The real deal on Mozart

Phil Grabsky is grateful his subject died so young - otherwise the film-maker's job would've been even tougher.

Forget the buffooneries of Amadeus, you will get closer to the real Mozart in a documentary which opens tomorrow at the Academy Cinema.

Director Phil Grabsky, in Auckland recently, may be known to you if you are a fan of the Discovery Channel: he was the man behind the popular Ancient Warriors series.

"Discovery was very influential in documentary film production in Britain in the 90s," says Grabsky, "largely because they brought in money. But then they started having an editorial influence and being more interested in weapons than inventions or the world around them."

In 2001 Grabsky made a feature on Muhammad Ali; in 2003 a documentary about the survival of an 8-year-old Afghanistan refugee. Both are far from what he calls "the celebrations of non-thought, celebrities and reality shows currently on British TV. The world's a big place and needs more variety than that."

For 2006, Grabsky has made his own contribution to Mozart's big year, with "the best soundtrack you could possibly have". It is staggering how much life, character and music he has fitted into the 126 minutes of In Search of Mozart.

Interview clips are plentiful, filmed by the director himself.

"I was just there on my own without a big crew. I was asking genuine questions and not trying to pretend what I didn't know."

There are scholars, such as the late Stanley Sadie, and revelatory performers. Imogen Cooper is playful with the opening gambit of a piano concerto, Leif Ove Andsnes describes goosebump experiences, and Simon Keenlysides talks about "the arc lamp of truth" in Mozart's operas.

The star is Lang Lang, playing a divine K491 concerto with what seem like boneless fingers, and then telling us the story of the piece, a racy narrative of nice ladies and bad guys.

Grabsky appreciated Lang Lang's co-operation. "It wasn't a very good piano or a very good acoustic and yet Lang Lang was still willing to play something. What he said about narrative stories in the music built upperfectly to the Da Ponte operas."

A remarkable number of the operas are in the film, from Ascanio in Alba to The Magic Flute, but it wasn't always easy finding the right production "without Nazis, or being set in the future, all dressed up in silver foil and blonde bob wigs".

You won't find cheesy Discovery-style reconstructions of history here.

He relies on documents and letters, including a generous splattering of Mozart's scatological banter and a cutting critique of a maidservant.

The time travel is niftily handled. A painting of Mozart fades mysteriously behind the fanning of a windscreen wiper, or, echoing a Joni Mitchell line, carriage wheels turn to car wheels in the town. Only occasionally, as in a sped-up London sequence, does it jar.

There is winning humour too when he cuts from tenor Ian Bostridge talking about the Beatles to a close-up of the shaggy-haired cellist of the Skampa Quartet.

See it on the big screen and enjoy sumptuous images, starting with the Salzburg winterscapes behind the Clarinet Concerto.

Concert performances, too, are cleverly and often dramatically, caught. Leif Ove Andsnes, shot from above in the D minor concerto, is a breathtaking piece of filming.

On the smallish downside there is the odd lacklustre cameo: Sir Thomas Allen likening Mozart to a photocopier, or simple pieces earnestly delivered on a modern Steinway.

It is also irritating to have to search the website for credits - Sandrine Piau's exquisite solo in the C minor Mass deserves one. You may well consider buying the CD on your way home.

But then perhaps Grabsky provides some of the answers when he talks about "the problem of what you leave out of such a full life".

"I am one of those rare people who are quite glad he died at 35. If he had lived on he would have made my life so much harder - 700 works are quite enough; another 20 years and there would have been 1000".

In July 2007, Grabsky plans to release his next documentary about an Angolan music school for children who have survived the brutalities of civil wars.

"There are lots of fantastic characters we are following at the moment," says Grabsky.

"I'll open the door, and the youngsters will be playing on these out-of-tune pianos ... and playing Mozart."

* In Search of Mozart plays at Academy Cinema, from Friday