Info:
Duration: 28’ 24”
Year of production: 1970
Music:
Piano Trio No. 5 in D Major, Op. 70 No. 1 "Ghost" by Beethoven:
I. Allegro vivace con brio
II. Largo assai ed espressivo
III. Presto
Performed by:
Jacqueline du Pré / Daniel Barenboim / Pinchas Zukerman
This performance in May 1979, at St John’s Smith Square, was filmed before the onset of Jacqueline du Pré’s illness in the early days of the Barenboim/du Pré/Zukerman Trio, which promised to become one of the great Piano Trios of all time.
They play Beethoven’s Piano Trio Opus 70, No. 1.
In 1808 the composer and violinist Louis Spohr was invited to a rehearsal in Beethoven’s house of the D major Piano Trio Opus 70 No. 1, known as The Ghost, and wrote of the occasion:
“It was not an enjoyable experience. First of all the piano was dreadfully out of tune, which did not trouble Beethoven in the least, since he could not hear it. Little or nothing remained of the brilliant technique which had been so much admired. In loud passages the poor deaf man hammered away at the notes crashing through whole groups of them so that without the score one lost all sense of the melody. I was deeply moved by the tragedy of it all. Beethoven’s almost continual melancholy was no longer a mystery to me.”
This film was described by the French opera and film director Jean Pierre Ponnelle as the most successful translation of musical performance onto the screen that he had ever seen.
Serendipitous History:
-
In fact he did us a favour because without his intervention neither this film of The Ghost Trio or our film Andrés Segovia: The Song of the Guitar would exist.
In the end, Sol Hurok's project never flew and so, six years later, in 1976, we went with Segovia to Granada and filmed him in the Alhambra; a rather better location which, to use his own words, was the Leitmotif of his life and the place where he "Opened his eyes to beauty and was born for the second time - and the most important."
Finding ourselves with a booking at St John's that we could not use, the director Christopher Nupen called Daniel Barenboim and Jacqueline du Pré in Brighton. As he recalls, “I had just heard them play Beethoven's Ghost Trio at concerts in Oxford and Brighton. The Oxford concert, in particular, had left an impression on me that was indescribable, one of those things that music can sometimes do and which cannot be explained; something extraordinarily elevated that I have not forgotten to this day”.
Nupen asked whether they could come to London to play The Ghost for our cameras in St John's Smith Square. They came up on the first train in the morning and went back on the last train that night, but, at the end of it all, we had it captured forever on film.
About six weeks later, as soon as we had finished putting the film together, Nupen invited the three of them to see it in a London theatre. At the end of the screening he said that he regretted that film could never capture the extraordinary spirit which they had generated at their concerts in Oxford and Brighton. Jacqueline du Pré responded in a flash, before the others had said a word. "Oh no!", she said. "I don't agree. It is much better on the film".
Everyone was taken aback and Nupen asked why. She replied "Because you can see what's going on and it adds another dimension". We certainly hope that something of the magic that those three marvellous artists created on the stage has, after all, been caught in the camera, remains there for the future, and comes across to the perceptive viewer.
Our Films on DVD
