DVD Videos

The Places

Starting from the great Cathedral of Chartres, our tour takes us to Brittany and Normandy in Northern France, and to Franche Comté and Burgundy. Many of the scenes chosen match closely the music of Fauré and in particular that of his Requiem, with a wide range of corresponding images, from the calvaries of Brittany to the startling architecture of Le Corbusier in his church of Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp, and from The Last Judgement by Roger van der Weyden in Beaune to the tapestries of Jean Lurçat at Angers.

The Music

The music chosen for this tour of France is by Gabriel Fauré. It includes his Requiem, the evocative Pavane, his Sicilienne, probably originally intended as part of incidental music for Molière’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme, and the Berceuse.

Fauré was not drawn to compose a Requiem because of the death of a loved one, even though his mother had died during the early stages of composition and his father had passed away two years before. Fauré’s composition does not set his Requiem to the standard liturgical text, instead adding a lyrical Pie Jesu and transcendent Paradisum, and omitting the Dies Irae and Tuba Mirum.

As a result the mood of the Requiem is relatively calm and peaceful and often referred to as a “lullaby of death”.

Fauré’s unconventional composition has become a firm favourite in the repertoire.

Paavo Järvi, new musical director of the Orchestre de Paris – one of the largest and most prestigious international orchestras – and has already gained a notable reputation as a conductor, including winning a Grammy award.

Picture format DVD: NTSC 16:9

Sounds formats DVD: PCM Stereo

Region code: 0

Subtitles: German, English, French

Booklet notes: English, German, French

Running time: 92 mins

The expansive length of Feldman's Trio (1 hour, 45 minutes, 22 seconds) requires a new approach to listening, which takes scale, the physical experience of sound, and novel uses of musical memory into consideration. With his delicate manipulation of musical materials, Feldman blurs the listeners' sense of time as their musical memory struggles to distinguish between past and present sounds - listeners are free to lose themselves in the beauty of each musical moment.

5.1 Surround sound, presented in Dolby and 24-bit DTS. Also a dedicated Dolby stereo mix option.

Bonus video essay on Feldman and the Trio by the noted German composer and Feldman expert Walter Zimmermann, who hosted the premiere of the Trio at his Beginner's Studio concerts in Köln (31-minutes).

Live from the Deutsche Oper Berlin, 2006.

At the turn of the 19th century the Italian composer Alberto Franchetti was rated one of the foremost Italian composers and a composer who was to ensure the continuation of Meyerbeer´s Great Opera tradition into the Modern era. Germania was premiered in 1902 and turned out to be the one of Franchetti’s most famous works.

It is unusual that an Italian composer in the early twentieth century chose to write an opera based on a chapter of German history from the early nineteenth century. Franchetti was an Italian Jew who had become enamored of Germany and its culture, and this opera dramatizes an incident in the 19th-century struggle for German independence. After the First World War the opera sadly lapsed into obscurity.

Released on Capriccio in 2007, Phoenix Edition is pleased to present a re-issue of the world première of this opera on DVD. This live recording re-discovers an opera which has been unperformed since 1908.

The performance was highly acclaimed, praised for the first-rate production, the staging of Kirsten Harms and musical leadership of Renato Palumbo, to the strong cast led by Lise Lindstrom and the remarkable Uruguayan tenor Carlo Ventre

60 minutes, mono, color.