Around the World in 50 Concerts (2014)
During the unique world tour of the RCO celebrating its jubilee in 2013 we meet musicians and concertgoers. The tour develops not just into a journey across the globe but also as a trip to the core of classical music, a quest for the palette of emotions which only classical music can arouse. In 2013 the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra tours the whole world to celebrate its 125th anniversary: 50 concerts spread over 6 continents. Unbounded passion and love for music brings musicians and concert goers together. Documentary maker Heddy Honigmann lands with the orchestra in Buenos Aires, Soweto and St Petersburg and shows how the ensemble succeeds in gaining the hearts of people with a different cultural background. A journey to the kernel and the power of music which knows how to touch unexpected emotions and which helps to overcome the pain of living.
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Thanks for the memories!
Highly Overrated But Still Good
Best movie ever!
The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
Different elements were combined to create one of the most moving documentaries about music of any kind and people from the world. Director Heddy Honigmann selected charming musicians to directly interact with the camera, chose fragments of fine music pieces among the 50 concerts the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam performed to celebrate its 125th anniversary, and captured the resonance of social conflicts and the hopes brought by music in three cities with dramatic stories: Buenos Aires, Soweto and St. Petersburg. So while we experience beautiful music, watch wonderful images of our planet or see and listen to the musicians happily talking about their relationships with the instruments they play, we also experience Heddy Honigmann's humanistic approach to an Argentinian taxi driver, a Russian victim of both Stalin's and Hitler's regimes, and two teenagers and an artistic promoter from Soweto. In all these little portraits life is related to music experience. Echoing the works of other documentary filmmakers Honigmann has contrasted within the frame of a single work the different realities on planet Earth, the easy living of some human beings to the struggles of others. We perceive beauty in the same places where violence and death once ruled, the hope and joy of living and the sad memory of past experiences. But what foremost prevails here is music, including a private little concert to a bakery worker and a huge popular concert by the Amsterdam canals that will surely move you as the concerts given in big concert halls and theaters. A joy to watch and to hear.