Paul Tortelier. The Complete Musician dir. by Peter Amman (review)

Published in 2014, this video is a reissue of a documentary about, and performances by, the great French cellist Paul Tortelier, made by the Swiss filmmaker and psychoanalyst Peter Amman from 1989. For those not familiar with this larger-than-life character with his shock of unruly hair, this film will come as a revelation. Clearly the aim of the director is to capture the essence of the man as musician using footage from a number of master classes, performances, home video, and even a television interview, from shortly before the cellist’s death in 1990. It portrays the artist in his various roles as performer, teacher, composer, and sage. Indeed, although he is seldom seen without his cello with its tell-tale bent pin, the film is not primarily about cello playing. There is almost nothing about cello playing technique. Rather, as the title suggests, we are presented with a close portrayal of what it means for an artist to be a complete musician.

This approach is evident in the first sequence when he is teaching the Bach Suites to students in a master class at the Geneva Conservatoire. He talks about his love and veneration for the composer and his music, transporting us to an earthly paradise. Tortelier interprets the music by using images from nature and imagined scenes from the composer’s daily life - “like an intimate diary.” One movement is described as poetic, another profound. He tells his young charges that to become complete artists they must be cosmopolitan and determined: “All music is firm and decisive like true love which is unwavering.” He lists eleven qualities to attain to that height of integration enabling them to do justice to the soul of the composer. A musician must be a lover, singer, storyteller, architect, sculptor, painter, designer, poet, and missionary, and in order to carry all this off, a cellist must also be physically fit. No individual can say these things without also sounding naïve unless they have the charisma and sincerity to be taken seriously - and these sTortelier has in spades!

The rest of the film shows him putting these themes into action when performing, teaching, politicking, storytelling to children, and being with his family at home. There are delightful sequences showing him playing in duo with his wife (an engaging personality in her own right). Neat splicing tricks show him playing to his students, then segueing to the same repertoire in live performance. Also, by interspersing stills into the rehearsal and performance sequences of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto and the Brahms Double, with Rostropovich conducting, the viewer is able to digest the intimacy and pleasure of their musical communication. Perhaps the oddest sequence allows us to hear Tortelier’s revision of the text of the Marseillaise reflecting his radical political and ecological views. A particularly moving segment is an excerpt from the D Major cello sonata of Beethoven providing us with “a lesson in love,” the essential philosophy of his total approach to music and life.

Bonus tracks include performances of several standard repertory pieces: concertos by CPE Bach, Elgar, Dvorak, and Tchaikovsky’s Variations. These were all filmed by a single stationary camera looking up at the artist, and so are of particular interest to performers, particularly cellists, while serving as a memento of Tortelier’s performances. However, the accompanying orchestras are not of the first rank, nor is the master’s playing quite as reliable as it once was. An encore gives us extended excerpts from his own composition: a suite entitled “Le Cirque.” Tortelier claimed that the act of composing gave him insight to understanding the creative processes of the great masters. The quality of the film, now 25 years old, is a little hazy at times, but doesn’t detract much from its essence. Anyone interested in music, and especially musical performance, will likely find this film insightful, engaging, and a moving tribute to a great artist.