Day 2 - Saturday, March 21

How Mozart Became a Bad Conductor. Presented by Glen Gould. Kirk Browning. US. 1968. 40 mins. English. FIFA link
This “live on camera” performance by Glenn Gould, broadcast once on April 28, 1968, four years after he stopped giving any live performances, was mis-categorized until recently. We were among the few to have seen it since it’s been recovered. It’s digitized from a broadcast VTR copy, and they’re trying to locate the original studio VTR masters somewhere in the Library of Congress. For anyone that is the slightest fan of Gould, this is almost priceless. You can see him in all his glory, confident, self-assured, and in his element, recording in the studio, away from the “blood sports” of the concert stage performance, as he called it. The woman who presented the film (I didn’t catch her name) said that in talking to Kirk Browning before he died last year, he mentioned that Gould had apparently memorized his detailed script for the lecture (given in the “talk and play” style that he favoured). The TV program was part of PBS’s Sunday evening Public Broadcasting Library, an “experiment in public broadcasting”. The 40 minute segment devoted to Gould, entitled “The Return of the Wizard” (referring to Gould making a public performance of any kind), has a bit of that really clunky cable-access type programming quality to it. Gould’s eyes, looking upwards to the camera from his low chair position, are partially in shadow, lending him even more of an eccentric look. Those that have not seen heard or seen any of his CBC broadcast lectures will be surprised at Gould’s phenomenal intellect and non-mainstream opinions about not just musical history and theory, but even delving into modern philosophy, albeit briefly. His parodies of the orthodox musical establishment in his Sir Humphrey Price Davies character might seem a bit ridiculous, but that’s exactly the point he was trying to make. I was just enraptured getting to see him play once again, in his chair. And while he deconstructs everything that he feels is wrong with Mozart’s mature works, (using K. 491 as an example), he concludes with an exquisite performance of K. 333, the Piano Sonata in B Flat Major. I asked if a copy will be for sale eventually, and the presenter said they’re working on it.

Maestro, Maestro! Herbert Von Harajan. Patricia Plattner. France. 1999. 70 mins. French and German with French subtitles. FIFA link
Now twenty years since his death, this 10 year-old retrospective manages in 70 minutes to coverage a long and brilliant career of one of the most famous conductors of the 20th century. There is of course, the problematic Nazi party membership in the 1930’s and through the war that earned him some shunning by musicians thereafter, but Karajan’s “de-Nazification” by the Allies after the war showed that if anything, he only used the party to advance his career. Certainly his marriage to his 1/4 Jewish 2nd wife, whom he married during the war, and almost left the party over, tends to balance the scales for most people. Karajan was the driving force behind the Philharmonia London’s success with his many recordings, and he was an early adopter and marketer of the CD in the 1980’s. There are his many years of being principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, and as well his long-term association with La Scala. We get to see Karajan’s teaching side as well, with comments from conductor Seiji Ozawa and violinist Sophie-Anne Mutter, as well as members of the European Union Youth Orchestra. Karajan was every bit the “star” celebrity conductor, with his informal, yet dapper manner of dressing, lots of schmoozing with the jet set (he flew his own jet, as well) the gorgeous model 3rd wife and photogenic children, and so on.


Gore Vidal. David Thomas. UK. 2008. 49 mins. English. FIFA link
Host Melvyn Bragg of the ITV South Bank had previously interviewed Gore Vidal about twenty years ago – some of the footage is taken from that episode, to reflect on what’s changed in Vidal’s world view since then. The last, fading lion of American writers of his generation (Vonnegut and Mailer having already died), he’s slower, but the incisive wit and unforgiving eye are still there. Now moved back to his original Hollywood home after decades of self-imposed “exile” from the U.S. in Rome and a beautiful Italian village, he weighs in on the death of his lifelong partner Howard Auster, comes back to how his second novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), and how it earned him fame, notoriety, and a permanent animosity for The New York Times for their refusing to review the novel (as well as his next four books), because of the open and unabashed dealing with homosexual themes. Some of you may be more familiar with Myra Breckinridge (1968), the transsexual satirical comedy that in both book and film form was a minor scandal all over again. Vidal’s critique of gay and lesbian identity as artificial and unnecessary has always been problematic, but the man has been such a Democrat and an anti-Imperialist, that it’s easy to forgive him. His weighing-in on the U.S.’s fall from grace because of declining educational standards and political apathy are scathing, as are his predictable, but hilarious pronouncements on G.W. Bush. It was refreshing to see that he’s not so partisan that he doesn’t pull any punches on the Kennedys' limitations (he was fairly close to “Camelot”, since Jackie Kennedy (nee Bouvier) was a step-sister of his). An interesting visit with Vidal at the end of his career, near the end of his life.

Sarah Waters. Gillian Greenwood UK. 2008. 49 mins. English. FIFA link
Host Melvyn Bragg of the ITV South Bank interviews the writer of Tipping The Velvet, a Victorian lesbian romance that was made into a 2002 BBC miniseries (we watched it last year on Showcase). Very happy to describe herself as a lesbian writer, she maintains that the lesbian aspect of her fiction is there in the stories naturally, since it is an aspect of her life. While Waters may have a PhD in English, and has written interesting historical fiction informed by her studies of Victorian culture and sexual mores, I found her attempt at articulating her motivations and influences rather pedestrian and not at all rigorous. I suppose it’s a judgment on my part, but someone who visits a psychic to learn about themselves, well, it was laughable. Juxtaposed against Vidal, it was literary flyweight against heavyweight. That being said, Tipping the Velvet was a good mini-series, although haven’t read the novel, so I can’t quite give a critique on Water’s writing.