A film by Bruno Monsaingeon

Piotr Anderszewski, piano; Dorothea Anderszewska, violin; Philharmonia Orchestra London, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel; Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen

Everything about Piotr Anderszewski is extraordinary: his talent, his repertoire, his constant questioning of his work as a performer. Any film about this highly unconventional pianist owes it to itself to depart from the beaten path: On the borderline between documentary and fiction, this "road movie" is set against the backdrop of a winter journey by train across Poland with a piano installed on board. Punctuated by Piotr's highly personal reflections, the repertoire consists of essential pages by Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Beethoven, Schumann and Szymanowski.

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: Dolby Digital 2.0
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Original Languges: French, English, Polish, Hungarian
Subtitles: English, German, French, Polish
Running time: 83 mins
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)

"In the documentary, Mr. Anderszewski, who speaks Polish, Hungarian, French and English in the film, is shown during a recording session, playing and conducting Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. On the concert tour, he travels in a specially appointed train car, complete with a kitchen, a dining area and a place for his Steinway grand, which we see being lifted onto the train by movers. In one scene he hosts a New Year’s Eve dinner party on board for friends.

Early in the film, right after Mr. Anderszewski’s confession about his frustrations with the pianist’s profession, he is shown in concert playing the lively Gigue from Bach’s Partita No. 1. Though he takes a brisk, nearly breathless tempo, the playing is so articulate that all the notes come through. Sometimes he really thumps out the bass notes, with clanking tone. Yet there is such zest in the playing over all that the effect is wonderfully ambiguous — like dangerous whimsy... in recent years I have found almost everything he does riveting... Revelatory scenes in the documentary convey the piercing insights that account for the freedom and daring of Mr. Anderszewski’s playing...

During several scenes Mr. Anderszewski animatedly plays excerpts from Mozart’s “Magic Flute,” an opera he finds “the most extreme in its ambiguity,” with music that perfectly juxtaposes “the sad, the joyous, the luminous, the divine, the impertinent.” He plays the orchestra music on the piano, singing, sometimes grunting all the vocal parts, attentive to every quirk. During the long Act II aria in which Papageno searches for his lost Papagena, begins to despair and threatens to hang himself, Mr. Anderszewski’s one-man performance is utterly insightful and completely charming. Papageno’s despair “never lasts,” he says, grinning warmly while he plays. “It’s a ludicrous kind of despair.” -- Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times (July 31, 2009)