Goofing Around with the ‘Trout’ Quintet

I wrote a post in the fall of 2006 highlighting the rehearsal process of the famous ‘Trout’ Quintet documentary from 1969 featuring Daniel Barenboim on piano, Itzhak Perlman on violin, Pinchas Zuckerman on viola, Jacqueline du Pré on cello, and Zubin Mehta on double bass.

Check my old post out here. In addition to the rehearsal process, it features complete renditions of the third and fourth movements.

There is also a clip from the movie where each musician grabbed a different instrument and played a chunk of the first movement. Daniel Barenboim sounds like a chud on bass, but listen to how amazing Jacqueline du Pré sounds on the violin! She’s holding it like a cello, but it sounds like she could play an entire concert like that and still dazzle the audience.

This documentary has unfortunately not been released on DVD, but you can pick up a VHS copy from Amazon here:

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1 Comment

  1. Andrew
    Andrew on March 14, 2007 at 10:48 pm

    Trout 3rd movement. Watch Zubin almost lose it during the performance, right around 1:15 here:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2xFH1P5Fv4

    And some pretty merciless ribbing going on backstage at around 7:15 and 8:10 of this clip:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KqdlL9efJY

    They were all around 20 years old at the time; wacky bowings and questionable musical choices abound, but who can really argue with these guys?

    The 1970 doc “Schubert: The Trout / The Greatest Love and the Greatest Sorrow” is available on DVD. Netflix has it, too. They’ve been expanding their classical & opera collection lately, which is nice.

    Andrew Harmon
    Chicago