M HKA Ensembles

Video, 28 x 27 x 8 cm, 00:05:10.

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. BK7673_M428).

In the film Presto. Perfect Sound by Manon de Boer we see the composer and violinist George Van Dam at work. De Boer has already worked with him on earlier films. In this piece he is playing the fourth part, Presto, from Bartok’s Sonata for Solo Violin, Sz 117 (1944). The title is taken from Bartok’s work. Presto is an originally Italian musical term that indicates the tempo at which a work has to be played. Presto means fast. This Presto is fluent and has a plot-like, almost filmic composition. ‘In this succession of various moods or temperatures we encountered a narrative wealth that made it perfectly suited to a filmed performance,’ explains the musician Van Dam. De Boer made several recordings of Van Dam’s performance and then merged them together. She wanted to approach perfection in a way completely different from what we are familiar with in film. The editing of Presto. Perfect Sound gave rise to a perfect sound, or in other words priority was given to the continuity and quality of the sound over that of the image. This method is commonly employed in the recording of classical music: different recordings of the same piece are cut and pasted in order to arrive at one flawless take. However, De Boer connects the video footage of the separate fragments that were pasted together back to the sound recording. The result is a flawless Presto, but one where the image is shaky. We see the changes of image, but we do not hear them.