Direction
Christopher Nupen
Production
An ALLEGROTM Film

Winner of the TZ-ROSE Munich 1973

United Kingdom, 1972, 55′, English

On August 30th 1969 five young musicians, all of whom were about to become established as international artists of the highest rank, came together to play Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet in the new Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. Their names: Daniel Barenboim, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Jacqueline du Pré and Zubin Mehta.
We thought that the concert might well become legendary in time and so we decided to make a film about it. The intention was two-fold: to film the concert itself live on stage, exactly as it happened, with five of the newly invented, silent 16mm film cameras, and to make an introduction to it during the preceding week, documenting the preparations and, in particular, the spirit behind the event.
The artists had all been intimate friends for some years but, more importantly, they had a great deal in common musically and, in addition, they shared an exuberance in their talents which was memorable, to say the least.
THE TROUT is almost certainly the most frequently televised classi- cal music programme made until now. When it was broadcast for the eighth time in Germany on May 25th, 1994 on the ARTE net- work it drew the biggest audience of all classical music transmissions on that network during the whole of 1994 twenty-five years after the film first appeared!
The Trout has also become the best remembered emblem of a time in our musical history which has gone – and seems to be forever gone. It has acquired both an historical character and the quality of nostalgia as the years have gone by.