Charles Amirkhanian interviews Philip Glass (Baltimore, 1937). They discuss his early experiences in theater, his work with Ravi Shankar, his development of minimal music, and his work with modern opera and cinema.
This 60-minute program honors the great American conductor, pianist and composer Leonard Bernstein as a teacher.
It assesses his importance, his credo and his sense of obligation to pass on to following generations what he himself learned and experienced. Leonard Bernstein saw himself as a link in a long chain of musical tradition leading from Koussevitzky, Mitropoulos, Reiner and Copland to himself and on to a younger generation represented by Seiji Ozawa and Michael Tilson Thomas, and to the youngest musicians he particularly enjoyed teaching, those who were still dreaming of a career.
The film shows Leonard Bernstein as the great "roaming rabbi" of music and love, two concepts which were synonyms for him, just like learning and teaching. We see the great musician who offered his knowledge without reservation and was still developing himself in his last years, eager to learn from other artists. The film also shows Bernstein during rehearsals with orchestras, with famous soloists (e.g. Krystian Zimerman), in conversation with friends and pupils and at work in Vienna, New York, Tanglewood and Salzau.
Recorded in July of 1987, during the Cabrillo Music Festival, Charles Amirkhanian interviews oboist, composer, and conductor, Heinz Holliger (Langenthal, 1939), who was one of the main, featured participants during that year’s Festival. Amirkhanian begins by getting the Swiss musician’s impressions of the Festival, which Holliger praises for it’s relaxed atmosphere and large and sophisticated audiences, although he does voice some reservations about the concert’s acoustics and wind-flapped tent. When Amirkhanian praises the oboe player about his virtuosic performances and dramatic gestures the musician claims to be unaware of such tendencies, and replies with the utmost modesty that the oboe is not as difficult to play as some other instruments. The conversation then turns to the availability, or lack there of, of quality music written for the oboe, with Holliger saying he has explored traditional as well as avant-garde classical music in order to find enough good works with which to build his repertoire. The interview then concludes with Holliger talking briefly about his recent efforts at composing and conducting, during which he confesses a current predilection for writing neo-romantic works.
1.- Leonard Bernstein explains some of Chales Ives (1874-1954) background before performing his second Symphony in Munich heading the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
2-4.- Leonard Bernstein conducts Second Symphony of the american composer Charles Ives with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, in 1987.
