ABSTRACT
Ken Russell’s Tchaikovsky biopic The Music Lovers (1970) presents us with a scene in which the composer (Richard Chamberlain) performs his Piano Concerto No. 1 in concert for the first time. During the edited first movement, we are privy to reaction shots of his sister, Sasha (Sabina Maydelle) and various other audience members as they listen. Once the second movement (Andantino semplice) begins, though, a rather different listening experience is presented in the form of two fantasies, each a dazzling piece of audio-visual virtuosity: one is apparently shared between performer and listener, while the other is entirely the private daydream of a member of the audience. Both these fantasies suggest a participatory mode of listening that, as with many of the examples of performance discussed in Chapter 3, seems to speak of the very musicking that Christopher Small argued for in his book of the same title. 1 Thus, as the movement starts, a rural idyll fantasy unfurls, in which Tchaikovsky and his sister’s family are seen wondering through woods, boating on a lake, and harvesting wheat in a field. Triggered by the composer’s exchanged looks with Sasha, 2 it suggests a shared participatory experience—one whose quasi-balletic movements are shaped by the languorous pace and gestures of the music. Moreover, the sound of the concerto remains an active participant in this fantasy with both Tchaikovsky and his sister performing on instruments in their imagined/ remembered space: Tchaikovsky simultaneously plays piano in both the space of the concert hall and the dream, while Sasha imaginatively takes over one of the solo cellos heard in b.42ff.
