APPASSIONATO, a new documentary by director Jackie Paré, turns the spotlight on a trio of passionate relationships: musicians with their instruments, patrons with musicians, and audiences with performers—a pitch-perfect concert that both enriches and uplifts all of us. How does everyone benefit? These musicians play not only in concert halls, private homes, and at festivals, but also in prisons, refugee camps, schools, and hospitals.

The connection: One day the phone rings and the music changes. A modern Medici buys a Stradivarius, say, but wants more than a financial return. The reward would be to hear it come alive in the care of a musical prodigy—someone who has long dreamt of this moment. But this deep, mutual connection lives on borrowed time. These are loans, not gifts. And they are all too rare.