Savior - review (scroll down)

'Itzhak' an intimate film portrait of violinist Perlman

Itzhak Perlman in the documentary "Itzhak" opens Friday at the Siskel Center. Little by little, a life richly lived in music unfolds from director Alison Chernick. (Greenwich Entertainment)

By John von Rhein Chicago Tribune

APRIL 3, 2018, 12:15 PM

D

ocumentary films about classical musicians almost always run up against the same problem. How do you present the subject in a manner nontechnical enough to appeal to general viewers, while

providing enough substance to satisfy the classical cognoscenti?

Director Alison Chernick walks that fine line pretty well in “Itzhak,� her affectionate portrait of IsraeliAmerican violin superstar Itzhak Perlman. The 2017 documentary opens Friday for a weeklong run at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago.

Given the many decades of media exposure Perlman has enjoyed, and the many articles and books he has inspired, Chernick retraces much familiar biographical terrain. Few if any insights are offered into the 72year-old fiddle great’s artistry or what drives his long-running love affair with making music. Like its subject, “Itzhak” is long on banter, short on introspection.

Still, given the chance, who among us would not want to hang out with so likable a mensch for 80 minutes?

“Itzhak” presents us with the Perlman beloved by family and friends, a friendly, outgoing personality whose great gift is to make the golden sounds he produces on his violin, in his words, “a replica of the soul.”

And who wouldn’t be touched by the saga of how a young polio survivor from Tel Aviv struggled to be taken seriously as a violin prodigy? His Polish-emigre parents, Perlman recalls, came close to giving up on him, citing his disability as an insurmountable barrier to mastering the instrument. But Perlman persisted, and a phenomenally successful career as one of the leading violinists of all time was the result.

The opening scene of “Itzhak” has Perlman, wearing a New York Mets jersey, zipping around Citi Field in Queens on his electric scooter before playing the national anthem at a Mets game. Then it’s off to the spacious Upper West Side apartment he shares with Toby Perlman, his devoted wife of 50 years. “When I hear that playing,” she says of the music her husband produces on his 1714 “Soil” Stradivarius, “it’s like breathing.”

Little by little, a life richly lived in music unfolds. It does so in Perlman’s own words and through conversations with colleagues such as pianist Martha Argerich, friends such as actor Alan Alda (also a polio survivor) and former teachers such as Dorothy DeLay, with whom he studied at the Juilliard School. Too bad the emphasis on the private Perlman limits our view of the concert Perlman to a couple of early archival clips.

We see Perlman returning to Tel Aviv to accept the 2016 Genesis Prize, a $1 million award given annually to Jewish notables who have achieved recognition and excellence in their fields. While in Israel, he reminisces about his childhood and the difficulties he faced as the result of contracting polio at age 4. The boy made a satisfactory recovery and learned to walk on crutches. Determined to study violin despite his disability, he taught himself to play using a toy fiddle. He gave his first recital at age 10 before his parents sent him to New York for lessons with DeLay. “I had never heard playing like his in my life,” the famed pedagogue recalls in a 2013 interview excerpted in the film. Perlman says he hated some of her teaching but later adopted many of her methods with his own students. (The Perlman Music Program, a summer camp for exceptional young string players that Toby Perlman cofounded in 1995, now operates year-round in Shelter Island, N.Y.) The first of many TV appearances Perlman gave over the years came in 1958 when the chubby 13-year-old

appeared on the Ed Sullivan show. It wasn’t his talent so much as the pity Sullivan felt for “that poor little crippled boy” that prompted his being booked on the show, the violinist recalls.

But the exposure led to Perlman’s Carnegie Hall debut in 1963, followed by concert tours, a succession of recording contracts, invitations to perform at the White House and appearances on “Sesame Street,” “The Tonight Show” and other TV engagements.

Some fiddlers just like to have fun. We catch Perlman cutting loose on a jazzed-up Irish folk tune with pal Billy Joel before a joint concert at Madison Square Garden. We eavesdrop on him rehearsing a portion of the Tchaikovsky Piano Trio in his living room with cellist Misha Maisky and pianist Evgeny Kissin, before they tuck into plates of moo shu chicken.

But it’s his long and happy marriage to Toby (a union that has produced five children), along with his Jewish identity, from which Perlman appears to take the greatest satisfaction when he’s not playing the violin, conducting or teaching.

The documentary doesn’t say so directly, but Perlman, Luciano Pavarotti and Beverly Sills were, in the postLeonard Bernstein era, the chief representatives of classical music on the airwaves of American culture.

When Perlman decides to exit that arena, he would do well to turn off the lights.

“Itzhak” opens Friday and runs through April 12 at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St.; 312-8462800. It also will be playing at the Landmark Renaissance Place Cinema, 1850 Second St., Highland Park; 847-432-7903. This film is not rated. Running time: 80 minutes.

MusicNOW premieres Kirsten’s ‘Savior’ With “Savior,” the latest in a series of multimedia works Amy Beth Kirsten calls “composed theater,” the Illinois-born composer has fashioned an ingenious, absorbing and quietly powerful retelling of the life and death of Joan of Arc that succeeds remarkably well on its unique, genre-melding terms.

The hourlong piece, a MusicNOW commission that had its world premiere in a collaboration between Chicago Symphony Orchestra musicians and members of Kirsten’s Connecticut-based ensemble HOWL Monday evening at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, works obliquely, drawing on the spare power of abstraction and stylization to fuse multiple conceptual elements into a ritualistic piece of music, theater, speech, sound and movement.

“Savior” uses three singers (two sopranos and a mezzo, as the voices of Joan), alto flute, cello, percussion, prerecorded voice, lighting and sound design to evoke the martyred Joan’s experiences as she drifts in and out of consciousness moments before her death at the stake. It unfolds in nine continuous scenes. We experience her visions of God, readings from the war diary of the English commander determined to defeat

Joan’s army and execute “this fair-faced demon,” and the voices of the interrogators who condemned her for heresy (the scene a brilliant cacophony of garbled absurdities).

Kirsten’s eclectic score gathers its strength from a mixture of jazzy, driving rhythmic ostinatos for cello (Katinka Kleijn) and percussion (Cynthia Yeh) in the trial scene, the piercing purity of the women’s voices singing in dissonant harmonic intervals, and, most striking of all, the flute playing of Tim Munro.

The flutist, a former member of the Chicago ensemble Eighth Blackbird, took the mysterious role of the Stag, whom Joan sees as a divine messenger and believes will save her from death. Sporting a mask with illuminated antlers, Munro played, flutter-tongued, grunted, snarled, spoke and emitted all manner of other explosive sounds through his amplified flute, his performance a virtuosic tour de force if there ever was one.

Hardly less mesmerizing were the three Joans — sopranos Molly Netter and Eliza Bagg, and mezzo Hai-Ting Chinn — accomplished singing actors whose ecstatic a cappella trio in the ninth section, “Fire,” sung in French, was hauntingly beautiful and dramatically powerful. This listener won’t soon forget the aching theater-poetry of the final scene, with the heroine’s repeated cries of “Jesu,” the stage fading to black and a single spotlight illuminating Joan’s face. Her faith in God is undimmed to the very end.

Kirsten’s stage direction was as sure-footed as her score and scenario, and she deserves immense credit for avoiding visual cliches — no projections of crackling flames or clashing armies, no projections of any sort, for that matter. Just as the composer capitalized on minimalist abstraction in her staging, so, too, did her sparing use of cello and percussion enhance the multilayered poetry of her libretto. Take a bow, Kleijn and Yeh. “Savior” proved to be a splendid addition to MusicNOW’s 20th anniversary season.

John von Rhein is a Tribune critic. jvonrhein@chicagotribune.com Twitter @jvonrhein RELATED: Itzhak Perlman lets Juilliard students show off their chops » Itzhak Perlman to talk disability here, receive presidential honor in D.C. » Classical listening delights, wrapped in gift boxes » Copyright © 2018, Chicago Tribune

This article is related to: Classical Music, Theater, Israel, Polio, Alan Alda, Citi Field

Missing comments? We’ve turned off comments across chicagotribune.com while we review our commenting platform and consider ways to improve the system. If you purchased points through the Solid Opinion platform and would like a refund, please let us know at chicagomobile@chicagotribune.com.

Support Quality Journalism Subscribe for only 99¢

START NOW ›