This documentary by the great Tony Palmer was first shown in 1988 on ITV’s South Bank Show. Its questioning title refers to the (possibly lifelong) love Dvořák had for his sister-in-law Josefína. Certainly the composition of the great Cello Concerto, the recording sessions of which form the backbone of this film, was intensely affected by the news of Josefína’s illness (Dvořák was in America at the time) and her death a month after he returned home to Bohemia. The footage of the sessions is overlaid throughout with readings of what purport to be Dvořák’s own words about the Concerto’s creation, though I doubt Dvořák ever penned autobiographical letters in the style of a music dictionary. The reader is the late Polish-born Vladek Sheybal (remember him as the lizard-eyed chess grandmaster in From Russia With Love?), whose sinister tone and indistinct diction make Peter Lorre sound comparatively harmless: the genial Dvořák he ain’t.

Of more (not to say compelling) interest are the recording sessions: a young British cellist in the Czech capital recording an iconic Czech work with great Czech musicians. ‘Into the Lion’s Den?’ might have been a better title. Things do not begin happily when the soloist, sporting the same Beatles mop that served him throughout his career (now sadly terminated), worries about the ‘buzzy’ sound of his cello, a complaint that is not well received. Indeed, the whole session comes across as a tense, joyless affair (or boring – several musician are caught yawning or reading books). It makes riveting viewing: tiny but important details are discussed, tempi are adjusted, phrasing is polished while Lloyd Webber appears reduced to wordless nodding as the avuncular Neumann coaxes, advises and suggests solutions and improvements (the resulting Philips disc was outstanding).

Palmer aptly links the sessions for
the slow movement to Josefína (Dvořák quotes from one his own songs in the central section, one of her favourites), but the joyous opening of the finale accompanies archive footage of Hitler, Brezhnev, Dubček et al. It was this section that meant, despite being a co-production with Czechoslovak Television, the film could not be shown in the Communist-ruled country. When the Russians left two years later, this was the first documentary shown on the newly liberated Czech television. But, for me, this is Josefína’s concerto (cf the coda) and should not have been appropriated for nationalist propaganda.