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In December 1990, a film winged its way to me through the Ozark atmosphere to my parents’ house in a village in Southwest Missouri during a winter break from my Peabody education. It was a documentary of the 1990 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, directed by Bill Fertik, and featuring two of my Peabody classmates; Kevin Kenner (who took 3rd in the Piano Competition) and Stephen Prutsman (who took fourth, but was the audience favorite). I knew the documentary was going to be released that day on PBS, and I made a contraband copy of it on my parents’ VCR which included the terrible fidelity of the long-distance Arkansas Public Television over-the-air broadcast. Snowy and discolored is one word to describe the results, nearly un-viewable is another. Regardless, I kept this tape for years, showing it to my students for Movie Nights, not only because of the presence of my colleagues, but also the images from the crumbling Soviet Union and the immediate aftermath. Five years ago, I found Bill Fertik’s email address online and wrote him; he actually answered and gave me the link to his Vimeo channel and instructed me how to download a digital copy, suitable for burning to DVD. What a gift! The snowy, crazy-striped videotape is gone, and beautiful digital images of that documentary now appear on my TV. The above image is taken from the film.
At the beginning of the documentary, a pianist describes the scene where all 118 initial piano contestants must play the same Prelude and Fugue to start the competition: “Round One, all together now, let’s see what happens.” As it happens, the Prelude and Fugue is today’s Prelude and Fugue. And then you watch, in tranches, many of those 118 pianists playing this Fugue as if as one. It is a riveting beginning to a spellbinding documentary. You can watch the documentary here.