Cheap The Art of Piano - Great Pianists of 20th Century (DVD) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Art of Piano - Great Pianists of 20th Century

You'll Never get Board Watching this one!!
When I saw this 2 hour program on tv, I was shocked with all the old but great footage! There are some recordings shown from the thirtys, fortys, up until present. This VHS Starts off with a few great pianists playing the first of Beethoven masterwork the "Apassionata sonata." They switch off pianists during the piece. They tell 20 of the great pianists of the century life stories. Famous musicians such as Evegeny Kissin and Daniel Barenboim discuss these pianist thoughout the VHS. I watch this almosts every night because each time I learn something new about Josef Hoffman or Vladimir Horowitz etc. This 1 is a keeper!

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An OK Video, some weaknesses
Generally speaking this video has great historical values. I find the following problems about it:

1. Many pieces are played only as a small fragmant (sometimes only a few seconds). It could be disappointing in some places (even though some pieces are played in their entirety). The unimpressive Beethoven Concerto was shown 3 times. On the other hand, the most exciting part of the Tschaichovsky Concerto is not aired (I mean the opening melody).

2. The people interviewed in the documentary are badly chosen. With exceptions (like Daniel Barenboim), many interviewees are uncharasmatic, ugly people who do not even speak English well. What a detraction that would be. Kissin speaks as if he had no tonge.

3. The group of pianists chosen is also not very representative. Many uninteresting ones are included while good ones might have been omitted.

Despite these weaknesses, the follwing is the highlight of the video:

1. Gilels playing the Rachmaninof Prelude on the high platform at the warfront airbase. What a scene that was.

2. Richter playing the revolutionary etude in its entirety (he finished it 30 secondes before most pianists would perform it).

3. A film shot from "moonlight sonata", where Paderewski played LIst's Hungarian Rhaphsidy.

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Nice!
This DVD is definitely cool!

Let's have a look at the great stuff:

- nice commentary and interviews from many 'greats'
- unbelievable amounts of cool ancient footage which I haven't seen before (admittedly, I'm not widely knowledgeable in this area)
- pretty nice editing.. good mix of enjoyable music with commentary...

Negatives? I don't know.. maybe...

- the limitations (in detail particularly) of it being a 1.5 hour movie..
- not entirely sure if it's of good journalistic value.. eg Cortot seems to be praised much more than criticised... not a balanced view..

It's great.. piano music fans need to get this!!