The Art of the Piano is a feature-length, 106-minute documentary that presents in refreshingly straightforward fashion a portrait of 20th-century piano playing. The format is simple: short segments on virtually all of the great pianists who have ever been captured on film, augmented by extracts from interviews, sometimes with the pianists themselves, or with later conductors and musicians of international stature, including specially filmed contributions from Daniel Barenboim, Sir Colin Davis, Evgeny Kissin, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, and Tamás Vásáry. The narration by John Tusa offers an overview of piano music through the century, though the heart of the film is the great quantity of rare archive historic footage, with extracts from performances by Gould, Horowitz, Paderwski, Rachmaninoff, Richter, Rubinstein, and many others. The interviews are short, but offer considerable insight, while the film of so many revered pianists brought together is a literal eye-opener, especially for those who have previously only known these masters from LP and CD. This is, like the companion program The Art of Singing, as close to definitive as a single film can get, even going so far as to include footage from the "silent" era with sound from corresponding recordings. --Gary S. Dalkin, Amazon.co.uk

这张全长116分鐘的影像纪录片『歌唱的艺术』堪称20世纪最精彩的影像纪录，从1911年默片时代本世纪第一位歌王卡罗素开始、50年代称霸大都会歌剧院的首席女高音史蒂汶丝、『前三大』男高音的科雷理、史蒂法诺分别演唱<<杜兰朵公主>>里的卡拉富王子与<<丑角>>真情至性的<粉墨登场>、毕约林与提芭蒂1956年合作<<波西米亚人>>的珍贵录影、『歌剧女神』卡拉丝早年於里斯本的<<茶花女>>以及1964年於科芬园歌剧院的<<托丝卡>>绝唱、庞赛儿1936年为电影试片载歌载舞的<<卡门>>录影、花腔之后苏莎兰、第一位扬名国际的美国黑人女高音普莱丝、本世纪最伟大的华格纳女高恩弗拉格丝塔、歌剧迷心中最伟大的莫札特男高音温德利许演唱<<魔笛>>等等28位世纪歌唱家的珍贵影像纪录，同时兼具欣赏与研究的高度价值。