Piano Players, Part One
TCM, beginning at 8 p.m.
Tonight and next Wednesday, Turner Classic Movies tickles the ivories with evenings of films featuring plenty of pianos, piano music and those who play the instrument. Most of the featured movies are biopics of real-life piano masters, while a few deal with fictional musicians. First on the program this evening is A Song to Remember (1945), a dramatized look at the life of famed Polish pianist/composer Frédéric Chopin (Best Actor Oscar nominee Cornel Wilde). Paul Muni costars as Polish composer/music theorist Józef Elsner, with Merle Oberon as French novelist George Sand, Nina Foch as Polish soprano Constantia and Stephen Bekassy as Hungarian pianist/composer Franz Liszt. Next, the drama Song of Love
(1947) fictionalizes the romantic triangle among pianists/composers Clara Wieck Schumann (Katharine Hepburn), Robert Schumann (Paul Henreid) and Johannes Brahms (Robert Walker). Liszt also appears here, portrayed this time by Henry Daniell. British melodrama The Seventh Veil (1945) follows, telling the story of a concert pianist (Ann Todd) who struggles to overcome a debilitating delusional disorder focused on her hands that makes her unable to perform. James Mason and Herbert Lom costar. After minor appearances in tonight’s first two movies, Franz Liszt finally gets to be the focus of the next film: Lisztomania (1975), a typically flamboyant production from writer/ director Ken Russell that offers a surreal/comedic portrayal of the musician (played by The Who’s Roger Daltrey) as the first classical pop star. Prog rock legend Rick Wakeman, who also appears as the Norse god Thor, composed the film’s soundtrack, which includes synth versions of works by Liszt and Richard Wagner. The coda for this evening’s lineup comes with another film written and directed by Russell: Mahler (1974), a similarly unique take on Austrian composer Gustav Mahler (Robert Powell). BAFTA Award winner Georgina Hale costars as Alma Mahler in this film that was nominated for the Palme d’or at the Cannes Film Festival and was awarded the Technical Grand Prize there. — Jeff Pfeiffer