From Menuhin to Yunchan Lim: How Legendary Performances Are Captured on Film

Which is it for you? A 32-year-old Yehudi Menuhin performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with the Hollywood Symphony Orchestra and Antal Dorati in 1947? Glenn Gould, shortly before his 1982 death, describing his art to Bruno Monsaingeon through the medium of Bach? Bernstein’s 1973 Ely Cathedral performance of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony? A 21-year-old Yuja Wang’s Flight of the Bumblebee at the 2008 Verbier Festival? Or perhaps Yunchan Lim’s career-launching Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No 3 at the 2022 Cliburn Competition? 

Whether one of the above happens to be your own favourite filmed musical performance or documentary, or whether in fact you’d name something entirely different, each deserves in its own way to be described as “legendary”, and in so doing, testifies to that special magic when one is able not simply to listen back to a major musician’s career or artistry-defining performance, but also to look back. Plus the classical film archive now at our fingertips through digital streaming is one that stretches back almost a century.

From Cinema to Concert Hall

It’s the cinema that we have to thank for the archive’s earliest examples, because the first filmed classical performances were made as shorts to be screened in movie theatres before the main feature film, with the very first ones – released in 1926, and featuring the likes of violinists Mischa Elman and Efrem Zimbalist – made in the US using the same Vitaphone sound-on-image synchronisation technology as used for the world’s first “talkie” movie, The Jazz Singer, itself released in 1927.

It didn’t take long for film studios on the other side of the Atlantic to catch on. British Pathé’s cinema performance shorts included Sir Adrian Boult in 1932 conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra in extracts from Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance marches. 

Similarly short, but of an entirely different level of directorial ambition were those produced in France by La Compagnie des Grands Artistes Internationaux. Usually directed by well-known names from the cinema, who illustrated the music with their own artistically-shot narratives, these included the 1936 shorts of Alfred Cortot playing Debussy’s Children’s Corner, directed by Marcel L’Herbier, and Jacques Thibaud and Tasso Janopoulo playing Szymanowski’s La fontaine d’Aréthuse, directed by Dimitri Kirsanov. 

Next came feature-length offerings, initially within the context of a wider drama. For instance Jascha Heifetz’s various films begin with him playing himself in Archie Mayo’s 1939 film for Samuel Goldwyn Productions, They Shall Have Music, in which he saves a fictional music school from closure by playing a benefit concert. In 1943, Battle for Music featured extended excerpts of Benno Moiseiwitsch playing Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto with the LPO under Constant Lambert. 

Then in 1947 came Concert Magic, filmed at Hollywood’s Charlie Chaplin Studios as the first full-length filmed concert, and starring the aforementioned 32-year-old Yehudi Menuhin along with Adolph Baller, Marguerite Campbell, Jakob Gimpel and Eula Beal.

Rediscoveries and Game-Changers

Not all the early musical films for cinema were purely for mere entertainment, though. In fact one of the most precious filmed historical documents we have, and a recent-times rediscovery, is a 30-minute film of Alfred Cortot taking a masterclass on Schumann’s Der Dichter spricht (The Poet Speaks) in 1953 at the École normale de musique in Paris. “His Master’s Voice were transferring Cortot’s recordings on 78s onto Long Play records, and they made this film to promote these new releases,” explains acclaimed music film producer Pierre-Martin Juban, who was the one to track down a 16mm copy of the film from its producer Catherine Winter, after a tip-off. “I think it’s one of the most striking pieces of music we have on film,” he continues, “and it’s thanks to record label marketing”.

The advent of television brought not only more filmed concerts, but also saw documentary form really hit its stride, powered by leading directorial lights such as Bruno Monsaingeon, Sir Humphrey Burton and Christopher Nupen. Both forms were further fuelled by such events as the 1964 launch of the BBC’s cultural channel, BBC Two, and the advent of home VHS players. 

Still, for the majority of those of you reading Page Turner, the absolute game-changer for musical archive discovery was the 2005 appearance of YouTube, when suddenly all the films previously known and enjoyed only by in-the-know collectors were there to be discovered, for free, by everyone.

Then in 2007 came the final piece of the mass-dissemination puzzle, when the H.264 encoder, with its ability to swiftly compress and send video, was launched for the first time into high-definition portable video devices. Crash-tested by the newly-founded medici.tv at the Verbier Festival, this ushered in the current era in which, when a legendary-leaning or history-making performance happens at a major hall, festival or competition, it is more likely than not to have been captured on film.

What Makes a Film “Legendary”?

As for what actually qualifies as a legendary filmed concert, there’s an extent to which we’ll all have a different answer. Back to Juban, and he’d also view it as a slightly reductive exercise to even name some prime examples. That said, he’s not short on opinions as to what and what is not likely to produce the magic. For instance, he’d say that technological advancement hasn’t always produced greater film-making, explaining, “It’s often the concerts captured in the 1950s and 1960s that have stood the test of time better than some from the 1970s, where you have people splitting screens and so forth”.

So, simplicity. Unless, he caveats, you’re dealing with a truly great film maker, such as Åke Falck’s 1965 film of pianist Alexis Weissenberg playing Stravinsky’s Petrouchka. “Falck was a disciple of Ingmar Bergman, and it’s the most beautiful cinematography you can imagine,” he exudes. “The lighting is pure black and white. Every shot has been cut and designed with the score”.

Obvious as it may sound, another quality Juban is quick to list is musicality. This begins with being more or less in sync with the music’s nature – “So the slow movement of a symphony will have fewer cuts than a final movement”. It then continues with what he describes as the voyeuristic aspect, and indeed who can argue that one major aspect of the wonder and excitement attached to watching a great artist or performance on camera is precisely the sort of up-close views that you’d never have been privy to from a seat in the hall – magnified still further if it’s capturing a virtuosic technique, be that Heifetz performing Paganini’s Violin Caprice No. 24, or Yunchan Lim’s Liszt and Rachmaninov at the 2022 Cliburn.

To bring Bruno Monsaingeon himself into the conversation, he’ll say that it’s precisely the blend of simplicity, musicality and voyeurism that will occasionally lift an otherwise-non-ideal ancient concert film into the firmament. “I spent around 20 years in the vaults of Soviet television” he begins, “and most of the stuff is very badly filmed. But on occasion, the poverty of the means are exceptionally striking. For instance, I dug up a series of films of David Oistrakh playing the Sibelius, Tchaikovsky and Brahms violin concertos, and while the tuttis are terrible – wide shots in which you can’t see a thing –, the moment Oistrakh comes in, you get beautifully framed shots where you see the essential parts of the body, the facial expression, and the gestures… And such a shot might last for eight minutes; and then after the next shot, perhaps equally long-held, you return to the first. A change of shot should always be justified in terms of musical substance, rather than simply for the sake of it, and in some of those Oistrakh performances you see this in a beautiful way”. 

A further element capable of elevating a filmed concert to legendary status – and perhaps even one with the power to grow an artist’s legendary status – is the portrayal of charisma and human interactions. Take Klaus Mäkelä conducting the Orchestre de Paris in Ravel’s Boléro as seen in Monsaingeon’s film, Towards the Flame, which Juban produced. “Klaus is a good case in point,” outlines Juban. “You don’t need to necessarily cut to the piccolo when the piccolo is playing, because looking at the way he’s connecting with the musicians might be much more indicative of the music’s intensity. So for the first few minutes of Boléro he’s not moving, but it’s him you need to see, zeroing in on the musician with his eyes and cueing them with his eyebrows”. 

Beyond the Music: Time, Place, and Human Connection

Sometimes the magic is just as much to do with time and place as it is the filming itself. Take Christopher Nupen having the intuition in 1969 that Jacqueline du Pré, Daniel Barenboim, Pinchas Zukerman and Zubin Mehta were the classical world’s new stars, and thus worth the expense and effort of following their London Schubert “Trout” from rehearsal to concert. Or even Rostropovich’s impromptu solo Bach in front of the Berlin Wall, two days after it came down in November 1989 – neither well filmed, nor with nicely captured sound, this has nevertheless become a lasting cultural touchstone for being timeless, intimate music, played as history was being made, by a peacemaker cellist whose own personal story was intimately bound up in all that dismantled wall represented.

On to documentaries, and for Juban, the watchwords are once again simplicity and musicality – together with having a plan.

“To take Bruno Monsaingeon again,” he begins, “Bruno’s supreme quality is he knows how to tell a story; and has progressively had the hero of his films tell their story themselves, with little or no third-party intervention. The epitome of this is Richter: The Enigma, which is 98 percent Richter. With Menuhin it’s the same thing. And always, he also will have done his research and will know in advance what he wants to get out of a subject matter. You can’t make a great documentary by just sitting and pressing a record. Those films do exist, but they’re weak”.

“You have to get all the information from your interlocutor” emphazises Monsaingeon, picking up that thread. “There must be space for interpretation on the part of the viewer, rather than you telling them what to think. This is how I hope that my films will have some kind of future – because they do not depend on my present state of mind or on my explicit interpretation”.

The further key elements for Monsaingeon are then trust between the director and their subject, and obsession on the part of the director. “For anybody, it is difficult to accept the way that somebody else looks at you,” he begins. “Richter did not particularly like the filming process, so his condition was that we had to make a film without one. It was therefore only after many months, when a close relationship had been built up, that we could actually start not only recording his words but also filming him. Which was incredibly touching. So I think the secret, when you are making a film about somebody, is that you have to devote every minute of your life to it. And it’s going to be something incredibly intimate – which is why it’s such a fascinating process”.

Asked to name a strong documentary made by someone else, he cites the 1984 Daniel Schmidt film, Tosca’s Kiss, following the residents of the home Verdi established in Milan for retired singers, Casa Verdi. “It was a marvellous, marvellous idea, and really very moving to film all the old singers as they reflect upon their past,” he enthuses. “And done with such tact and delicacy. I think it’s a beautiful film”. 

Late Style, Legendary Auras, and the Magic of Age

Indeed old age brings a magic all of its own. Take Menahem Pressler’s late-life return to solo piano performance after 55 years with the Beaux Arts Trio.  “We speak of prodigies in terms of youth,” begins Juban, “but there is something prodigious about someone in their nineties being able to deliver something of that magnitude. When it’s caught on film, you’re even more aware and in awe of that miracle, and I know that filming those performances gave that late career a different aura. For many people, watching this Master Yoda of the piano work music through the keys, in addition to hearing him, was very impactful.”

Indeed, while Juban earlier demurred about naming a legendary performance, there is one produced by himself and directed by Sébastien Glas which ends up featuring prominently in his conversation: Pressler’s 90th birthday concert, on 7 November 2013 at Salle Pleyel, for which he collaborated with a young Quatuor Ébène; and specifically the encore, which saw the Ébène seat him next to them onstage, and then play to him, as a final surprise birthday gift, the slow movement of Debussy’s String Quartet – a nod to his career having been launched after winning the 1946 Debussy International Piano Competition. “It’s the best performance of that movement you’ll ever hear,” says Juban, “and even though Pressler isn’t playing, he’s the fifth member of the quartet through his participation as a listener. And this is the best illustration of how a good director films the interaction between the musicians, even if they’re not playing”.

That encore does indeed pack one serious emotional punch, as much for the expressions on all their faces as for the music. So yes, we might all have a different answer as to what makes a legendary musical film. But chances are that your own favourite, whatever it is, will be one which places you, with intensity, at the heart of its musical experience.