A phenomenal series of uploads was made to YouTube in 2020: 3 clips of the legendary Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau in a 1935 Mexican movie in which he portrays Franz Liszt! The film ‘Sueños de Amor’ – or ‘Liebestraüme’/’Dreams of Love’ – was directed by José Bohr in 1934 and released the following year. I had never heard of the film before, let alone seen it; the colleague who alerted me to its existence told me that it was only rediscovered a few years ago, in 2017.

The entire film has been posted and then taken down from various online sites – the last one that was visible was available by clicking this link but now that seems not to be working (I’m leaving the link there in case it’s a temporary issue and I will check back). Someone has once again uploaded the entire thing to YouTube but this might be taken down again – I’ll share this at the bottom of the page after the individual musical links shared more immediately below.

While the soundtrack has some warble that results in unstable pitching, we can still appreciate some magnificent playing by the great pianist in his young years.

This opening sequence shows Arrau’s name along with the rest of the cast, and features the pianist playing Liszt’s Un Sospiro:

This opening scene is set up to be like Josef Danhauser’s  1840 portrait ‘Liszt am Flügel’ (‘Liszt at the piano’):

There is also this glorious performance of the Paganini-Liszt ‘La Chasse’ Etude, with some truly dazzling fingerwork (unfortunately the volume is extremely low in this upload).

And finally, a truly impassioned reading of Liszt’s everpopular Liebestraum No.3 – again with regrettably low volume, but the passion in the middle section particularly palpable:

A remarkable discovery providing tremendous insight into Arrau’s artistry. One hopes that the audio will be improved so that we can even better appreciate the pianist’s playing but as it stands this is still a a truly fascinating find!

Here is the full film as currently available: