The whole film lasts an hour, and is a good introduction (if that's what you need) to J.S. Bach, Glenn Gould, and maybe, too, what it's like to be a genius who has no alternative but to dedicate his life to the service of an extraordinary talent.
Well Go USA in Taiwan continues to commemorate the passing of Pavarotti by promoting a DVD called The Impossible Dream which shows arrangements of the first Three Tenors concert in 1990. You watch them rehearsing to piano accompaniment, hanging around backstage at the ancient Roman baths at Caracalla where the event was staged, conferring with the conductor Zubin Mehta (who had to manage the forces of two combined orchestras), and generally priming themselves for the occasion. There are better memorials to Pavarotti, but, if you haven't seen this one before, it remains of genuine interest.
Apparent impossibility overcome appears again with Yo-Yo Ma's (馬友友) latest CD New Impossibilities. It's the third CD containing material from his Silk Road Chicago project, a year of concerts and improvised sessions that ended in June. Seventeen musicians from, among other places, Lebanon, Iran, India and China combined with Ma and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to expand boundaries and unite different musical traditions. So you hear tablas and violins, pipas and cellos, a caxixi and a double bass, all played by masters in their field.
However old Ma gets (he's now 52), he doesn't stop bringing disparate people together through his performances. In Chicago, he won extensive praise for his continuing optimism and energy. For him, the Silk Road is a symbol of continuing inter-connectedness, which is still as valid today as it was 2,000 years and more ago.
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