DVD Videos

Recorded live 2003-2006<br /><br />The present DVD provides a comprehensive overview of the work of this already legendary orchestra featuring a selection of outstanding recordings from the 2003 to 2006 festivals. For prominent works by Beethoven, Bruckner, Debussy and Mahler, the orchestra is joined by reputed soloists. In addition to a masterly filmed musical experience, the box set also comprises the documentary "The History of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra" including rarely seen rehearsal, concert and archival footage featuring Wilhelm Furtwangler, Ferenc Fricsay, Herbert von Karajan, Yehudi Menuhin and Arturo Toscanini. Also included is a bonus DVD of Maurizio Pollini playing Beethoven in a first ever audiovisual release. The box set comes, at a very attractive price, in a luxurious presentation with an extended booklet with insightful essays and interesting photographic material - a suitable homage to a very special orchestra and its great conductor.

“It’s different having best friends together. Everyone is there to enjoy making music, to take pleasure, to play with enthusiasm, with passion. They are prepared to do any crazy thing I ask them for the sake of the music. To fly, to walk through fire.” Claudio Abbado

In 2005 Daniel Barenboim performed the complete Beethoven piano sonatas over eight concerts in two weeks at the Staatsoper in Berlin. The performances were beautifully captured on film. In addition to four DVD releases, each covering two of the concerts, the master classes are released in a separate 2 DVD set – these feature the legendary man imparting his wisdom to the next generation, featuring some of the world’s most notable young pianists.

In 2005 Daniel Barenboim performed the complete Beethoven piano sonatas over eight concerts in two weeks at the Staatsoper in Berlin. The performances were beautifully captured on film. In addition to four DVD releases, each covering two of the concerts, the master classes are released in a separate 2 DVD set – these feature the legendary man imparting his wisdom to the next generation, featuring some of the world’s most notable young pianists.

In 1974, Roland Petit, probably the greatest and certainly one of the most prolific of 20th century French choreographers he was the first person to create a work based on Proust's novel, A la recherche du temps perdu, completed in 1922, the year of his death.The book, better known to Anglo-Saxon readers as In Search of Lost Time, in which the author's homosexuality is latent, was written over the last 14 years of his life. Marcel Proust mingles childhood souvenirs with adolescent memories and is full of nostalgia for places once visited and exhibitions he'd seen. He dwells lengthily on love, passion, and jealousy and inevitably questions one's reason for living.

Proust ou les intermittences du coeur has now happily entered into the repertoire of the Paris Opéra Ballet.It consists of 13 vignettes inspired by the seven lengthy tomes which complete the unabridged work, Petit has chosen to convey the spirit of the novel via a succession of impressionistic tableaux which reflect the changing moods of the writer as he oscillated between periods of intense happiness and deep depression. And although the choreographer paints a merciless portrait of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie during the Belle Epoque, the highlights of the work lie in the series of poetical pas de deux, which at times might have seemed a little disconnected, but at which the French choreographer is past master.

Choreography & stage direction Roland Petit; Designer Luisa Spinatelli; Sets Bernard Michel; Lighting Jean-Michel Désire Palais Garnier, March 2007