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MovieMail's Review
There have been many documentaries detailing the life of the greatest of all composers (with the arguable exception of Mozart), and something new on Beethoven is required to pique the interest. Phil Grabsky provides just that – but not in any obvious fashion.
The format is conventional enough: respected talking heads (music experts and stellar conductors, framed very tightly –we rarely see anything above the participants’ eyebrows), delicious extracts of the music (and in Beethoven’s case, that's an almost unbroken series of masterpieces) , views of the composer’s stamping ground (here an exquisitely photographed Vienna – Grabsky has a non-pareil visual sense that is one the glories of this two-disc set), lingering shots of contemporary portraits (Grabsky makes do with a limited number), a solidly analytical script – and the insights into Beethoven’s music and difficult, rebarbative personality are highly persuasive. But Grabsky subtly reworks all these tools of the documentary art, forging a nigh-definitive evocation of genius. The second disc has extended performances of the music, and the set is essential fare for lovers of great music.
A feature-length biographical documentary about the life and work of legendary composer Ludwig van Beethoven. The film, which documents each piece of music chronologically and interweaves it with Beethoven's biography and letters, features over 60 live performances by artists including Sir Roger Norrington, Vadim Repin, Emanuel Ax, Lars Vogt and Alban Gerhardt. Juliet Stevenson narrates.
