Violin Masters: Two Gentlemen of Cremona on PBS

[NewNewbie]

   Hi Everyone

On the weekend I was able to catch, at the wee hours of the morning, on PBS the video documentary "Violin Masters: Two Gentlemen of Cremona".

 

I thought that others should keep an eye on the PBS station in their area for a broadcast, since the video became available to PBS on May 1st of this year.

 

 

www.pbs.org/arts/exhibit/violin-masters

 

Some of the folks in this video post here at Maestronet, so I would like to say Thanks!

 

I really enjoyed this video, just wish it was longer !!!

 

Oh should mention that it is available for sale on DVD from PBS or Amazon etc.

[Jim Bress]

Thanks for posting the link.  Very interesting, but as you say, too short.  

[4th. vcl]

Reading the notes carefully, this is only the teaser to the hour-long video. The full length Blu-Ray or DVD is available from the Website.

[Violadamore]

I adore such well done short documentaries, but I wish that someone like Ken Burns would apply their genius to the formative period of the violin business.  The more I learn of the subject, the more possibilities for a sweeping (and romantic) epic covering 300 years of history (1500 to 1800), and stretching from the Po to the Danube (at the very least) present themselves.  The fictional possibilities for a monumental multi-generational novel on the pattern of Michener and the like at their best also strike me as impressive.  This latter has already been done successfully for Gothic architecture, gunsmithing, and the tea trade, among others.  How is luthiery any less fascinating?

[4th. vcl]

Maybe "The Red Violin" fits your demands, but I'm sure you've already seen it. Gotta' love Samuel Jackson as a famous violin "expert."

[Violadamore]

Maybe "The Red Violin" fits your demands, but I'm sure you've already seen it. Gotta' love Samuel Jackson as a famous violin "expert."

What I had more in mind was on the one hand, Burns' PBS series The Civil War,  and on the other novels like Kenneth Cameron's The Father of Fires, Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth, and James Clavell's books about Hong Kong.  I see no reason why the history of a family of luthiers could not, in the proper hands, be rendered as fascinating as what Louis L'Amour's Sackett series did with the early American frontiersman..

[NewNewbie]

Yes I saw the hour long show, and gave the link to the 10 minute teaser so that people could look forward to seeing the whole hour long show.

 

As to Samuel Jackson, it is a good thing that he is not a method actor, that he did not study Charles Beare to get into character, as there could not possibly be two further separated characters than these two.