DVD Videos

At the Berlin Waldbühne in 1995 Sir Simon Rattle conducted an ‚American Night‘ at the Berliner Philharmoniker‘s annual summer concert with works by Leonard Bernstein and George Gershwin.

What is the essence of American music? Bernstein gave his opinion at one of his ‚Concerts for young people‘:‚I don‘t think there is anyone in the whole world who wouldn‘t know immediately that Gershwin‘s music is American. It sounds American, smells of America, and when you listen to it you feel American.‘ With his ‚Rhapsody in Blue‘ Gershwin succeeded in devising a blend between swinging themes, blues and symphonic elements - ‚symphonic jazz‘.

The first performance was given at New York‘s Carnegie Hall on 12 February 1924. Gershwin was at the piano. It was a sensational success and induced many composers to follow similar stylistic paths, ultimately without any notable results. One exception is perhaps Leonard Bernstein, whose music often reveals jazz elements in his fondness for syncopations. George Gershwin‘s genius was at its most creative in the opera ‚Porgy and Bess‘. Spirituals, gospel, jazz, songs but also love duets in conventional operatic style alternate with one another. Although European orchestras performing outside the US at first found it difficult to adjust to jazz, this American folk opera rapidly became a success world-wide and to this day has not lost its fascination. Sir Simon Rattle was the ideal interpreter of this music for the musicians of the Berliner Philharmoniker. Together with them and an ensemble of first class soloists he earned enthusiastic applause at the Berlin Waldbühne.

Sound Format: PCM Stereo, DD 5.1

Picture Format: 4:3

DVD Format: DVD 9, PAL

Running Time: 85 mins

FSK: 0

With the Opéra Royal in Versailles, the Berliner Philharmoniker found a particularly beautiful and historically signifi cant setting to host its 1997 European Concert. It was at this glorious small theatre that the French Republic was proclaimed in 1875. As the chateau‘s management feared that use of spotlights could endanger the building‘s wooden-beam construction, the task of obtaining filming permission was not an easy one for the concert organisers. In the event, negotiations had to continue right up to the last minute when, having satisfied all official safety requirements, the go-ahead was finally given for filming to start. The Versailles concert was conducted by Daniel Barenboim, whose close acquaintance with the Berliner Philharmoniker goes back many years.

The Programme began with Maurice Ravel‘s ‚Le tombeau de Couperin‘, in honour of the celebrated French Baroque musician François Couperin le Grand. Daniel Barenboim not only conducted the next piece, namely Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart‘s piano concerto in C major K. 415, but also played the piano solo and closed the concert with an electrifying interpretation of Beethoven’s „Eroica“, which was topped only by the thunderous applause of the delighted Versailles audience.

Sound Format: PCM STEREO, DD 5.1

Picture Format: 16:9

DVD Format: DVD 9, PAL

Running Time: 97 mins

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Zubin Mehta, born in Bombay in 1936, is one of the greatest conductors on the rostrum. ‚I have been conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker longer than many of its musicians have been members. I began in 1961 and since then have not missed a single season. During all those years I have been able to observe continually that the Berliner Philharmoniker sets standards for outstanding orchestral achievements.‘

The theme of his ‚St. Petersburg Night‘ at the Berlin Waldbühne is, of course, Russian music. The centrepiece is one of Tchaikovsky‘s most frequently played and effective compositions: his Piano Concerto No. 1 in B fl at minor. This work has spread the fame of Russian music all over the world. Its memorable melodies and original rhythms never fail to captivate audiences.

Daniel Barenboim, was the soloist for the Tchaikovsky concerto in Zubin Mehta‘s music night. With this combination of master conductor, master pianist and leading orchestra, success was, of course, assured. The twenty thousand people in the audience at the Berlin Waldbühne, sold out weeks beforehand, expressed their thanks with tumultuous applause.

The other works in the programme were also enthusiastically received, in particular the familiar sounds of Tchaikovsky‘s ‚Swan Lake‘ and Rimsky-Korsakov‘s orchestral scherzo ‚The Flight of the Bumblebee‘ from his opera ‚The Legend of Tsar Saltan‘, which was played with astounding virtuosity.

Sound Format: PCM Stereo, DD 5.1

Picture Format: 4:3

DVD Format: DVD 9, PAL

Running Time: 97 mins

FSK: 0

The Berlin Philharmonic opened its Europe Concert 1993 in the impressive setting of the Royal Albert Hall with Pyotr Tchaikovsky‘s fantasy overture to Romeo and Juliet.

Playing and interpreting Mozart is an incomparable challenge for every musician, but the present recording demonstrates masterful interpretation and playing by the world-renowned violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann. The Violin Concerto No. 3, K.216, with its fully balanced dialogue between solo instrument and orchestra, represents - compared to its two predecessors - a quantum leap. Alfred Einstein called this violin concerto „a miracle“. Only a musician who has total sway over his instrument and is able to interpret the freshness of the invention and the elegance of the melody can achieve a finished performance.

Under Bernard Haitink‘s baton, the Berlin Philharmonic have demonstrated here their possibilities in the reduced classical instrumentation, before the full orchestra put on a show after the interval with Stravinsky‘s „Rite“.

Sound Format: PCM Stereo,

DD 5.1, DTS 5.1

Picture Format: 4:3

DVD Format: DVD 9, PAL

Running Time: 90 mins

FSK: 0

After Prague, Madrid and London, in 1994 it was the turn of Meiningen to host the Europe concert which, as in previous years, was held to celebrate the foundation of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra on 1st May 1882.

The German pianist and conductor, Hans von Bülow (1830-1894) - the centenary of whose death the concert also commemorates - was engaged here, from 1880 until 1885, with the Meininger Hoforchester before being appointed the fi rst Principal Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. Meiningen, situated at the centre of a Germany no longer divided by the Iron Curtain, can look back on a great musical past. During the course of the last century, the town developed into a theatre and musical centre, which it has remained to this day.

The concert opens with Beethoven‘s fi fth piano concerto, a majestic, virtuoso work which enthralls. This present recording is impressive for two reasons: on the one hand there is the imperial character of the work itself, and then there are the musicians, Abbado and Barenboim. In their interpretation of this highly imaginative and expressive work, genius and charisma have combined to produce a delicately magical, and at the same time powerfully virtuoso performance of one of music‘s greatest piano concertos. The concert concludes with Brahms second symphony.

Sound Format: PCM Stereo, DD 5.1 , DTS 5.1

Picture Format: 4:3

DVD Format: DVD 9, PAL

Running Time: 86 mins

FSK: 0

Between 1844 and 1859 Robert Schumann lived in Dresden where he composed a third of his complete work. Today‘s concert marks the 200th anniversary of Robert Schumann‘s birth and offers a welcome opportunity for Daniel Harding and the Staatskapelle Dresden to introduce three of the most impressive but now too rarely performed works from his Dresden period (Overture to Genoveva, Requiem für Mignon and Nachtlied).

Particular highlights - which will come as a surprise even to connoisseurs of his works - are a first performance and a world premiere of rediscovered and reconstructed symphonic movements dating from the composer‘s legendary „symphony year“ of 1841.

Moreover, the Rhenish Symphony, composed by Schumann after leaving Dresden and widely influenced by his impressions of the Cologne Cathedral, blends in perfectly with the sacral architecture of the Frauenkirche.

Sound Format: PCM Stereo, DD 5.1, DTS 5.1

Picture Format: 16:9

DVD Format: DVD 9, NTSC

Running Time: 77 mins

FSK: 0

Live Recording from The Deutsche Oper Berlin, 2010.

Set Design by Ulrike Siegrist & Philipp Stölz.

Richard Wagner’s early opera “Rienzi” is stylistically closer to Meyerbeer and bel canto than to Wagner’s later masterworks. Yet even this early work – especially as presented in this recording – is “so fantastically beautiful that it takes one’s breath away” (Berliner Zeitung). And in this staging by Philipp Stölzl, who condensed the five-act opera into a little over two hours, “Rienzi” becomes a startlingly powerful and timeless parable of power and abuse.

Though the story of the rise and fall of a charismatic leader and his totalitarian regime takes place in 14th-century Rome, Stölzl sets it somewhere in the recent past. The topic “anticipates the history of the 20th-century in a visionary way”, says Stölzl, adding that “one can make surprising analogies to many despots of this time: Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Ceausescu…” Since film was a central propaganda tool of 20th-century totalitarian systems, Stölzl uses film projections to make the “tribune” Rienzi tower above the masses or, in the style of old newsreels, to show a utopian “New Rome”. It is, after all, with films that Stölzl began his career: directing video clips for Rammstein and Madonna, then directing feature films (“North Face”, “Goethe!”) and staging operas at major venues, including the Salzburg Festival.

Tenor Torsten Kerl, who has visibly studied the gestures of the 20th century’s major dictators, gives a brilliant and eloquent Rienzi; his dutiful sister Irene, sung by Camilla Nylund with great lyrical intensity, is paired with a lover, Adriano, interpreted by the luminous mezzo Kate Aldrich, “the discovery of the evening” (Süddeutsche Zeitung). Also worthy of lead-role status is the chorus, which masters its demanding part with stunning presence and accuracy. The orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin is led with exuberance and precision by young conductor Sebastian Lang-Lessing.

“…spectacularly thanks to brilliant pseudo-historic footage in the style of Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi propaganda films…The production is a knockout.” The Sunday Times

„Perhaps one of the strengths of this evening is that it helps one to be distrustful“ Die Zeit

BONUS: Making Of

Sound Format: PCM Stereo, DD 5.1, DTS 5.1

Picture Format: 16:9

DVD Format: 2 x DVD 9, NTSC

Subtitle Languages: GB, IT, DE, FR, ES, JP

Running Time: 156 mins (Opera), 26 mins (Making Of)

FSK: 12

Directed by Otto Schenk & Set Design by Gerhard Hruby

Gian Carlo Menotti was one of the most important 20th-century composers of opera working in the United States. The Old Maid and the Thief and The Medium are brilliant studio recordings from the early years of television. The two operas depict everyday stories about personal relationships and crime in America during the first half of 20th century.

The performances are given by a first-rate cast, including Elisabeth Höngen, Eberhard Waechter and Olive Moorefield. The Orchestra of the Wiener Volksoper is conducted by Wolfgang Rennert (The Old Man and the Thief) and Armando Alberti (The Medium). An important document of operatic and film history, this restored recording is available on DVD for the first time.

BONUS: Interview with Otto Schenk

Sound Format: PCM Mono

Picture Format: 4:3

DVD Format: DVD 9, NTSC

Running Time: 117 mins (Opera), 10 mins (Bonus)

Subtitle Languages: DE, IT, GB, FR, ES, JP

FSK: 0

Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, 7th July 1996

Few conductors have made a greater contribution to our presentday understanding of Bruckner than Günter Wand (1912-2002). His readings of the composer‘s symphonies invariably concentrated on their texture and hence, their spirit. During the great final phase of his career, documented here, Wand devoted himself increasingly to Bruckner‘s works and his interpretations became more and more free, revealing both heartfelt emotion and

musical intelligence. He developed trademark fidelity towards Bruckner, which led to insightful readings of his works. Wherever possible Wand returned to the versions representing most clearly the composer‘s intentions - be it the „urtext“ or scrupulously restored versions.

In the television recording of Bruckner’s Symphony No.6, Günter Wand and his inimitable style of conducting are brought back to life in a particularly impressive way.

The films of his concerts at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, from 1987 onwards, can truly be regarded as Günter Wand‘s legacy to the NDR Sinfonieorchester, „his“ orchestra for almost 20 years, on which he has left a mark like no other.

Sound Format: PCM STEREO

Picture Format: 16:9

DVD Format: DVD 5, NTSC

Running Time: 80 mins

FSK: 0

Daniel Barenboim conducts the Berlin Philharmonic in their open-air summer venue, in a concert of spirited Latin-American gems from 1998.

This is a wonderful evening of evocative tango and Latin American inspired rhythms, fittingly conducted by the Argentinian-born Daniel Barenboim. Despite playing music outside their usual repertoire, the Berlin Philharmonic enthrals the audience with an exotic programme, which begins with works by those ‚honorary Spaniards‘ Ravel and Bizet, and then features special arrangements of lesser-known melodies and dances from a host of South American composers, including Rodrigo‘s famous Guitar Concerto played by John Williams, and passionate tango by Astor Piazzolla.

This is a rousing, fiery concert from the leafy open-air Waldbühne, the Berlin Philharmonic summer home in the woods outside Berlin, and is a must-see for all classical music lovers.

Arrangements by José Carli; direction by Bob Coles

Sound Format: PCM STEREO, DD 5.1

Picture Format: 4:3

DVD Format: DVD 9, PAL

Running Time: 119 mins

FSK: 0