The Alchemy of the Piano – A film by Jan Schmidt-Garre with Francesco Piemontesi
Francesco Piemontesi, Alfred Brendel, Ermonela Jaho, Jean-Rodolohe Kars, Stephen Kovacevich, Antonio Pappano, Maria João Pires, Eldar Nebolsin, Yulianna Avdeeva, Zlata Chochieva, Benjamin Heisenberg, Marieke Schroeder, Erwin Stürzer
2110778 / NBD0186V
1 DVD / 1 BLU-RAY
Barcode: 747313577859 / 730099018661
Release Date: 09/05/2025
Francesco Piemontesi, a BBC Music Magazine award-winning pianist and lauded as a ‘wonderful Mozartian’, has an intense curiosity about his fellow artists – their pianos, the sonorities they cultivate, the secret elements that animate their playing, and what drives them. In this documentary by Jan Schmidt-Garre, filmed over one year, Piemontesi talks with some of the world’s leading performers, including his mentor Alfred Brendel, Maria João Pires, Stephen Kovacevich and Antonio Pappano, in a series of revealing encounters that illuminate their individual approaches to the instrument, its colour and form. The film is complemented by a bonus 60-minute recital by Yulianna Avdeeva, Zlata Chochieva and Francesco Piemontesi, played on Rachmaninoff’s Steinway piano at Villa Senar, his home in Switzerland during the 1930s.