THE STORY – Joseph Levy’s documentary follows Emanuel Ax as he enters his 50th year as a concert pianist while reflecting on the future of his career. The film explores the life of the acclaimed musician as he continues to perform internationally while grappling with stage fright and the prospect of stepping away from the spotlight.
THE CAST – Emanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma, John Williams, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Itzhak Perlman, Alisa Weilerstein, Anders Hillborg, Andris Nelsons, Deborah Borda, Leonidas Kavakos & Yoko Ax
THE TEAM – Joseph Levy (Writer/Director)
THE RUNNING TIME – 83 Minutes
For over a half-century, Emanuel Ax has been dazzling concert audiences with his piano virtuosity. An eight-time Grammy winner, Manny (as he likes to be called), now 77, still plays over 80 concert dates a year, yet there has never been a feature film about his remarkable life and career. Writer/director Joseph Levy’s “All the Music in the World” checks that box as he approaches his 50 year anniversary of concert performances. Filmed between 2023 and 2025, the doc follows Manny as he prepares for two major events coming up in his life: the world premiere of a piano concerto written especially for him by maestro John Williams and a concert at Carnegie Hall that will celebrate his 50th anniversary of performing for audiences around the world. To triumph in both, he must overcome his intense stage fright, which has plagued him throughout his entire career.
Levy weaves an additional third storyline to the mix – chronicling the recording of a new album in which Manny collaborates with fellow members of his chamber music trio violinist: Leonidas Kavakos and legendary cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who has played with Manny since his teens and is, to this day, still his best friend. The bond between the two men provides a number of the film’s warmest moments; these are people who know each other so well that they can finish one another’s sentences and whose greatest joy just may be playing together.
Perhaps the doc’s most illuminating sequences are the ones involving the recording sessions, when the trio regroups and listens back their latest take. They rarely critique each other’s playing, but instead focus on what each of them could do to make the next take even better. The joy that’s evident on Manny’s face with all this give-and-take among legends is equaled only by the pleasure he takes from teaching young piano students at his beloved Juilliard. These scenes are contrasted with those of Manny alone just before his concert entrance, managing his anxiety as best he can.
To get the fuller picture of the joys of Manny’s existence, Levy dedicates a portion of the film to his family life. As a young Polish Jew, Manny’s father Joaquim saved his own life by jumping off a train headed for the camps. He later married Manny’s mother Hellen, after both of them lost their families and first spouses in the war. Manny started his own family when he met and married his wife Yoko when they were both music students, and they eventually raised two children, Joseph and Sarah. Now Manny has the joy of playing with his twin grandchildren, as is evident in a charming sequence where he tries to teach them how to make fresh pasta.
Throughout the film, Levy drops in testimonials from a number of music figures who have worked with Manny and can attest to his genius. The cast list reads like a veritable who’s who in contemporary classical music: composers John Williams and Anders Hillborg, conductors Esa-Pekka Salonen and Andris Nelsons, and musicians Itzhak Perlman and Alisa Weilerstein, just to name a few. According to them, his piano skills are “beyond interpretation” (Salonen), his stage performance “a spiritual experience,” and Perlman asks “What gives this person magic?” The love from his peers is unbounded. And here, ironically, is where “All the Music in the World” runs into trouble. All of this unbridled praise, situated one after another, causes the film to veer at times dangerously close to hagiography. Certainly, there’s no need for any one to offer a negative view of Manny’s life and work, but there’s no shading here as to how the man is being presented.
If only the doc had dug just a little deeper to uncover more of the man under the plaudits, the film might have been more compelling. Have there been any moments in his life, for example, when Manny had faced tough times but persevered, learning from that experience and coming away stronger? His past, both on the family and the professional fronts, is rarely discussed in depth so, as a result, we are shown no other dimensions to the man, no complexities in his character that might make him more relatable to us. Certainly, he seems like a great friend, a doting grandpa and a real mensch, but beyond that, we don’t hear much more besides ebullient praise. A celebrity doc needs some dramatic conflict or driving issue to engage us and invest us in the outcome. Stage fright and anxiety over an upcoming concert may be truthful, but they are simply not enough on which to hang a feature documentary, as delightful a subject as he may be.
But still, there’s the music, and despite my quibbles elsewhere, Levy presents Manny’s genius at the keyboard magnificently, capturing the warmth of his playing and the extraordinary tonal balance he achieves in his performances. As I sat there and listened to the beauty of his work, I thought back to a one of his quotes from the film, observing that “All the music in the world exists to express things that can’t be put into words.” Sometimes, that’s all that needs to be said.
