DVD Videos

In this celebrated Glyndebourne Festival production, David Hockney’s designs for director John Cox reinterpret the Hogarth etchings that inspired the opera’s libretto, written for Stravinsky by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman.

In 2010, this revival under Glyndebourne’s Music Director, Vladimir Jurowski, captured the opera’s neo-classical spirit and its juxtaposition of whimsy, cynicism and compassion, prompting the Financial Times to call it, ‘‘as enjoyable a performance of Stravinsky’s opera as any that has come along".

Extra features:

Documentary includes interview with David Hockney Introduction to the Rakes’s Progress Running time 150 mins

Region Code All regions

Picture format 16:9 Anamorphic

Sound format 2.0LPCM + 5.1(5.0) DTS

Menu languages EN

Subtitles EN/FR/DE/ES

This DVD explores the interaction between the members whilst performing these four key 20th Century works for String Quartet.

The quartet firmly believes that music should be seen as well as heard. The mechanics of playing and the communication of the players are what create the art.

The Kreutzer Quartet comprise Peter Sheppard Skærved (violin), Mihailo Trandafilovski (violin), Morgan Goff (viola) and Neil Heyde (cello).

The Kreutzer Quartet has forged an enviable reputation as one of the Europe’s most dynamic and innovative string quartets. The ‘Independent’ newspaper summed up their playing as ‘Passion, Grace and Steel…’.

They are the dedicatees of numerous works, and over many years forged creative partnerships with composers including Sir Michael Tippett, David Matthews, Michael Finnissy, Judith Weir, and Haflidi Hallgrimsson. They have a particularly strong relationship to a cross-section of leading American composers, having collaborated intensively with the great George Rochberg in the last few years of his life, as long as working closely with figures as Elliott Schwartz, and the prolific symphonist Gloria Coates.

As recording artists they have won critical acclaim for their discs on the Naxos, Metier, and Chandos labels. Their work in collaboration with art galleries has garnered much attention, and large audiences, particularly their annual residency at the Tate Gallery, St Ives. In 2008 they appeared at several Festivals including the Venice Biennale, and the Montpelier Festival. They are ‘Artists in association’ at York University.

Double sided DVD - one side NTSC, one side PAL

Conducted by Grammy award winning Paavo Järvi the Orchestre de Paris exquisitely performs three landmark pieces of orchestral music.

Both of Stravinsky’s ballet scores and Debussy’s L’Après-midi d’un faune are well suited for a DVD recording. The wildly varying moods under Järvi’s expert guidance are superbly caught in this high quality production.

The orchestra undertake international tours and aims to reach all genres of people. Järvi became the Music Director at the beginning of the 2010/11 season, and after just seven months his contract was extended to the end of 2016.

In celebration of the creation of 'Le Sacre du printemps' in Paris in 1913, Bel Air present a new edition in a DVD-book of a wonderful Stravinsky night at the Mariinsky with the original Nijinsky version of the 'Rite of Spring' and 'The Firebird' both conducted by Valery Gergiev.

The premiere of 'The Rite of Spring' at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées, Paris, on May 1913 caused a veritable scandal. The audience was shocked by the primitive violence of the ballet. It was so radically rejected that the ballet was taken off after eight performances. Although long forgotten, thanks to the relentless work of Millicent Hodson, Nijinsky’s original choreography was recreated.

'The Firebird' is a Russian folk tale in two scenes commissioned from the young Stravinsky by Diaghilev and premiered at the Paris Opera House in 1910. The ballet was an immediate success. The Ballets Russes enabled the choreographer Fokine to bring to this enterprise the right amount of novelty needed to captivate but not alienate the audience. It was a total success.

CONTENTS: DVD BOOK, 2 ballets 85 min.

Bonus: Documentary on the Ballets Russes (8 min), interviews with Millicent Hodson & Kenneth Archer (30 min), 36pp illustrated in 3 languages

Format: Colour, 16/9, NTSC, Sound: PCM Stereo - Dolby Digital 5.1.

This disc brings the first release of 4 Butterflies for quadrophonic tape on CD and in surround release, and the first recordings of Subotnick’s live remix/recomposition of the classic tape piece Until Spring: Revisited plus A Sky of Cloudless Sulphur: Revisited.

Until Spring was first conceived in 1975 on the Buchla synthesizer using only analogue techniques. “It was about 10 years from Silver Apples to Until Spring,” Subotnick explains, “and I’d evolved a whole concept and a technique, but I had gone as far as I could go with it. I could do everything I wanted to do, but I couldn’t do it in real time.” As computers and software developed in the coming decades, Subotnick created a software-based instrument that he felt could allow him to complete his original vision, which led to Until Spring: Revisited, a reinterpretation constructed around source materials from Until Spring, recorded live in San Francisco. The work has been performed many times by the ensemble of Morton Subotnick (live electronics) and Miguel Frasconi (live electronics and glass harp).

Four Butterflies was originally released as a stereo LP on Columbia Records. This is its first release on CD. Mode has made a high-resolution transfer from the analogue master tapes, which was then given a new mix by the composer. Set in four sections separated by two interludes, Four Butterflies is a floating, mysterious electronic landscape. See also mode237dvd

Liner notes by Andy Battaglia and Morton Subotnick

The DVD also contains special BONUS FEATURES:

Subotnick and SUE-C collaborate on A Sky of Cloudless Sulphur: Revisited, based on the analogue tape piece A Sky of Cloudless Sulphur and created especially for this DVD.

BONUS INTERVIEW: Subotnick, Miguel Frasconi and Sue Costabile discuss their collaboration together.

BONUS INTERVIEW: Subotnick and Ramon Sender speak of the early years experimenting with electronic music and creating the historic San Francisco Tape Center.

The Savoy operas of William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan have some of the most memorable music of all time written for the English language. Using DVD technology you can easily be the star of these great songs as the words are presented on the screen. The joys, sorrows, ecstasy and anguish of Opera are here for you to create your own performance. Using DVD technology, the words are displayed for optimum ease so that you can be the opera star with full orchestral and choral accompaniment.

During their long and successful partnership, William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan collaborated on fourteen operas, many of which are still regularly performed throughout the English speaking world today.

‘...this production has assembled a cast that simply could not be bettered.’ The Sydney Morning Herald

Running time 8 hours 56 mins approx

Region Code All regions Picture format 16:9 Anamorphic

Sound format 2.0LPCM + 5.1(5.0) DTS

Menu languages EN

Subtitles EN