Pianomania (DVD)
With: Lang-Lang, Julius Drake, Alfred Brendel, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Stefan Knupfer
Directors: Cibis Franck, Lilian Franck
DVD Release Date:14 Nov 2011 in the UK (Austria 2009)
Running time: 93 mins
Format: PAL
Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)
Number of discs: 1
Studio: Crabtree Films
ASIN: B005VCO2XI
Summary: A documentary about a bid to perform Bach’s Art of Fugue perfectly
Click the photo for the Pianomania website
Articles
Adam Sweeting, The Arts Desk, 16 August 2010
Nobody can remember seeing a film about a piano tuner before. Happily, Pianomania isn’t merely unique; it’s a riveting documentary into the bargain. It takes as its subject the micro-detailed and nit-pickingly demanding routine of Stefan Knüpfer, Master Tuner for that Rolls-Royce of the piano industry, Steinway & Sons. Among Knüpfer’s celebrated clients are such titans of the keyboard as Lang Lang, Alfred Brendel, Till Fellner and Julius Drake, all of whom appear in the film’s 93-minute span. The main driver of the narrative is the ongoing account of how Knüpfer helps Pierre-Laurent Aimard to record Bach’s Art of Fugue.
You might think tuning a piano is merely a matter of carefully tweaking each string to the correct pitch (isn’t there an iPhone app for that?), but as the film unwinds it becomes clear that Knüpfer’s job comprises elements of psychology, superstition and intuition, as well as mere hands-on practical skills with wood and wires. Each pianist has his own hyper-sensitive demands about the tone, touch, feel and resonance of the instrument, and Knüpfer must display monk-like patience and emit waves of empathy and reassurance towards his musicians as he nurses them towards that perfect sound. Actually, it’s not too difficult with Lang Lang, who demands merely a stout piano bench which won’t collapse beneath him during his performance, in which we see him attacking one of Liszt’s Hungarian rhapsodies as if he’s trying to chop the keyboard into matchwood with his flying fists.
But the core of the film explores Knüpfer’s relationship with Aimard as the pianist prepares for his Bach recording. Would you like the sound to be like this, asks the Master Tuner, making a gesture as if cupping a large balloon in his arms, or like this (clamping both hands together around an invisible baseball)? “Ideally I’d like it to be both,” says Aimard helpfully.
The layman might think a piano just sounds like a piano, but as we probe into the arcane inner world of the concert pianist, a secret universe begins to expand before our eyes. Depending on the piece and the occasion, a pianist like Aimard might require the instrument to make a chamber-sized sound or to boom like an orchestra. He might want its tonality nudged to sound more like an organ, a harpsichord or a clavichord. We hear Knüpfer explaining how he can adjust the keys so that for a given amount of physical input from the pianist, the piano will produce a full, crisp tone or an airier, more impressionistic effect. A piano perfectly set up for one particular concert hall may sound dull and dismal if moved to another one. Knüpfer even swears that a piano has a kind of memory, preserving the spirit of the pianist who last played on it.
This may all sound like fringe science running amok, but there’s an engaging wit and self-deprecating quality about Knüpfer which not only makes him an engaging subject, but explains how he keeps his sanity in the faintly Lewis Carroll-ish world he inhabits. Pianomania’s director Robert Cibis has explained how he first encountered Knüpfer after hearing about his unique abilities from his brother, who’s a pianist. “He was making the whole place laugh and telling such insightful stories that we decided we have to make a film with this person,” said Cibis, though he didn’t want to make a film about piano-tuning per se. “It was really casting first and concept second.”
Having discovered this improbably perfect subject, Cibis and his partner Lilian Franck then had to lie in wait, like wildlife film-makers trying to capture some furtive nocturnal species, until they could win the confidence of their subjects. “It’s very hard to be filmed while you’re recording, because those are such fragile moments,” Aimard confessed. “But there was a mix of dedication and discretion, respect, modesty and concentration so that after several sessions, you just wanted to open the door.” This probably won’t be the summer’s bestselling multiplex-buster, but it’s as compelling an investigation of the mysteries of music-making as you could hope to see.
Jude Rogers, The Guardian, 16 August 2010
It does not, at first, seem the most promising of premises. But Pianomania, a delicate Austrian documentary about the painstaking work of a master piano-tuner, has spent the last six months scooping up international awards.
The film takes us into the life of Steinway’s piano technician Stefan Knüpfer as he works on the instruments of the world’s greatest virtuosos. In the pursuit of perfection, Knüpfer bounces tennis balls on piano strings, replaces the leg of one instrument with a cheap violin as an experiment – and spends an entire year working on one piano until it’s the ideal instrument on which to play an unfinished masterpiece by Bach.
Pianomania began as a pipe-dream in 1999. Documentary-maker Robert Cibis met Knüpfer one afternoon as he tuned a baby grand belonging to his brother, Paul, and instantly knew he had found an ideal subject. “I was fascinated by the way Stefan communicated the minutiae of making music. He used beautiful language, but in a way anyone could understand, with intelligence, humour and joy.” Over the next few years, with his director wife, Lillian Franck, Cibis struggled to get funding for his “completely absurd” idea. By 2006, he decided to take a risk and just make it.
As soon as the cameras started to roll, Cibis knew they had done the right thing. On film, Knüpfer is charismatic, gentle but fiercely passionate; ideas seem to be constantly sparking in his mind. The central thrust of the film is Knüpfer’s relationship with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, the French pianist who curated the Aldeburgh festival last year. In 2006, Aimard embarked on an ambitious project to play a perfect rendition of Bach’s unfinished Art of Fugue, on the piano.
To achieve this, he asked Knüpfer to help him make the instrument sound like a clavichord, an organ and a harpsichord, to get closer to what many think is the sound Bach intended. Their adventures were filmed at the Konzert Haus in Vienna, and when Knüpfer isn’t playing with fluff and hammers to realise Aimard’s dream, the pair are seen galumphing around, as removal men heft heavy pianos to and fro.
As they get closer to perfection, however, tension starts to grow: the reason being the domineering spectre of the piano itself, still not quite ready. “A piano is a big object and a changing one,” says Aimard, explaining why they’re so different from, say, violins. “We don’t travel with them most of the time, so there isn’t that closeness. But once it’s there, it allows you to sing, express, think, shout, pray, even make revolutions. That’s why it is so phenomenal.”
Aimard found being filmed terrifying at first. “Especially with the Bach – this was adding risk to the risk.” Now he feels that Cibis’s work enriched his experience. “It made me think: finally, here is a useful documentary. It shines a light on a profession that few people know about, a profession that is essential, which deserves respect. The film-makers were also following their inspirations and mastering their techniques, just like us. It also helped that they were so smart and discreet.” This took work, Cibis admits. “My job was to disappear as much as possible. Not to make noises. To walk without shoes. The tiniest movement could affect what Stefan was doing.”
It’s hard to find Knüpfer these days. Since Pianomania was officially released in Austria earlier this year, winning the Golden Gate award at the San Francisco International film festival, as well as prizes in Switzerland and Germany, he has largely hidden from the press. As a man who dedicates his life to fastidiousness and perfection, and for whom English is not his first language, he will only agree to answer questions by email.
When he does, he answers beautifully. He thinks the secret of a good instrument is the way “somebody in a huge concert hall with a space of thousands of cubic metres touches the key of a piano with the power of a few grammes”. He played the piano from the age of six, but gave up at 19, because “he could not find enough time to practise”. But while he can write poetically about his profession, he refuses to delve deeper into himself. “There is absolutely no need to describe myself and my work,” he writes. “Just see the film!”
Audiences may well agree. Cibis has been astounded by the reactions it has had. He didn’t know what to say when someone in Locarno exclaimed that Pianomania “was the best film he had ever seen”, and was amazed to see a man “crying with joy” at the end of the London premiere. What this proves, says Aimard, is that magic can reach people from the most unlikely sources. “A film like this shows someone’s unlimited passion and commitment. In film, as in life, there is nothing better.”
Michael Tumelty, The Herald, 23 August 2010
Steinway’s magician casts a spell on the world’s star pianists
Michael Tumelty enjoys music documentary Pianomania.
erious music lovers might spot the music documentary Pianomania, made by Lilian Franck and Robert Cibis, and run a mile; the title smacks of gimmickry. Well, don’t run; in fact go out of your way to see one of the most enthralling, revealing and strangely nail-biting music documentaries ever made – a flawed study, but gripping none the less.
The star is Stefan Knupfer, below, who, in days of yore, would have been called a piano tuner. Knupfer is a technician for Steinway, the leading and most famous firm in piano construction; more accurately, he is THE Steinway technician.
This is a film with a core, and that core is about Knupfer’s attempts to person-alise a Steinway for a concert pianist, the great and endlessly fastidious French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, in the run-up to his recording, for the Deutsche Grammophon label, of JS Bach’s mighty contrapuntal (and incomplete) essay in total musical intellectualism, The Art of Fugue. This landmark recording has subsequently garnered more acclaim and awards for this extraordinary Frenchman whose expressive face is a bit like a squashed potato.
Knupfer, the Steinway magician, is unflappable at the demands of the star pianists who flit in and out of the film: Lang Lang, the over-rated Chinese superstar (whose playing I have always detested, for reasons that can be witnessed on this film) wants “more disappearing” as the sound fades on his piano. He also needs a heavier-duty piano stool to stabilise his mobile body as he flings himself all over the shop. Knupfer gets him “the Ferrari” of stools.
British pianist Julius Drake, accompanying tenor Ian Bostridge in Brahms, wants “a little magic” from his Steinway. Alfred Brendel, in his last year of playing, wants a consistent sound in all registers of the piano, from top to bottom. Aimard, on the other hand, wants different sounds, from fugue to fugue and, sometimes, from note to note.
Therein lies the drama; and it unfolds on both an epic and an intimate scale. Every Steinway piano is different. Each has its own unique number. Each piano has its own character and sound, from register to register. The chosen piano for Aimard’s recording suddenly becomes unavailable: it is being sold to an Australian. Aimard is devastated, Knupfer is distraught, and the Steinway rep for Australia is implacable. Another piano has to be adopted and adapted.
Replacement hammerheads are ordered and arrive. Knupfer spots, as they come out of the box, that they are too narrow. “Nothing like this has ever happened before,” he says, in a moment of indescribable intensity: all this drama over pieces of wood and felt.
Aimard, meanwhile, is homing in on what he wants from his Steinway for the Bach recording. Unlike Lang Lang, Brendel and the others, he doesn’t want a particular sound: he wants “four families of sound” for the different characteristics of different fugues. “What he wants is difficult to achieve,” observes Knupfer, introducing us to the concept of Steinway customisation, via specially invented slats and sound reflectors, home-made glue, endless pieces of felt to dampen and dry out resonance, and a mysterious process involving a great deal of “poking about” in the entrails of the Steinway with something resembling a toothpick.
The drama, passion and tension that flow from the search for the perfect sound elude words, but can be felt, never more than in the catharsis of the moment when the super-authoritative, totally confident, supremely prepared and relaxed Deutsche Grammophon production team arrive, set the mikes and begin recording.
A fabulous film, a superb tour of the piano, wonderful European concert halls, the mind of a great pianist and the craft and art of a great technician: just too many peripherals and extras.
Joachim Mischke, Hamburger Abendblatt, 3.9.2010
Operation am offenen Flügel
“Pianomania”, ein Film über die Arbeit des Hamburger Klaviertechnikers Stefan Knüpfer, wird weltweit gefeiert, nun startet er auch in Deutschland
Wirklich normal ist eigentlich niemand in diesem liebenswürdig irren Film. Nicht der mit Sonderwünschen bombardierte Hausmeister des Wiener Konzerthauses, dessen Stirn sich wegen solcher Extrawurst-Bestellungen, am liebsten kurz vor Feierabend, schon längst nicht mehr kräuselt. Nicht die Handwerker, die in der Steinway-Manufaktur aus Tausenden von Einzelteilen Präzisionsinstrumente herstellen, die wegen ihrer individuellen Stärken und Schwächen eigentlich Vornamen tragen sollten und keine Nummern.
Auch der Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, der sich ein Jahr vor der CD-Aufnahme seine Interpretations-Absichten für Bachs “Kunst der Fuge” penibel in ein Notizbüchlein einträgt, darf für grundsätzlich sehr anders tickend gehalten werden. Ebenso sein Kollege Alfred Brendel, der – nervös wie ein Rennpferd kurz vor dem Startschuss – auf dem Klavierhocker sitzt, während direkt neben ihm noch letzte Feinheiten in den sensiblen Innereien seines künstlerischen Mediums gerichtet werden. Einer wie Brendel tut dann nichts anderes mehr, der will dann nur noch spielen. All das macht jeden von ihnen ja erst so sympathisch.
Letzte, kleine, fast unhörbare Details, jene hauchdünne Schicht, die “schon sehr gut” von “wirklich überragend” trennt, darum geht es in diesem Dokumentarfilm mit dem schönen Titel “Pianomania”, der am 9. September in die Kinos kommt. In Großbritannien hat er bereits Premiere gefeiert, “ein kleiner Film mit großen Schwüngen”, lobte der “Guardian” und beschrieb Menschen, die unter Freudentränen die Vorstellung verließen. Beim Internationalen Filmfest von San Francisco gewann “Pianomania” den Golden-Gate-Award, in Locarno gab es Standing Ovations. Im Film geht es um klassisch verrückte Künstler, um weitgehend untherapierbare Borderline-Persönlichkeiten – vor, hinter und neben der Bühne. Um Profis wie den Klaviertechniker Stefan Knüpfer, der hin und wieder das Radio ausschalten muss, weil er den Klang des Klaviers nicht erträgt.
Die Filmemacher Lilian Franck und Robert Cibis nehmen ihr Publikum mit hinter die Kulissen des Konzertbetriebs, dorthin, wo noch gearbeitet, gefeilt, gehobelt, geschraubt und vor allem an allem gezweifelt wird, bevor gespielt werden kann. Sie zeigen einen dieser unverzichtbaren Experten, die man als normaler Zuhörer erst dann wahrnimmt, wenn live und vor aller Ohren etwas schiefgegangen ist.
Knüpfer ist ein manischer Perfektionist, den einige Bruchteile von Millimetern mühelos um den Schlaf bringen können, wenn sie irgendwo in dieser hochgezüchteten Musikmaschine Konzertflügel fehlen. Und moderne Flügel haben elend viele Stellen, an denen so etwas jederzeit möglich sein kann. Irgendwas ist ja immer. Und was nicht wirklich vorhanden ist, kann man sich ja immer noch einbilden.
Als Steinway-Cheftechniker in Wien, im Allerheiligsten der klassischen Musikwelt, hat der gebürtige Hamburger Knüpfer täglich Operationen am offenen Herzen durchzuführen, während die Patienten ihm unentwegt dazwischenreden oder mit Verbesserungsvorschlägen am Nervenkostüm zerren. Er muss Star-Pianisten und solchen, die sich dafür halten, mit Engelsgeduld und Leidensfähigkeit jeden Wunsch von den Fingern ablesen, denn er ist dafür da, ihr Können im Rampenlicht erstrahlen zu lassen. Nur die wenigsten von ihnen leisten sich noch den Luxus, mit einem eigenen Instrument (oder, wie weiland Horowitz, sogar mit eigenem Klaviertechniker) durch die Welt zu reisen. Alle anderen müssen spielen, was gerade da ist, wo immer sie ihr Terminkalender auch hinbeordert. Dort können sie nur hoffen, dass jemand wie Knüpfer in Rufweite ist.
Sobald Musiker mit Vokabelkrücken wie “Der Ton atmet nicht” versuchen, ihr klangliches Ideal zu umschreiben, muss Knüpfer verstehen, was sie damit wohl meinen könnten. Einmal, zweimal, so oft wie eben nötig. Wenn jemand wie Aimard ganz freundlich lächelt, aber dann mit dem einen Wort “Frage …” alles auf den Prüfstand stellt, weil ein Obertönchen ganz knapp nicht dort schwingt, wo er es gern hätte – da braucht es Nerven wie Basssaiten.
Als ihm ein japanischer Kollege zeigte, dass er einen Staubklumpen im Resonanzboden eines von Knüpfer betreuten Flügels gefunden hat, sagte der ihm mit strengem Unterton, er solle den Staub nur ja wieder genau dorthin zurücklegen, wo er herkommt. Das kann nur ein leicht verschrobener Spaß unter Experten gewesen sein. Muss aber nicht. Die Grenzen zwischen Wahrheit und Wahn sind da fließend. In einer Szene beim Musikfestival in Grafenegg bittet Julius Drake, der Klavierbegleiter des Tenors Ian Bostridge, Knüpfer darum, den Flügel bis zum Konzertbeginn mit “a little magic” zu versehen. Solche Unmöglichkeiten erledigt jemand wie Knüpfer sofort, Wunder dauern höchstens etwas länger. Und wenn eine anstrengende Aufnahmesitzung mit Bach-Fugen unbefriedigend überstanden ist, überrascht Knüpfer am nächsten Morgen den Produzenten und seinen Tontechniker mit einem Geschenk seiner Frau: einem zum Vortagsergebnis passenden Käsekuchen.
Der Ton macht die Musik? “Pianomania” zeigt mit liebevoller Hingabe und einer Extraportion Engelsgeduld, wie wahr dieses Sprichwort ist.