“Christopher Nupen has died at the age of 88,” states an unsigned obituary in Monday’s (2/20) Gramophone (U.K.). Nupen was “born in Johannesburg into a family of Norwegian descent … He moved to the UK and initially worked in banking before joining the BBC as a sound engineer…. He was then invited by Huw Weldon, the Managing Director of BBC TV, to make a series of films about classical music starting with Double Concerto which followed Vladimir Ashkenazy, Daniel Barenboim and the English Chamber Orchestra. Using the new 16mm cameras, he developed a style of documentary film making that invited the viewer into the act of making music … This was most memorably demonstrated in his film of Schubert’s Trout Quintet with … Itzhak Perlman (violin), Pinchas Zukerman (viola), Jacqueline Du Pré (cello), Zubin Mehta (double bass) and Daniel Barenboim (piano) … filmed at a performance at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in August 30, 1969 … Nupen made a series on composers, including Paganini, Schubert and Sibelius, as well as the 2004 documentary We Want The Light, a study of the complex relationship between the Jews and German music…. One of the younger subjects of his films, Daniil Trifonov said … ‘Christopher Nupen knows how to go into the psychology of an artist and it really shows the art of music making from inside out.’ ”
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