The Art Of Piano - Great Pianists Of The 20th Century (2002)

This video documentary provides a survey of 18 extraordinary keyboard artists that dominated the concert world in the mid 20th century, from Ignaz Paderewski to Claudio Arrau. Using footage that was painstakingly collected over a two year period, THE ART OF PIANO features rare clips of eighteen amazingly talented pianists who reached career heights at the middle of the 20th century. Featuring legends like Rachmaninoff, Hofman, Horowitz, and Glenn Gould performing live and on film, the theme of the video is tied together through interviews and commentary by conductors including Sir Colin Davis and Daniel Barenboim.

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.