Fabulous Fiddlers of the 20th Century

From the heyday of Eugene Ysaye to the deaths of Yehudi Menuhin (in 1999) and Isaac Stern (two months ago), “The Art of Violin,” written and directed by Bruno Monsaingeon, surveys in depth the great violinists of the 20th century. Filmmaker Monsaingeon, himself a violinist, tells a complete and breathtaking story compellingly in this documentary.

This is a survey thrilling in its breadth, and the documented performances--some momentary snippets and several longer excerpts--constitute a listener’s album of great playing.

The gallery of virtuosos observed includes Jascha Heifetz, Nathan Milstein, David Oistrakh, Zino Francescatti, Mischa Elman, Stern, Fritz Kreisler, Ruggiero Ricci and more than a dozen others. They play, sometimes in montage, at other times for almost the entire length of a short work, the core of the repertory--concertos by Brahms, Mendelssohn and Khachaturian, sonatas by Bach, Franck and Brahms, beloved pieces by Bazzini, Schubert and Wieniawski.

The performances are never less than beautiful, technically splendid and elegantly communicative. Among many others, one notes Oistrakh’s incandescent playing of the cadenza from Shostakovich’s First Concerto, Heifetz’s aristocratic Mendelssohn, Ginette Neveu’s riveting performance of the closing of Chausson’s “Poeme.”

As broadening as are the performances, historical footage of some of the fiddlers, in individual interviews, adds dimension to the experience. Among these are Menuhin, Milstein, Oistrakh, Stern and Henryk Szeryng, and cellist-conductor Mstislav Rostropovich.

Contemporary commentary in the film, all enlightening, consistently amusing, comes from the chief host, Itzhak Perlman, and four other, articulate, living violinists: Ivry Gitlis, Ida Haendel, Hilary Hahn and Laurent Korcia.

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“The Art of Violin” airs Sunday at 8 p.m. on KCET.