Music Transfigured: Remembering Ferenc Fricsay (2003)

Music Transfigured: Remembering Ferenc Fricsay (2003)
A film by Stephen Wright and Gérald Caillat
Directed by Gérald Caillat

This fantastic short film features a biography narrated by Ferenc Fricsay himself as well as rehearsal and performance excerpts interspersed with comments by other renowned conductors and musicians, including Tamás Vásáry, Antonio Pappano, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and Kurt Masur.

Ferenc Fricsay is one of my favorite conductors ever, despite not having many recordings compared to other conductors of the time. His recordings are always so full of humanity and soul, and in this film we get a glimpse of how he does it. In my opinion, his tragically early death was a devastating loss for all of music.

I highly recommend watching the rehearsal of Smetana's The Moldau in full, which can be found here:    • Ferenc Fricsay rehearses and conducts Smet...  
The Don Giovanni performance shown in the film can be found here:    • モーツァルト「ドン・ジョヴァンニ」【日本語字幕】フィッシャー＝ディースカウ/ フリッ...   (featuring Fischer-Dieskau as Don Giovanni; with Japanese subtitles)

DIETRICH FISCHER-DIESKAU (translated from German): "I would not subscribe to what is generally said, that he had suddenly become a different musician [after his illness], with a much more spiritual, ethereal inspiration, and that his whole interpretation was informed by a new spirit. I didn't see that. For me, he was the same musician at the start as the one I knew at the end. ... He was in the process of building his repertoire, which made his premature end all the more tragic. He wanted to do Mahler's symphonies, which weren't in vogue back then and barely known by the public. None of that came about. He wanted to do Verdi. He wanted to conduct Aida, Othello... Othello above all... And of course, much more Mozart. That was also a project."

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