The Trout and The Greatest Love and The Greatest Sorrow (review)

This DVD contains two of Christopher Nupen's films: The Trout (1970) and The Greatest Love and the Greatest Sorrow (1994). The first is a documentary and performance of Franz Schubert's Trout Quintet performed in late August 1969 by Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Jacqueline Du Pré, Zubin Mehta, and Daniel Barenboim. These five musicians were not yet widely recognized names in classical music. The second film is an attempt to portray Schubert's emotional state and its effect on his music following the death of Beethoven. It is not a traditional biographical documentary per se, but conveys the spirit of Schubert's last twenty months with performances of his music as well as readings of his letters and diaries.

The first film presents preparations and rehearsals followed by the entire uncut performance of the Trout Quintet. All five musicians featured in the documentary were in their mid- to late twenties and at the cusp of stardom in their individual careers. The television broadcast of this film likely helped these performers to gain a wider audience in a matter of a few years (see, for example, Jim Tosone, "Great Performances: The Life's Work of Director Christopher Nupen," Guitar Review 120 [Spring 2000]: 14–16). This film effervesces with youthful enthusiasm. Nupen films the artists during the week before the performance documenting such things as Pinchas Zukerman selecting a viola in a London violin shop and Itzhak Perlman playing a lullaby to his infant son. The last fifteen minutes before the performance best captures the spirit behind the film. The artists joke with one another and gleefully argue who will go out on stage first.

The next film on the DVD, The Greatest Love and the Greatest Sorrow, took many years to complete according to Nupen. By comparison, The Trout only took one week to shoot and eight weeks to edit. Nupen admits in his introduction that The Greatest Love and The Greatest Sorrow was one of the most difficult films that he had ever made. He did not want it to be a film filled with facts and dates; rather it was to depict the essence of Schubert's emotions and creativity after Beethoven's death. The beginning of the film depicts Schubert as a torchbearer at Beethoven's funeral. Nupen, as the narrator, mentions that Schubert had, "emerged from Beethoven's shadow and recognized that he himself had become Beethoven's heir." He then refers to the epitaph on Schubert's grave written by Franz Grillparzer, "Die Tonkunst begrub hier einen reichen Besitz aber noch viel schönere Hoffnungen" (Music buried here a rich possession but still many fairer hopes [my translation]), as the source of the myth of Schubert's neglect as a composer. Despite the fact that The Greatest Love and The Greatest Sorrow was completed a few years before the appearance of more recent studies of Schubert's myth, these statements made in the beginning seem to be unrelated to the rest of the film's content. An introduction to these more recent studies can be found in Christopher H. Gibbs' essay, "'Poor Schubert': Images and Legends of the Composer" in The Cambridge Companion to Schubert ([Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997], 36–55). Nupen then reads selected letters and diary entries accompanied by Schubert's music. Performances of individual lieder and movements of Schubert's works are interspersed with these readings and are documented in the DVD's menus and liner notes.

The camerawork and lighting in The Greatest Love and the Greatest Sorrow is somewhat overdone. For example, viewers will see many fascinating close-ups of Vladimir Ashkenazy's hands playing the piano. In contrast, Andreas Schmidt sings the lieder in this film, while the camera takes unusually long close-ups of his face; all of which are...