Interview, Bruno Monsaingeon on the Menuhin Centenary

The veteran French film-maker Bruno Monsaingeon has charted the careers of some of the most outstanding musicians of the twentieth century, including Glenn Gould, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Sviatoslav Richter and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, but his work with the late Yehudi Menuhin is surely his greatest labour of love - over the course of three decades, he returned again and again to a documentary-subject who was also a friend, mentor, musical partner and life-long inspiration.

I spoke to Bruno on Friday morning, whilst he was in London to present a special screening of The Violin of the Century (recently re-issued with new footage of the 'Mykonos Conversations' between Menuhin and Monsaingeon from 1994) as part of the Menuhin Centenary celebrations, and found out a little more about his documentation of a remarkable forty-year friendship…

How did you first encounter Menuhin and his playing?

When I was a child I heard my first recording of him without knowing who he was, or even who Brahms was - I had that early recording of one of the Brahms Hungarian Dances, and it literally changed my life and its orientation. I must have been four or five, and that was the beginning of an extraordinary relationship. Later on I became a student of his, through a masterclass, and then we really became friends who played together and eventually started making these films – our overall output together is something like sixteen films. The last documentary which we made together, The Violin of the Century, was done over a period of around 30 years, so it really is the result of that extraordinary relationship.

Tell me a little about the new material that’s been issued as part of the centenary release…

We did some talking in Mykonos in the summer of ’94, and naturally I had in mind the dramatic structure of the film, but we talked about so many subjects! This situation of being together, having the crew there, and being in that wonderful place where he could devote himself totally to the film without having concerts or interviews to give was just irresistible. It’s been my dream to edit what we’d done and I’ve just finished that, for the box, and it’s three hours long, divided into 26 chapters. He’s just talking, not even contaminated by music (we have many other films of that) and just seeing him talking, unstructured, is a glorious thing. So using rushes and making them into a consistent whole is also one of my aims: it’s something I did with Gennady Rozhdestvensky and with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and I feel that these things should be done for so many, not just in music, but in the fields of sports, politics, science … (Imagine if we had the chance of getting Shakespeare, or Marcel Proust to talk about their art, wouldn’t it be wonderful to have that?!) But the problem is that television - which we still need – is entirely opposed and hostile to the whole purpose.

It was a fantastic inspiration: I’m still shivering when I think about that whole year, but also at the thought of having been able to play with him and having that burning sound next to mine. Hopefully I’ve constructed a faithful portrait of this great man…not slavishly faithful, because it’s not my purpose to make it into a hagiography – my purpose is really to let these people express themselves for what they are, and to give the whole thing cinematic structure.

And also in the film, I must say that I wanted to get back to the idea that this was a very great violinist, if not THE greatest violinist, because in later years the whole emphasis shifted towards the political, and the fact that he was a great humanitarian - and of course he was, but I think this should not conceal the fact that the great Menuhin contribution is music! I read some critics somewhere in certain magazines saying ‘Well, after the War, his role as a politician was perhaps more important than his role as a musician’. But I wanted to keep the focus on the music, because he was a singer, really – he was the ultimate singer! We decided early on that we would never touch on his personal life, on family matters: all his humanity, all his humanitarianism, would come through because of the music.

When you set out to make The Violin of the Century, did you consciously want to do something that was in a different style from previous documentaries that you’d seen about artists?

Yes, it was absolutely different, by which I mean that I was determined not to be influenced by any of the usual television formats. I wanted it to be a huge film, but one that could be divided – I do understand that people might want to see the first half, and then maybe have a drink before seeing the second (or perhaps see it next week, or perhaps in a month, it doesn’t really matter), but I wanted the picture to be as wide as possible. And for that, naturally, I embarked on a gigantic amount of research. Of course I had started many years ago, but I was desperately hoping that I would find something from the early years…and when I did, eventually, it was so gratifying!

I found a concert-film from when he was a boy, just a few seconds and without sound. (For the more substantial documents, with sound, the earliest I came across was from 1943, when he was 27 or 26, and when I came across important material without sound, I synchronised them with recordings). The whole thing was quite deliberate, so that when I first came to Greece [in 1994, for the Mykonos conversations] we had already worked for years on the script, the scenario, and the dramatic structure of the film, so that he was totally aware of what I was about to do. He knew that we would cover as wide an area of ground as possible.

It sounds as if he collaborated with you a lot before the filming process, but what about the editing stages? Did he have much input after filming was complete?

Oh no: he saw the film when it was finished, and could not be retouched! This was contrary to what I had done with the documentary from a few years before – I showed that to him several times at my place, because I still had questions, you see, whereas with The Violin of the Century I knew that he had said that he would trust me completely. There was no question! Once we were shooting in Greece, everything went perfectly.

Finally, how did your relationship evolve over those four decades of collaboration and friendship?

It started from that very first day in that masterclass at Dartington. It was quite extraordinary. I asked him if he had the music for one of the Bach partitas, and naturally he said ‘Well, I don’t carry my whole musical library with me…!’, but then next morning he brought me a score of the first Sonata which he’d bought at the local music-shop! And then we played the Bach Double Concerto together, and that was the beginning. Perhaps by the time we started making the films he was more present (later on we would have frequent conversations on the phone, and there were some wonderful lengthy answer-machine messages..!), but right from the start it was an extraordinary relationship.

With him, there was always that mixture of awareness and spontaneity. I think it’s typical of his genius, this incredible naturalness – it’s genius, but in the most natural way. Nothing was forced – the normality was genius, and the spontaneity was genius.

Sometimes I would ask him ‘Are you aware of how you do that portamento?!’ And he would say ‘Of course I know the sound that I want to get, and I know how I’m going to produce it!’, but it sounded so spontaneous, like those singers who just have a natural voice. That double quality was just irresistible, and so typical of him. I really believe he was somehow divinely inspired: he only had to start tuning his violin, and his whole physiognomy changed…It became deeply involved, radiant – radiant not just in the sense of smiling, but of being in an altogether different sphere.