rudolf Serkin. We get information we never had in A of P, such as how Hofmann made the very first piano cylinders ever, for Edison, just days after he perfected his recording device. (For curators of the offbeat, he may also have invented the windshield wiper.) We get a recording (the only one, barely distinguishable) of the voice of Brahms, made by Thomas Edison. We get more of Arrau than we did in A of P. Strangely absent from *both* productions is the man many consider the father of 20th century pianism, Artur Schnabel. Also absent in this one is Rachmaninoff, or at least bio and film about him. We do get mention of him, and see others play his works, but the man is absent himself. Some of the material, but not as much as you might expect, is duplicated from A of P. Even the Paderewski footage, though from the same concert, is of different works in that concert. The Hofmann is exactly the same only because this is the only footage extant of the man. Horowitz is seen performing the same Scriabin Etude from the same concert (his famous televised Carnegie Hall recital of 1968) in both, when there is plenty of Horowitz footage out there. One minor complaint is no dates for any of the footage is given in either the documentary or the booklet. I, for one, would like to know a lot more about the Cortot/Debussy film we see, a very early and crude attempt at a "music video."

The disc comes with a tacked-on bonus: Claudio Arrau performing one of his specialties, the Beethoven G Major Concerto, with Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Academy of Music. While I am a big admirer of Arrau, this performance was near the end of his life and he was not in top form, to put it politely. (Listen to his EMI recording of the 4th with Galliera or his Philips 1964 with Haitink for examples of how Arrau owned this piece.) Muti makes the fine Philly Orch sound like an (admittedly polished) anonymous house band, for what's what they often were in his hands. The performance is enjoyable, but not essential. Still, since there aren't many videos out there of either artist, it's nice to have this.

The documentary's narrator, noted piano authority David Dubal, is stiff and wooden and seems to be stuck in a 1979 fashion warp. He's not the best host, and tends to read every line as though it were portentous and profound, but at the same time, he's no worse than the grating British narrator on the A of P. The structure of the documentary is very odd: after starting with the deaths of Horowitz, Arrau and Serkin, stating that they were the end of the great Romantic era of piano playing, we flash backwards to the beginning. We then work back to the three pianists who began our story, so it seems that we're wrapping up after them. But no, the filmmaker then inexplicably tacks on about five minutes of black and white footage of Van Cliburn, never even mentioned till then, performing his signature piece, the Tchaikovsky Concerto. *Then* the documentary ends!

Rating:
Summary: Like "Art of the Piano" could be better, but worth owning
Review: This DVD makes a nice supplement to the "Art of Piano" documentary. Both could have been longer and both could have had more depth. But at least this one has some of the breadth that the former misses. An interesting introductory section on the development of the piano and the virtuosi who played it give the rise of 20th century pianism more context. We see some woderful clips of Cortot, Brailowski, Landowska (not really a pianist, but interesting nonetheless), Myra Hess and Rudolf Serkin. We get information we never had in A of P, such as how Hofmann made the very first piano cylinders ever, for Edison, just days after he perfected his recording device. We get a recording (the only one, barely distinguishable) of the voice of Brahms, made by Thomas Edison!! We get more of Arrau than we did in A of P. Strangely absent from *both* productions is the man many consider the father of 20th century pianism, Artur Schnabel.

The disc also comes with a tacked-on bonus: Claudio Arrau performing one of his specialties, the Beethoven G Major Concerto, with Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Academy of Music. While I am a big admirer of Arrau, this performance was near the end of his life and he was not in top form. Muti makes the fine Philly Orch sound like an anonymous house band, for what's what they mostly were in his hands. The performance is enjoyable, but not essential.

The documentary's narrator, David Dubal, is stiff and wooden (and dig that jacket!). He's not the best host, and tends to read every line as though it were portentous and profound, but at the same time, he's no worse than the grating narrator on the A of P. The structure of the documentary is odd: after starting with the deaths of Horowitz, Arrau and Serkin, stating that they were the end of the great Romantic era of piano playing, we flash backwards to the beginning. We then work back to the three pianists who began our story, so it seems that we're wrapping up after them. But no, the filmmaker then inexplicably tacks on about five minutes of black and white footage of Van Cliburn, never even mentioned till then, performing his signature piece, the Tchaikovsky Concerto. *Then* the documentary ends!

As for several reviewers below me who complained about so much replicated footage from "Art of Piano," there is actually very little the two films have in common, so you can buy with confidence that you aren't getting "the same documentary" twice. Even the Paderewski, though from the same concert, is of different works. The Hofmann is the same only because this is the only footage extant of the man. Horowitz is seen performing the same Scriabin Etude from the same concert (his famous televised Carnegie Hall recital of 1968) in both, when there is plenty of Horowitz footage out there. One minor complaint is no dates for any of the footage is given in either the documentary or the booklet.

This is definitely worth owning, especially when there isn't really another way to see most of this footage. My usual criticism applies--it could have been longer and featured lengthier excerpts from the musicians and less pompous yacking from the dour Dubal. (Don't *tell* me about a pianist's singing pianissimo or thunderous octaves, let me HEAR them.) But it isn't like this subject area has lots of competition out there on DVD, so grab this.