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PIANOMANIA

By Robert CIBIS, Lillian FRANK

Documentary - Completed 2009

Pianomania follows Stefan Knüpfer, a piano tuner from Steinway and his famous clients Lang Lang, Brendel, Buchbinder and Pierre-Laurent Aimard as they search for the perfect pitch. Truly an unusual and entertaining peak behind the curtain at the worlds great concert halls.

- Year of production
- 2009
- Genres
- Documentary
- Countries
- AUSTRIA
- Languages
- GERMAN
- Budget
- 0.6 - 1 M$
- Duration
- 93 mn
- Director(s)
- Robert CIBIS, Lillian FRANK
- Writer(s)
- Robert CIBIS, Lilian FRANK
- Cast
- Lang LANG, Pierre Laurent AIMARD, Rudolf BUCHBINDER, Stefan KNÜPFER
- ISAN
- 0000-0002-A538-0000-J-0000-0000-H
- EIDR
- 10.5240/4AC9-9513-109D-B4BC-2A78-1
- Producer(s)
- Robert CIBIS (Oval Filmemacher), Ebba SINZINGER (WILDart Film), Vincent LUCASSEN (WILDart FIlm)
- Synopsis
- "The tone isn't breathing." - complains pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, distraught. This is a typical sentence in Steinway & Sons' chief technician and Master Tuner Stefan Knüpfer's normal work day. Each piano has its own personality, each piece demands its own timbre, and every interpretation has a particular temperament.
  Pianomania takes the viewer along on a humorous journey into the secret world of sounds, and accompanies Stefan Knüpfer at his unusual job with world famous pianists like Lang Lang, Alfred Brendel, Rudolf Buchbinder and Pierre-Laurent Aimand, among others. To find the right instrument with the necessary qualities, compatible with the vision of the virtuoso, to tune it to perfection and finally to get it on the stage, needs nerves of steel, boundless passion, and the extraordinary competence in translating words into sounds.
- Partners & financing
- FFW, ORF, ZDF/ 3 SAT, Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film,
  Eurimages
- Beginning of shooting
- Mar 01, 2008