The Art of Conducting (Legendary Conductors of a Golden Era) has longer portraits of six major conductors of the twentieth century: Sergiu Celibidache, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Erich Kleiber, Willem Mengelberg, Evgeny Mravinsky, Charles Munch, so that as much rehearsal and performance footage as possibl
The Art of Conducting (Legendary Conductors of a Golden Era) has longer portraits of six major conductors of the twentieth century: Sergiu Celibidache, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Erich Kleiber, Willem Mengelberg, Evgeny Mravinsky, Charles Munch, so that as much rehearsal and performance footage as possible is included (100 minutes out of a total of 115 minutes). Some of the footage is very rare, and hasn’t been seen since it was screened on television in the 1960’s.
There is a small amount of commentary from eminent musicians who knew these artists first hand, including Yehudi Menuhin, Daniel Barenboim and Bernard Haitink.
The film demonstrates many of the early filming techniques for classical music, from newsreel footage and early studio recordings, to “tele-recording” and the advent of video.