DVD Videos

Film 1 : The Final Chorale tells the story of Igor Stravinsky’s “Symphonies for Wind Instruments”, a piece he composed in 1920 in memory of Claude Debussy. Using for the first time a “montage” technique juxtaposing short musical sequences and blocks of sound, Stravinsky constructed his work as a bold and majestic piece with complex tempo relations which, until today, still strike musicologists, musicians and audiences alike by their originality. The chorale at the close of the piece explodes in an apotheosis of eclecticism. Frank Scheffer tells this neo-classical musical adventure in a moving documentary, taking the structure and character of the composition as the basic form for the style and editing of the film. His narration includes interviews, archival material on Stravinsky and performances by the Netherlands Wind Ensemble conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw.<br><br>Film 2 : Written in 1909, Five Orchestral Pieces is one of Arnold Schönberg’s most famous compositions, representing the revolutionary step from tonal to atonal music. In the composer’s own words, it was just "No architecture, no build up, just an uninterrupted flow of colours, rhythm and moods".

Conductor Michael Gielen rehearses and performs Schoenberg's Op. 16 with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic. Each of the five movements is interspersed with interviews as Gielen, Carl Schorske and Charles Rosen who discuss various aspects of Schoenberg's life and works. Rosen also performs the last movement of Schoenberg's Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11.

Format: PAL

Language: English

Region: All Regions

Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Number of discs: 1

DVD Release Date: 10 Sep 2007

Run Time: 157 minutes

In Dichterliebe (2000), a film by Oliver Herrmann based on Robert Schumann’s song-cycle of the same name, the boundaries between song recital and reality blur. The chosen setting – a night club in the centre of Berlin – creates the intimate, dark salon atmosphere in which the songs might also have been performed at the time they were written. Returning to origins in this way, the film departs from the concert atmosphere in which song-recitals are normally performed nowadays.

In the film One Night. One Life (1999), based on the cycle Pierrot Lunaire, Arnold Schönberg’s opus 21, director Oliver Herrmann has created a surreal, at times grotesque dream world set in a modern city, through which Pierrot (Christine Schäfer) moves like a spirit. In each new number she passes through different scenes and levels of the world around us: such as an abattoir, a peep-show, a station or a supermarket.

In Dichterliebe (2000), a film by Oliver Herrmann based on Robert Schumann’s song-cycle of the same name, the boundaries between song recital and reality blur. The chosen setting – a night club in the centre of Berlin – creates the intimate, dark salon atmosphere in which the songs might also have been performed at the time they were written. Returning to origins in this way, the film departs from the concert atmosphere in which song-recitals are normally performed nowadays.

In the film One Night. One Life (1999), based on the cycle Pierrot Lunaire, Arnold Schönberg’s opus 21, director Oliver Herrmann has created a surreal, at times grotesque dream world set in a modern city, through which Pierrot (Christine Schäfer) moves like a spirit. In each new number she passes through different scenes and levels of the world around us: such as an abattoir, a peep-show, a station or a supermarket.

By the time he reached his mid-20s, Glenn Gould had changed the way the world listened to the keyboard works of Johann Sebastian Bach. By the time of his fatal stroke in 1982, two days after he turned 50, this daring and visionary artist had successfully challenged many of the most cherished conventions of classical music.

Now, for the first time, the dozens of film and television programs Gould made with the Canadian Broad casting Corporation from 1954 to 1977 are collected in their entirety in Glenn Gould on Television The Complete CBC Broadcasts. More than 19 hours of TV specials, concert performances, interviews and discussions collected on 10 DVDs make it possible to discover what Gould always considered some of his most significant and original life?s work, most of which has not been seen since it was first telecast.

Includes: The Subject is Beethoven, Music in the USSR, Glenn Gould on Bach, Richard Strauss - A Personal View, The Anatomy of a Fugue, Anthology of Variation, Duo: Gould and Menuhin, all four Conversations with Glenn Gould films, The Idea of North, the four Music in Our Time programs, and more.