The Matchstick Man / The Seventh Door - Two films on Gyorgy Kurtag and Peter Eotvos
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Features
• Classical
• Color
• Content/Copy-Protected CD
• Dolby
• DVD-Video
• Widescreen
• NTSC
In Theaters : 2005
DVD Release : 20 June, 2006 |
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The Matchstick Man / The Seventh Door - Two films on Gyorgy Kurtag and Peter Eotvos Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥
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Two well-made, often enlightening documentaries on two great composers
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This DVD, the seventh in the "Juxtapositions" series of films on contemporary music, pairs the Hungarian composers, Gyorgy Kurtag and Peter Eotvos in two documentaries directed by Judit Kele.
The 1996 documentary "The Matchstick Man" covers the life and work of Gyorgy Kurtag. The composer had a reputation as being somewhat shy and private, but opens his heart here. This is a highly psychological portrayal of Kurtag as creative figure, and dry biographical facts don't abound. The viewer seems expected to already know something about Kurtag's early career, how he once wrote according to the party line, spend an important period in Paris, and so forth.
We learn Kurtag's feelings about the music of his predecessors that inspired him, the authors whose writings have spoken deeply to him, and how he approaches teaching performers. There are brief interviews with Gyorgy Ligeti, Zoltan Jeney, Frank Sulyok, and other Hungarian music figures. There's lots of scenes of performances, with Kurtag and his wife playing the piano, Peter Eotvos leading the Ensemble Modern, and Claudio Abbado conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker, and so forth. Adrienne Csengery, the soprano who debuted "Messages of the late R.V. Toussova" op 17, is briefly interviewed and we see footage of the 1981 Paris concert conducted by Pierre Boulez that launched Kurtag's career abroad. Especially poignant is a scene where Ildiko Monyok explains how Kurtag wrote "Samuel Beckett: What is the Word" op 30A for her after she had lost her ability to speak in a car accident and was only slowly getting it back.
The DVD extra, "Exercises", consists of several scenes which seem to be outtakes from the Kurtag documentary. I-Ming Huang introduces several children to the "Perpetuum mobile" piece from "Games". The philosopher Klaus Stichweh speaks the construction of "Stele" op 33. Then there's a discussion between Stichwech , the composer Henry Foures, and the conductor Dominique Rouits on Kurtag's general aesthetic. In the fourth scene, Kurtag coaches a violinist sitting offscreen. Finally, the fifth scene is a performance of first four movements of the "Officium breve in memoriam Andreae Szervanszky" op. 28 by the Orlando Quartet supervised by Kurtag. There's also a brief cello performance, and the extra ends with Marta Kurtag playing the a few of the pieces from "Games".
In 1998 Kele produced her second documentary, THE SEVENTH DOOR, about the composer Peter Eotvos. Its approach to its subject is quite different. Where Kurtag was passive and had to be piqued into speaking about his work, here Eotvos actively narrates much of the footage and openly talks about his youth and his ideas. There is much discussion of Eotvos' collaboration with Stockhausen in the late '60s, and Stockhausen himself is interviewed. The viewer gets to hear several of Eotvos' little-known early works, which were either electronic or at least inspired by the sounds of Stockhausen's studio. Pierre Boulez speaks a little about Eotvos' time leading the Ensemble Intercontemporain, and in one of the most interesting scenes of the documentary we set Eotvos, Boulez, and David Robertson rehearsing to conduct Stockhausen's "Gruppen". I was fascinated by the composer's explanation of the cosmological theories behind his early piece "Cosmos", which he plays in the arrangement for solo piano.
Again, there are few instances of straightforward biography here, one is expected to know a little of Eotvos' admiration of Frank Zappa, and the death of Eotvos' son is mentioned only in the composer and his daugther watching home video of the boy while "Shadows" plays in the background. Indeed, the title of the documentary refers to Bartok's highly psychological opera "Bluebeard's Castle", where the innermost door of the self is meant to stay tightly closed. Kele displays a man of great charm and ingenuity who still conserves great mystery under a genial surface.
The DVD comes with a booklet that contains Kele's comments on the making of the documentaries (with tantalizing mention of a Ligeti one), as well as brief biographies of the composers and a list of recommended recordings.
With this installment Juxtapositions series continues to provide highly entertaining viewing for fans of contemporary music. If you enjoy the work of Kurtag and Eotvos, this is a DVD which is very much worth getting. Even if one or both of the composers is unfamiliar to you, it's still a good purchase. While I was a Kurtag fan before watching, I had never paid much attention to Eotvos' music before. After watching the documentary however I went back to pieces like "Atlantis" and "Psychokosmos" and discovered great beauty within. |
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The Matchstick Man / The Seventh Door - Two films on Gyorgy Kurtag and Peter Eotvos dvd movie.