The films offer an intimate view of the artist and his hardly-believable gifts which are currently astonishing the world. Daniil Trifonov started to play the piano at the age of five, not because he wanted to play the piano but because he wanted to compose.
That was unusual enough but it was only the beginning of a musical quest which led to his winning both the Tchaikovsky and Rubinstein competitions at the age of 20 — an astonishing feat.
In these two films Trifonov talks revealingly about his musical concerns but his modesty prevents him from saying anything at all about his extraordinary technique, “I am just playing the piano” he says. “There are people doing even more crazy things”.
The films contain a number of performances shot live on stage with cameras unusually close to the artist which adds consideraby to the power of the images. They also present him in conversations which demonstrate his earnestness, his exceptional modesty and his gloriously high intelligence.
In the portrait film Trifonov plays music by Chopin, Ravel and Trifonov himself: part of his first piano Concerto, filmed at the world premiere performance which took place at the Cleveland Institute, in the United States, in April 2014.
In the performance film he plays music by Chopin, Scriabin, Johann Strauss (arranged Trifonov) and Rachmaninov — a performance of the rarely heard Variations on a Theme of Chopin, in the elegant Teatro Accademico in Castelfranco Veneto, near Venice in Italy.
Region: 0 (all regions)
Picture format: 16:9
Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Subtitles: French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese
Running time: 103 Minutes
