DVD Videos

This is a re-release – on our own label for the first time – of our prize-winning DVD, We Want the Light.

The title is taken from a poem by a 12-year-old girl, Eva Pickova, written in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Her words provide both the title and the climax – in a setting for two choruses and orchestra by the American composer Franz Waxman, in his touching work The Song of Terezin. It is a film is about many things. It is about freedom and captivity, about emancipation, acculturation and assimilation; it is about the roles played by Moses and Felix Mendelssohn in the dream of fruitful, unproblematic integration of the Jews into German society after their liberation from the ghettos; it is about Richard Wagner, his ferociously anti-Semitic essay Das Judenthum in der Musik (The Jews in Music) and his influence on the thinking of the Third Reich but, most of all, it is a film about how much music can mean to people, even in the direst of circumstances, or particularly in the direst circumstances.

Picture format: 16:9 anamorphic

Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo

Subtitles: EN/FR/DE/ES

Running time: approx 330 minutes

This is a re-release — in an improved version, and on our own label for the first time — one of our most important DVD titles, Andrés Segovia in Portrait.

It contains two very different films: Segovia at Los Olivos and Andrés Segovia: The Song of the Guitar. The first was shot in 1967, in what was, at that time, his newly built house, Los Olivos, on the Costa del Sol in southern Spain. The Grand Master was 75. The second was shot in Granada and the glorious Palaces of the Alhambra in 1976 when the maestro was 84.

In Segovia at Los Olivos, Segovia talks, in the relaxed atmosphere of his new home and in his inimitable Spanish way, about his objectives, his convictions, his career and his music. He plays pieces by Bach, Torroba, Llobet, Tarrega, Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Granados.

In The Song of the Guitar Segovia speaks, out of vision, except for a short statement near the beginning and he talks, not about his career and his achievements, but about his youth and the spirit in which he set out on his remarkable quest — a great artist in late maturity, reflecting on the genesis of his extraordinary journey. It is made as a poetic recollection of the atmosphere, rather than the facts, of his passionate beginnings — nearly 70 years earlier. Andrés Segovia was a poet in almost everything that he did.

In the second film he plays music by Albeniz, Granados, Scarlatti, Rameau, Sor, Ponce, Aguado, Bach, Chopin and Torroba.

Andrés Segovia had one of the longest, most successful and most unusual careers in the entire history of Western music: He gave his first recital at the age of 16 and his last at the age of 94. Fritz Kreisler, himself one of the 20th century greats, claimed that Segovia was one of the two greatest performing musicians of the 20th century. The other, according to Kreisler, being Pablo Casals.

Picture format: 4:3 and 16:9 letterbox

Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 mono and stereo

Subtitles: EN/DE/ES/FR/IT

Running time: approx 151 minutes

A new release from the series of Metropolitan Munich programs, ahead of the Celibidache and Barenboim Anniversaries to come in 2012.

In 1992 Daniel Barenboim had just been appointed Artistic Director and General Musical Director of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin and was Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Today Daniel Barenboim is internationally recognized and revered as an orchestral and operatic conductor, pianist, and a musical ambassador and also as a humanitarian.

One of Bach's most famous yet demanding and certainly immensely important works performed by Daniel Barenboim.

Bonus: Daniel Barenboim introduces the Goldberg Variations.

Classified as EuroArts "Recorded Excellence", with high historical value.

Picture format DVD: NTSC 16:9

Sounds formats DVD: PCM Stereo

Region code: 0

Booklet notes: English, German, French

Runnning time: 91 mins (Concert 82 mins & Bonus 9 mins)

This re-release — an improved version of Christopher Nupen’s Schubert DVD — contains two of his most famous films: The Trout, which is almost certainly the most frequently broadcast classical music film in the history of television and Franz Peter Schubert: The Greatest Love and the Greatest Sorrow which many people think is his best — perhaps because it was 10 years in the making.

As with most of Christopher Nupen’s DVDs this one contains two films which are entirely different in style and character from one another.

The Trout which was shot in 1969 is an explosion of youthful exuberance that was unlike anything that had ever been seen before. The protagonists were unknown to the general public when the film was shot but have since come to be recognised as being among the most affectionately remembered musicians of our time. Their names: Daniel Barenboim, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Jacqueline du Pré and Zubin Mehta.

Franz Peter Schubert: The Greatest Love and the Greatest Sorrow was described by Sir Isaiah Berlin as, “This most poignant of tributes to Schubert.” It is not a film about Schubert’s life. It is a film about his extraordinary achievements in the last 20 months of his life after the death of his god, Beethoven. Schubert himself said, “Who, after Beethoven, may dare to do anything.” The answer was Franz Peter Schubert, who took the language of music forward into new and uncharted territory once he was liberated from his own profound respect for his predecessor. However, unlike Beethoven, he does not sing of the fullness of the earth. Instead, he laments for our mortality and what he has to say, ranks among the greatest achievements in music. The musicians are Vladimir Ashkenazy, Andreas Schmidt, Antje Weithaas and Michael Sanderling.

Nominated at Banff and winner of Czech Crystal at Golden Prague.

Format: NTSC

Region: 0 (all regions)

Picture format: 4:3 and 16:9 letterbox

Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo

Subtitles: DE/EN/ES/FR/IT

Running time: 182 mins

“Christopher Nupen: King of the music documentary” Gramophone Magazine

and winner of the Documentary DVD of the Year 2005, 2006 and 2008, 2010.

“The master of the music doc.” Norman Lebrecht, The Evening Standard

A Christopher Nupen DVD about Niccolo Paganini: the most charismatic figure in the entire history of Western music — also the most talked about, the most controversial, the most famous and the most successful classical soloist that the world of music has ever known.

The story is astonishing, exciting, wildly unusual and, at the end, deeply touching. It is one of the most extraordinary tales in the history of music and it is told with all the Nupen finesse and commitment that have won him DVD of the Year Award four times in the past six years.

Paganini made use of his astonishing gifts, and the gullibility of the world, to create the most elaborate and enduring legend of all instrumental soloists in Western classical music. But, as so often with legends, the excitement and the chatter obscured the true figure of both the man and the artist.

In the film on this DVD, Christopher Nupen looks at the legend and the strange man who created it with his dazzling combination of technical brilliance, supreme showmanship, Italian melody and unbridled manipulative skill — a man whose extraordinary personality unsettled even the most sophisticated and educated minds and provoked wildly contradictory opinions.

The film presents Paganini’s music, shot and edited in the style developed by Christopher Nupen and his colleagues for their prize winning DVDs about Sibelius, Schubert and Tchaikovsky and combines it with extracts from Paganini's letters and quotations from both his admirers and his many detractors. While being hailed as the greatest performing musician of his time, Paganini was denounced again and again by knowledgeable critics as a charlatan in league with the devil and an avaricious man with scant respect for those who responded so enthusiastically to his unforgettable gift — and contributed so readily to his vast personal fortune.

Paganini exploited it all and used the legends to make himself not only the most famous performer of his time, but also the wealthiest by a long, long way. In time this provoked envy and resentment and, finally, a pitiable isolation.

“Christopher Nupen: King of the music documentary.” Gramophone Magazine

How many people remain in good shape, both mentally and physically, at the age of 106? The answer is very few but Alice Sommer Herz is among those exceptional few. And how many have the gift of forgiveness? And how many are free of hatred? Gigi Sommer has both of those qualities. She was imprisoned, with her six-year-old son, in the Theresienstadt concentration camp and saw unspeakable atrocities. She lost both her mother and her husband in Nazi death camps but she does not hate her persecutors. That is not because they are anything other than monstrous criminals but because she has the wisdom to know that all hatred hurts the soul of the hater, not the hated and Gigi Sommer’s inspiring soul is among the things which she has kept intact and unblemished through her hundred and six years.

She was a pianist of distinction, played more than 100 concerts in the Theresienstadt camp and is in no doubt that music saved both her sanity and her life and the lives of many others in those unimaginable circumstances.

On this DVD Alice Sommer speaks with her quiet grace and wisdom about her life, her experiences and her beliefs. She also plays music by Schubert, Smetana and Beethoven in a manner that reminds us of her teacher Artur Schnabel and a bygone age in music making.

At the age of 104 she published a best-selling book, written in collaboration with her by two German writers, (A Garden of Eden in Hell), which has already been printed in seven different languages. That, and our film, We Want the Light of which she is the heroine, have made Gigi Sommer an international star.

Film remembers our artists in a way that not one of the other media is quite able to match and Gigi Sommer is an artist worth remembering.

Region: 0 (all regions)

Picture format: 16:9 FHA

Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo

Subtitles:

GB/DE/ES/FR/IT

Running time: 54 mins

These two pioneering films will both be shown in the second Christopher Nupen season to be broadcast by the BBC on Friday evenings, starting on 15 January. The series will also include the two Sibelius films and his Schubert film, all available on DVD and distributed by Select.

The Tchaikovsky films are unusual in that they do not use actors to represent the composer but are made entirely of Tchaikovsky’s own words and music plus the words of a few of his closest companions. The result gives an exceptionally intimate picture of the inner landscape of Tchaikovsky’s work and artistic preoccupations. They are essential viewing for Tchaikovsky fans.

The first film, Tchaikovsky’s Women (70'15"), looks at the women both in his private life and in his early music. Almost all of his best early work was inspired by deep identification with the plight of his suffering young heroines, an identification so complete that it spilled over repeatedly into his personal life with dramatic consequences: on one occasion leading to attempted suicide. This predeliction began, when Tchaikovsky was 24 years old,

with Katerina Kabanova in The Storm. It continued in full flood with Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Francesca da Rimini, Odette in Swan Lake and, above all, Tatyana in Evgeny Onegin. All of these young women make appearances in the film.

The second film, Fate (85'35"), looks at Tchaikovsky’s strange relationship with Nadezhda von Meck, the most important attachment of in his life, after his mother, while also following his increasing concern with the idea of fate as a controlling influence in his own life and as a motivating force in his later symphonies. What he did not know, despite all his concern and forebodings, was that fate would overtake him, at the age of 53, more tragically than even Tchaikovsky could have foreseen.

“Christopher Nupen: King of the music documentary” Gramophone Magazine and winner of the Documentary DVD of the Year at Midem in Cannes 2005, 2006 and 2008.

“The master of the music doc.” Norman Lebrecht, The Evening Standard

“Tchaikovsky ...constant delight and variety.” Peter Waymark, The Times.

Picture format: 4:3

Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo

Subtitles: DE/ES/FR/ IT/

Running time: 2 hours 36 mins

This DVD contains one of Christopher Nupen’s famously intimate portraits of leading performers plus a montage of excerpts from his composer films with Ashkenazy as conductor where one sees a very different Ashkenazy from the notably undemonstrative pianist.

The DVD also contains a characteristically modest interview with Ashkenazy on the nature and origins of musical talent and a deeply felt performance of Rachmaninov’s last work for the piano, the Corelli Variations, preceded by an extended introduction and analysis by Ashkenazy that is a model of its kind.

Ashkenazy started high by winning the Queen Elizabeth of the Belgians Prize at the age of 18 and later the Tchaikovsky competition but that was only the start, his career has continued to rise steadily from then until now. He is probably the most frequently recorded pianist in history with a discography that runs to 56 pages and he has also become an international conductor of the highest rank.

In the first film on the DVD, Ashkenazy’s boyish charm and the winning good looks of his Icelandic wife gave the film a very appealing quality from its first appearance. In the intervening years it has become also an affectionately remembered historical document with a good deal of associated nostalgia.

This DVD contains three productions from Christopher Nupen’s famously comprehensive portraits of leading performers: the portrait film, Itzhak Perlman: Virtuoso Violinist (I know I played every note) and two memorable performances of Bach partitas shot live, on stage, at a concert in London where this polyfaceted artist is at his best.

It also contains two sequences in which Itzhak Perlman looks back. The first of them, The Trout Remembered looks at the making of the film The Trout, probably the most frequently broadcast classical music film in the history of television and one which has become the lasting emblem of a great age in music. The second, made especially for this DVD, "Jacqueline du Pré Remembered", recalls a friend who was very close for many years, a colleague with whom he made chamber music in many places and an artist and personality for whom he has an unbounded admiration and an enduring affection.

Itzhak Perlman is one of the world’s leading musical performers, famous all over the world not only as a virtuoso violinist of the highest rank but as a much loved television personality, an honoured guest at the White House and an extremely effective spokesman for the disabled, having been handicapped himself by polio since the age of 31/2. All of these things together, plus a famously lighthearted ebullience, have won him a particularly affectionate following.

This DVD will contain our film Who Was Jacqueline du Pré? which has never previously been released in any home video format, an interview with Jacqueline du Pré which we shot in December 1980 and which has never been seen by anybody but us, a 12 minute montage of images from our archives of Jacqueline du Pré and Daniel Barenboim in action set to our recording of them playing the first movement of the Brahms E minor cello sonata and Remembering Jacqueline du Pré which was previously issued on the EMI label