Music videos connected with the award-winning English-born American concert pianist and composer Jack Gibbons, plus related musical items.
Jack Gibbons has established a remarkable reputation as one of his generation's finest pianists. He gave his first public performance at the age of 10, and at 20 won the Newport International Piano Competition. Since then he has performed across the world with regular appearances at New York's Carnegie Hall and London's Queen Elizabeth Hall, where he has appeared annually since 1990.
For more information please visit: www.jackgibbons.com
Thank you very much for this. I have heard recordings of him playing before but was not aware there was any film and I glad to see it here. I fail to understand why some people (including my own brother) regard Bartok to be a composer of music that is difficult to listen to and not enjoyable. Much of his music is very beautiful and though some of it is quite challenging it is well worth the challenge. The first record I ever bought as a teenager with my own money I had saved up was a box set of his string quartets. This was in the early 70's. I remember a couple of years later I convinced a friend to listen to the fifth quartet while he was tripping on acid. He listened to the whole thing start to finish on headphones very intently and told me afterwards he liked it very much. Of course one doesn't need to be on drugs to like such music and I am not recommending anyone to try listening this way.
Amazing to see the great composer playing his own music. His stare at the camera seems to be saying something..? What a pity we don't have more footage of the other 20th century pianist composers such as Rachmaninoff and Gershwin who were also great performers.
My father and Dylan boyhood friends, sang as choirboys in Sketty Church and went to Swansea Grammar School then out into life, my father to war. They did meet up when war ended. I remember the day Dylan died.
I love his way of playing, without being a cartoon on the piano, not unnecessary emotions and pretentious fake feelings, anormal gestures and poses. He has that amazing school i love, letting the hands all the work and express themselves... Amazing musician he was
It has now come to my attention that this silent film is likely NOT colorized. Apologies for any doubt I may have inadvertently spread, my initial information coming from a single, unverified, source.
It has now come to my attention that this silent film is likely NOT colorized. Apologies for any doubt I may have inadvertently spread, my initial information coming from a single, unverified, source.
@vivvpprof: Actually the EXACT opposite is the case: I slowed down the video by a fragment (the original was running too fast in any case) so it would match the tempo of Bartók's 1929 Allegro barbaro audio recording.
Not quite the right picture for this song. Keep in mind the thoughts of the native ethnic germans were heavily repressed during the weimar republic times, just like they are today.
Most of the pictures that we have of Bartok show a stern visage. This shows the open smile that might have encouraged peasants to open up to him and let them and record their songs.
I know little of his music but his portraits have always fascinated me. Such intensity in his eyes and softness in his traits... sometimes genius is directly expressed by the face. Have read once memoirs of the hungarian writer Sandor Marai. He called him the greatest hungarian of his time...
Any piano teacher worth their salt should encourage students to tackle Bartok. Many of the pieces from the middle volumes of 'Mikrokosmos', for instance, or the folksong transcriptions in 'For Children', are quite approachable. The footage of the composer at the piano is remarkable. It shows something of the energy and power this physically slight, diminutive man could bring to music.
@@PiotrBarcz If that's true then he shouldn't have had the choice. He's part of cultural history and there should have been a record for future generations.
He was recorded hundreds if times. He was not filmed. Is that Bartok in 1st pf. Concerto? I cant believe we have film . His eyes. He had a physical beauty. He knew he was special he thought he was a finer pianist than Backhaus won 2nd placr . H I s Scarlatti a shows a master.@PiotrBarcz
Musical triple banana split treat, Jack - Gielgud reading the poem, the Rackham illustrations, the film of Ravel, and your performance - tout magnifique! Keep 'em coming!
Hijack - The Beast with Five Fingers freaked me out as a kid, seeing it on television, before I began music studies. I thought I could hear it scrabbling around under my bed at times. Later I remembered the austere, gloomy piece that Thing (Addams family) played in the film , and asked via letter to Universal Studios (wrong producer, I know) what the piece was, and they wrote back with the correct reply. Years later I learned that the hand belonged to 'Ervin Nyiregyhazi, whom some who knew him was considered a real beast with ten fingers. Nosferatu reminds me of a couple of piano students I have met along the way.
Thanks for uploading this, Jack. Elegaic. Long ago I briefly met a nephew of Tibor Serly, and have a current friend who once stayed in Ernst Bloch's cabin.
