other title:
Piotr Anderszewski: Voyageur intranquille
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Piotr Anderszewski: Unquiet Traveller
From the pianist Piotr Anderszewski's first comments in 'Unquiet Traveller' ('Voyageur Intranquille'), a new documentary film that follows him on a concert tour by train through his native Poland, you would think that this fiercely individual artist found being a pianist an agonizing impossibility. In a winter coat and a hat with thick wool lining, Mr. Anderszewski walks solitarily along snow-covered train tracks at a railroad station, as we hear his reflections in a voice-over, in English. 'When I play with orchestra,' he says, 'I sometimes tell myself I'll never play a concerto again. Too many artistic compromises.' Yet, he continues, when confronted with 'the extreme loneliness of the recital, the heroism and also the cruelty involved, I sometimes think that I 'l never do recitals ever again. I'll only make recordings.' Then again, he says, in the recording studio, when he is free to repeat the work as often as he desires, the possibility of always doing better creates another kind of terrible pressure. 'In fact,' he concludes, 'the real, the ultimate temptation would be to stop everything, lie down, listen to the beat of my heart and quietly wait for it to stop.'. . . 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 totour, 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. There is something extreme in this performance, exactly the quality that gave me reservations about Mr. Anderszewski's early work, which was unquestionably brilliant and intensely expressive but strong-willed and feisty. Maybe he has mellowed or maybe I have gained insight into his approach. But in recent years I have found almost everything he does riveting. --New York Times, Anthony Tommasini, July 31, 2009
