SELECTIVE RETROSPECTIVE 
"Did I not know of his association with the Mariinsky; the first performance of the Second Symphony, conducted by the composer; the first performance of the St John Liturgy, et cetera?’ I confessed I did not know, whereupon I received a thirty-minute lecture from Gergiev about my ignorance and how important Rachmaninoff was to all Russian musicians, a lecture which concluded with him saying, ‘You make the film; I’ll conduct the music.’ Since, at that time, he was one of the most highly regarded and expensive conductors in the world, it was an offer I would have been churlish to refuse.
Rachmaninoff’s music is of course all too familiar - in films like Brief Encounter and Shine; on TV in The South Bank Show and Panorama; on radio in Semprini Serenade - and includes some of the most famous melodies of the 20th century. His romantic, passionate music is as popular today as it has ever been.
This 100-minute documentary film, shot in Russia, Switzerland and America, was made with the full participation of the composer’s grandson, Alexandre Rachmaninoff. And Rachmaninoff’s letters and other reminiscences are spoken by Sir John Gielgud. “It is a curious story”, Rachmaninoff says. “The older we get, the more we lose that divine treasure of youth, and the fewer are those moments when we believe that what we have done is any good. Nowadays, I am rarely satisfied with myself, and almost never feel that what I do is successful. I am burdened with a harvest of sorrow.”
After the Bolsheviks had burned and looted his country estate, Rachmaninoff and his family had fled to the United States. From there he wrote: “Stalin and his bullies seemed determined to destroy the Russia we loved. In 1931, with Count Ilya Tolstoy and others, I wrote a letter to the New York Times in which I said: "At no time, and in no country, has there ever existed a government responsible for so many cruelties, wholesale murders and common-law crimes, as those perpetrated by the Bolsheviks. For 13 years now, the communist opp¬ressors have subjected the Russian people to indescribable torture. They are nothing but a group of professional murderers!”
“My music was now forbidden at the Moscow and St. Petersburg - now called Leningrad - Conservatories, where I had been a student all those years ago. I knew now that, for me, Russia was forever closed. Dies Irae! Day of anger!”
“Only art that is free, has meaning. Only creativity that is free, can be joyful. In Russia, there are no 'free artists', only victims without rights. The title 'free artist' is now a bitter joke.”
The film features soloists Mikhail Pletnev (with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Claudio Abbado, and his own Russian National Orchestra), baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky and young stars Valentina Igoshina, Peter Jablonski and Nikolai Putilin."
- Tony Palmer
Tickets £8
17th May Day Pass (6 Films): £25 Only - applied automatically when you book all 6 films.
