DVD Videos

“…the Schoenberg film, Five Orchestral Pieces (1994), is perhaps the most successful, the visualisation assisted by the composer's extraordinary artistic talent. While Charles Rosen make the case for the score as the most emotional music of the 20th-century, Michael Gielen, ever alert on the podium, neatly elucidates its radicalism in words: 'The old conceptions was that the theme stands the development moves. Here everything moves, 'Like a number of films, this would make a useful teaching aid.” Gramophone Magazine, December 2005

“At a time when America’s major orchestras are struggling to define their missions and maintain audiences, the San Francisco Symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas is an exception.” New York Times

“Perhaps it's simply that pseudo-realism sits uneasily with so stylised a piece. Go back 30 years and you can opt for the classic Glyndebourne/Cox/Hockney staging directly inspired by Hogarth's engravings (ArtHaus). With Bernard Haitink in the pit for such up-and-coming youngsters as Felicity Lott and Samuel Ramey, the artificiality is deliberate and rings true.” Gramophone Magazine, May 2006

“It seems perverse to place it in Las Vegas in the 1950s, as Robert Lepage has done, with stetsons, risqué revue turns and black-and-white TV … Yet when we arrive at the graveyard scene, and then the incredibly moving mad scene in Bedlam, it is all so wonderful that I felt it had been worth persevering. Musically, it is first-rate.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2008 ****

“This is a show to be seen - Covent Garden is staging it in July - and, down to the witty, period and silent menu screens, a model of its kind.” Gramophone Magazine, May 2008

“Lepage has forged a reputation as one of the most visionary theatre directors of our age… The Rake’s Progress is heading our way, and it promises to be a highlight of the 2007/8 season.” Sunday Times

“Auden first met Stravinsky to discuss the libretto of The Rake's Progress in Hollywood in 1947, and Robert Lepage winds forward his 'clock of fashion' to the time and place of the opera's composition.
Hogarth's Gin Alley runs into Easy Street, populated by Vegas hookers, dancers and chancers. The composer-sanctioned division into two halves rather than three acts is a complementary move from the conventions of the opera house to the theater, and what a show we have. Madam, or rather Mother Goose (Julianne Young, bearing a disconcerting resemblance to Julianne Moore), lures the naive Tom onto a heart-shaped satin bed, and the pair literally sink into its folds – before our hero re-emerges, worldly wise and weary, in front of a blow-up Winnebago, and banishes ennui not with mother's ruin but a line or two of Colombia's finest.
Andrew Kennedy takes all this in his stride, and his always fresh, appealing tenor ensures we retain our sympathy through Tom's piteous downfall from indolence to insanity, far more so than we are likely to for his operatic model, Ferrando.
From Nick Shadow's first entrance under the shade of a Dallas derrick to his flame-capped Broadway nemesis, the parallels are not with Dons Alfonso or Giovanni but rather Alberich.
This is largely thanks to William Shimell's ironblack baritone and rasping wit, though lines such as 'That man alone is free who chooses what to will and wills his choice as destiny' certainly strike a Wagnerian ring of mania.
The recorded balance is slightly unfavourable to Laura Claycomb in 'I go to him': this is her 'Abscheulicher', but she is no Leonora, and is happiest vocally when she is dramatically downcast.
The two crucial scenes, either side of the interval, between her, Tom and Dagmar Pecková's show-stealing Baba are models of ensemble writing and direction, pulling between operatic naturalism and Stravinsky's preferred realism just as Tom is torn between one woman and the other – and all in front of a chorus who change from waltz-time party guests to painfully well observed inhabitants of Bedlam with phenomenal assurance.
Doubtless Kazushi Ono must take credit for some slickly cinematic pacing. This is a show to be seen and, down to the witty, period and silent menu screens, a model of its kind.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Weissenberg has a remarkable talent, as the three Petrushka pieces prove, but he has often misused it, with harsh results. This sampling of his repertoire and his thoughts on it is worth seeing.” BBC Music Magazine, Proms 2008 ****

“If you invested in Marc-André Hamelin's recent CD 'In a State of Jazz' (see page 1328) you will have heard the eponymous Sonata and five Charles Trenet song transcriptions by Alexis Weissenberg. Here is Weissenberg himself seen first in the innovative black–and–white film of Three Movements from Petrushka directed by Åke Falck in 1965 which revived the pianist's flagging career. The print is remarkably crisp and vivid even if, as on the original film, the sound of this high–octane performance is not always in sync. The DVD's bonus features a short interview with the pianist talking about the work.
The rest of the programme has performances that reveal what an uneven player Weissenberg was. His impassive face and economic gestures seem to reflect his disengagement with some of the music (try the Bach–Hess Jesu, Joy of Man'sDesiring and the slow movement – the only part of the work here – of Chopin's B minor Sonata).
On the other hand there's a riveting Prokofiev Third Sonata (complete) and Scriabin Nocturne for the left hand alone. The longest work from the 150 minutes of the disc is Brahms's Second Piano Concerto, a lightweight reading conducted by the amiable Georges Prêtre in 1969.
From the same label comes a 1989 recital from Sviatoslav Richter given in London's Barbican Centre by the light of a 40–watt bulb. Now expressing any criticism of the great man will invite a heap of invective, but when Richter comes on stage conveying the distinct impression that he would rather be anywhere else, it does appear rather graceless. What with that, the anglepoise and reading from the score you wonder if he is in the mood to play Mozart at all.
Thank heavens he is. One can put up with any amount of eccentricity to hear K282, K545 (Sonata facile) and K310 played like this. Close your eyes – that's the best way of enjoying this, especially as the editing is a real distraction.
The three (black–and–white) bonus tracks from 20 years earlier were broadcast in October 1969.
Looking once more as though his cat's just been run over, Richter rampages through Rachmaninov's Etude–Tableau Op 9 No 3 and Chopin's Etudes Op 10 No 4 (ludicriously fast) and No 12.
Then there is the endearing figure of Tatyana Nikolaieva in her signature work, the 24 Preludes and Fugues of Shostakovich. Filmed in December 1992 just 11 months before her death at the age of 69, the setting for the 150 minutes of the cycle appears to be a capacious Victorian drawing room, the instrument illuminated by an old–fashioned standard lamp (what is it about Russians and electricity?). Talking of which, Nikolaieva, looking every inch the archetypal babushka and clad in clothes that might have been worn by Clara Schumann, lights up these works from within. Here are old and intimate friends. It's doubtful whether we'll hear them better played – unsuprisingly, as she was the composer's inspiration for the cycle (she reveals as much in the brief interview that forms the DVD's bonus). Already, this is a valuable historical document.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“This beautiful, essential disc gathers together footage of the Bulgarianborn, French pianist Alexis Weissenberg from the mid-to- late 1960s, a period that marked his return to the concert platform after nearly a decade's absence. Pride of place goes to his 1965 film of Stravinsky's Three Movements from Petrushka, directed by Ingmar Bergman's assistant, Åke Falck. It's a technical tour de force that turns Weissenberg into a glamorous visionary, fetishises his hands and transforms his piano into a modernist abstraction of planes, lines and lethal-looking hammers. More conventionally filmed, but equally mesmerising, is a 1969 French TV performance of Brahms' Second Piano Concerto, with the ORTF Orchestra conducted by an enraptured-looking Georges Prêtre. Weissenberg's detractors have often taken him to task for his supposed heavy-handedness. The weight of his playing, however, was balanced by great interpretative directness and intensity, and this performance of the Brahms is among the most searching and profound that I know. A number of shorter TV appearances give us fine examples of his astringent Chopin, his deeply sexy Scriabin and his controversial, probing Bach.” The Guardian, Friday 12 December 2008 *****