DVD Videos

Following the success of the enlightening first series of Keeping Score, MTT and SFS return with three further programmes that combine one-hour documentaries with live concert performances. The new programmes explore the music and stories behind the music.

Each of the three DVDs in Keeping Score Series 2 features a documentary episode - with MTT guiding us through the composers’ perspectives and influences - coupled with a live concert performance of each work. The programmes are designed to engage and entertain viewers of all levels of musical background. With outstanding production values, they are released on DVD and Blu-Ray HD formats, making SFS the first orchestra to distribute its product on Blu-Ray disc.

Was Hector Berlioz writing music to get over his obsession with his distant love, Harriet Smithson? Was this symphony his way of saying goodbye, or even seeking revenge? Or was it instead his impassioned valentine to a woman he could not forget?

In 1827, Berlioz saw Harriet Smithson for the first time, playing Ophelia in a production of Hamlet. Hopelessly smitten, he turned his entire life upside down to meet her. Frantic months turned into years when he suddenly heard rumors about Harriet and another man. Believing himself cured, he wrote a ‘fantastic’ symphony complete with a special theme, the idée fixe, to represent his former obsession.

89 minute film directed by the acclaimed, award-winning director Tony Palmer and starring Corin Redgrave.

“I, Hector Louis Berlioz, composer, musician, citizen of France, tell you, in this my Last Will and Testament, that my subject is – and has always been – war.”

So begins an epic journey through the terrible struggles that Berlioz endured to get his great opera The Trojans performed. He never succeeded, and the effort cost him his life.

Sir Brian Young, former Director- General of the IBA, wrote at the time of the first transmission: “Absolutely magnificent. It will win the Prix Italia and every BAFTA award going.”

Being the typically “Berliner” events they are, the annual summer concerts of the Berliner Philharmoniker at the Berlin Waldbühne far surpass the usual in open-air shows and are generally sold out months in advance. A traditional part of these concerts involves the early arrival of the guests who, laden with the requisite picnic paraphernalia, take their seats with a view to enjoying the hours until “their” Philharmonic gala is ready to begin. While there is little likelihood of fi nding the majority of these concert-goers at a “regular” performance of the Berliner Philharmoniker, the unique atmosphere of the Waldbühne – one of the most attractive amphitheatres in Europe – is irresistibly appealing and has long been the Mecca of many classical music fans.

French Night is subtitled this exceptional concert delivering a program of French favorites under the baton of Georges Prêtre. The concert begins with Berlioz‘ Roman Carnival Overture, Ravel‘s Concerto for the Left Hand with soloist Leon Fleisher follows by Debussy‘s L‘Après-Midi d‘un Faune, Bizet’s Carmen-Suite and finally Ravel’s famous Bolero.

Sound Format: PCM Stereo, DD 5.1 , DTS 5.1

Picture Format: 4:3

DVD Format: DVD 9, PAL

Running Time: 99 mins

FSK: 0

Recording Date: 2000

Place of recording: From the Salzburger Festspiele 2000

Running Time: 2 DVD: 237 min

Picture Format: 16:9

Sound Format: Dolby Digital 5.1

Menu Languages PAL: D, F, GB, SP

Subtitle Languages PAL: D, F, GB, SP

Menu Languages NTSC: F, GB, JP, SP

Subtitle Languages NTSC: F, GB, JP, SP

Host: Wulf Konold

A new way of experiencing and enjoying the great works of music from the Baroque to the Modern Period – thanks to a new educational series of audio-visual concert guides, Introducing Masterpieces of Classical Music. Each release includes extensive documentation and a complete performance of the work or works in question.

Famous masterpieces from the standard repertoire of the greatest international orchestras are brought closer to the viewer through first class concert broadcasts (Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker, Gewandhaus Orchester…) in a timely visual style.

Includes 29 mins introductory feature + full concert performance of the masterpiece!

Berlioz’ “Fantastic Symphony” is widely regarded as one of the most important and representative pieces of the early Romantic period. Leonard Bernstein once called it “the first musical expedition into psychedelia” because of its hallucinatory and dream-like nature. The German musicologist Wulf Konold describes the idea behind and the realization of this fascinating work.

Picture format DVD: NTSC 16:9

Sounds formats DVD: PCM Stereo, DD 5.1, DTS 5.1

Region code: 0

Subtitles: English, German, French, Spanish

Booklet notes: English, German, French

Running time: 29 mins (documentary) + 53 mins (performance)

FSK: 0

After the very successful Ring from Valencia, here is another spectacular staging by La Fura dels Baus, this time conducted by Valery Gergiev.

This monumental opera complete with ballets, large choruses and orchestral set pieces was recorded at Valencia’s Palau de les Arts in 2009.

Great singers: Daniela Barcellona as “breathtaking Dido” (Opernglas), Lance Ryan, Elisabete Matos.

Staged by La Fura dels Baus

Bonus Making of (21 minutes)

Total: 261 minutes (Opera ´240 + ´21 Bonus ´)

English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean

DVD: DTS 5.1, PCM Stereo

"Ancient myth meets Star Wars, and the eye is constantly engaged with images ranging from space-age technology to details of soccer uniforms." The New York Times

"This is a worthy and compelling, glittering version of a sublime work." International Herald Tribune

Leading Chopin interpreter Nelson Freire is the soloist in Chopin’s lyrical and brilliant Second Piano Concerto. On the podium the young French conductor Lionel Bringuier makes his Proms debut conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra and gives a sizzling performance of Roussel’s Symphony No.3 and of Ravel’s score for the ballet 'Daphnis et Chloé' - Suite No 2.

Chopin wrote his concerto at the age of 19 while crazily in love with an opera singer, but it's the work itself which is the object of adoration for soloist Nelson Freire who describes himself as having something of a 'crush' on the piece after first hearing it as a teenager.

The three other works on the programme chart French music over a century of changing musical tastes, beginning in 1844 with Berlioz's vivid evocation of a swashbuckling pirate adventure in his overture 'Le corsaire'. By 1912 the tides of modernism influenced Ravel's lavishly scored, pastoral ballet Daphnis and Chloë, with its famous opening soundscape of dawn breaking over the forest canopy, and by the 1930s Roussel's Third Symphony reflected the trends of neo-classicism.

"It was around the beginning of the second movement of Albert Roussel's Third Symphony that the playing of the BBC Symphony Orchestra – under the outstanding 23-year-old French conductor Lionel Bringuier, making his Prom debut – moved into top gear. From that point on, the orchestra's awareness of its own sound, collectively and individually, became heightened to an unusually compelling degree. The playing stayed on this exalted level until the end of the concert, which closed with Ravel's second Daphnis and Chloé suite...shaped with a certainty of direction that never compromised the music's inherent sensuousness. It provided a sensational climax to the evening."

George Hall, The Guardian 13/8/2010

Recorded live at the Royal Albert Hall, 08/2010,

Running time 95 min.

Booklet: French, German, English

Image 1DVD9, Colour 16/9, NTSC

Sound: PCM Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1

Tom Cairns' cinematic film features a young and vibrant cast in Bernstein's chamber opera, set in the fifties. This biting satire on American suburban married life stars Stephanie Novacek as Dinah and Karl Daymond as Sam, facing a serious communication breakdown -- he is obsessed with his work; she seeks escapism via the magical world of the latest movie release, Trouble in Tahiti. Inspired by jazz and American musical comedy, the score is a path-breaking fusion of lyric art with popular entertainment.

Specials: <br>

•Introduction to Trouble in Tahiti. <br>

•NOT PARTICULARLY ROMANTIC - Humphrey Burton, Bernstein’s biographer, comments on the composer’s life and the significance of Trouble in Tahiti. <br>

•A VERY TESTING PIECE - Conductor Paul Daniel on the performance and background of the opera. <br>

•28 page illustrated booklet with biographies in English, French and German plus full libretto.<br>

<br>

PICTURE FORMAT: 16:9 <br>

LENGTH: 75 MINS <br>

SOUND: DOLBY SURROUND / LPCM STEREO <br>

SUBTITLES: FR/DE/ES (PAL) ES (NTSC) <br>