DVD Videos

This is Priory’s ninth DVD/CD package – a series which has been described as “ the greatest in the history of recorded organ music”. A programme of music linked to the history of Chester and a full tour of the organ and its history is documented with an accompanying CD of the recital – (programme below). Another fantastic release which will undoubtedly sell a few thousand copies, like all previous volumes. Currently only available in PAL.

Alongside the new CD release from the Vienna Boys’ Choir, this DVD showcases the choir at their best with a selection of festive songs from the festively decorated Augarten Palace.

Picture Format: Colour 16:9

Region Code: 0 (Worldwide)

Running Time: 40mins

“These recordings represent an overview of twenty of the most heady years of Mstislav Rostropovich’s career, during which he made his name in the West, was exiled from his homeland for his support of dissident artists, poets and musicians, and established himself as a major international force for (not just the musical) good.” (Chris de Souza)

Introduced to Britten through Shostakovich, his teacher, Rostropovich formed a close partnership with the British composer – as evident here in their collaborative performances from the opening concert of the new Snape Maltings Concert Hall, which includes rare audiovisual footage of the Maltings before it was destroyed by fire in 1969 and rebuilt.

Rostropovich’s Aldeburgh performance of Variations on a Rococo Theme displays him at the peak of his powers and is a wonderful example of his partnership with Britten, of whom this is rare conducting footage.

The excerpts from Britten’s opera Gloriana (the contemporary poetic name for Elizabeth I), included as the bonus of this DVD, are a highly significant addition to the composer’s discography. While Britten conducted recordings of most of his operas on disc, Gloriana was not one of them, so this is the only hint we have of his approach to any of the score. The well-chosen sections, forming an unusual concert suite, include The Lute Song performed by Peter Pears.

This is the first release of this material on DVD, and is available in time for the Britten centenary in 2013.

Sound format: Enhanced Mono

DVD format: NTSC

Picture format: 4:3

Running time: 68’

Subtitles: n/a

Menu languages: English

Booklet languages: E/F/G

Region code: 0

Territory Restrictions: None

Choreography: Sir Frederick Ashton

La Fille mal gardée – or The Badly Guarded Girl – is one of the best loved comic ballets of all time.

Said to have been inspired by Pierre Antoine Baudouin’s 1789 painting, La Réprimande/ Une Jeune Fille Querellée par Sa Mère, and first presented at The Grand Theatre de Bordeaux, France, on the 1st July of the same year, its refreshing simplicity and boisterous radiance has established it as a popular choice in the repertory of ballet companies the world over, centuries after it was first created.

This DVD showcases Frederick Ashton’s version – widely regarded as the definitive interpretation – initially devised for the London Royal Ballet in 1960 and first screened on the BBC over the Christmas period of 1962.

This performance featured the cast of the 1960 original, with Nadia Nerina in a role that Ashton created with her in mind. Nerina’s “joyous, soaring skill, which is Lise’s signature” (Financial Times) and David Blair’s technical and interpretative genius in the role of Colas are perfectly offset by Stanley Holden’s hilarious travesti turn as Widow Simone, and Alexander Grant, who brings pathos and humour to the character of Alain.

The score perfectly complements Ashton’s whimsical choreography. La Fille mal gardée is at once energetically fresh and quaintly naïve, and this DVD is testament to the youthfulness and vibrancy of Ashton’s version of this timeless ballet.

The talents of Nadia Nerina have also been seen on ICAD5030 (Giselle), and more recently on ICAD5058 in a performance of Coppélia.

Picture format: 4:3

Running time: 90’

Subtitles: n/a

Menu languages: English

Booklet languages: E/F/G

Region code: 0

Territory Restrictions: None

It is indeed ‘a curious story’, as the Prologue says. A remote English country house, an old and faithful housekeeper, two young orphan children and an eager new governess sent down from London to look after them. But all is not quite as it seems in the sheltered world of Bly. Spirits from the past increasingly encroach upon the realm of the living. And one question keeps worming its way into the governess’s mind: what exactly did happen between the children, their former governess and the deceased manservant, Peter Quint? Britten’s brilliantly scored, insidiously compelling adaptation of Henry James’s novella takes its themes of childish innocence and adult corruption, then twists and turns them to disturbing and ultimately devastating effect. Jonathan Kent’s eerily unsettling staging has been recorded at the Glyndebourne Festival conducted by Glyndebourne on Tour’s Music Director, Jakub Hrusa.

“Here is Britten’s supremely crafted operatic masterpiece — not a dud moment or false move — in a shatteringly powerful performance of such musical and theatrical distinction that I scarcely know where to begin apportioning praise. Perhaps the conductor: I already knew the quality of Jonathan Kent’s production from its first outing in 2006, and the cast looked pretty hot on paper too. But what I hadn’t suspected was that the young Czech conductor Jakub Hrusa would offer such a thrillingly visceral, angry and churned-up reading of the score. Galvanising the LPO to playing of scalding brilliance, Hrusa carefully ratcheted up the tension in the early scenes and brought the drama to the boil with an almost daemonic intensity. This wasn’t a nice creepy bedtime story, but something reaching dangerously into the darker reaches of human nature.” Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph

Twenty-five years ago, Pathways of Baroque [Les Chemins du Baroque] tiptoed in the footsteps of missionaries, Jesuits lost in oblivion, bringing scores, instruments and musical practices to South America. This is the final project from an association that revived and spread knowledge of these indigenous musicians, who now fully own their colonial heritage.

This sensitive sober film, with musical direction by Gabriel Garrido who has done much to revive music from the Americas, depicts repertoire that celebrates the fusion of the scholarly and popular.

Ahead of next year’s Britten centenary, Tony Palmer’s 1967 classic film is made available again. It’s a behind-the-scenes look at the Aldeburgh Festival, cofounded by Benjamin Britten along with singer Peter Pears and writer Eric Crozier, and the opening by The Queen of the new concert hall at Snape.

Sean Day-Lewis of The Daily Telegraph raved, "A superb film (which) may well achieve the status of a classic, repeated again and again over the years... the brilliant editing (was) of the highest quality, making a natural partnership of music and picture."

DVD specifications:

Region: 0 (All Regions)

Rating: E (Exempt from Certification)

Duration: 53 mins

Picture Format: NTSC (all regions)

‘Mozart in Japan’ is Tony Palmer’s film of the triumphant return of the Japanese pianist Mitsuko Uchida to her homeland in 1986, following her ecstatically received European performances of all 27 Mozart Piano Concertos.

In 1986 Mitsuko Uchida burst upon the international scene with an astonishing series of concerts comprising all 27 Mozart Piano Concertos. Conducting the English Chamber Orchestra from the keyboard, her performances received universal praise. Music Week wrote that she had "brought a new understanding to Mozart"; The Guardian said that her "apparently unfussy approach to the most elusive of composers disguised a profound understanding."

Tony Palmer went with her on her triumphant return to her homeland. East met West on a truly memorable occasion to make a prize-winning film, now released on DVD for the first time.

DVD specifications:

Region: 0 (All Regions)

Rating: E (Exempt from Certification)

Duration: 64 mins

Picture Format: NTSC (all regions), 16:9, Colour

This is a DVD of the special chamber concert of the 7th International Music Festival ‘Chopin and his Europe’ , performed at the Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall in August 2011.

The principle aim of the Chopin and his Europe festival is to seek Chopin’s influence and celebrate this in the musical culture of Poland and Europe, and to present these works.

The Quintet in G Minor by Juliusz Zarebeski, his Op. 34, is a work to be celebrated in this context. He was all but forgotten as a composer throughout the twentieth century, but rediscovered in the twenty-first and the delight in his work seems to be justified judging by this Quintet.

He was born in 1854, a gifted pianist, and went onto study at the Vienna Conservatoire, ending up in Rome to become a pupil of Liszt. (He was said to be one of Liszt’s favourite pupils!).

The Quintet was not premiered until a performance in 2011 in Lugano, and Marta Argerich and this team of musicians here recreate that performance, played last year in Warsaw.

English subtitles.