DVD Videos

Christian Thielemann launches a new era for the Salzburg Easter Festival, with a groundbreaking performance of Wagner’s ‘Easter opera’, to be available in a 2-DVD set and on Blu-ray.

Earlier in Wagner bicentenary year, Christian Thielemann put his stamp on the Salzburg Easter Festival with a triumphant Parsifal. In his first year as Artistic Director he has launched a new era, with a performance on the one hand firmly rooted in tradition, whilst pushing visual and artistic boundaries along the way.

The evening marked something of a homecoming for the acclaimed Wagnerian, who worked on the opera in Salzburg with his mentor Herbert von Karajan in the Eighties. Hailing a new tradition, the performance was greeted with tumultuous applause from the Festival audience and hailed by international critics.

The cast of leading Wagnerians includes the great heldentenor Johan Botha in the title role, Michaela Schuster as the enigmatic Kundry, Danish bass Stephen Milling as Gurnemanz and, in another break with tradition, Wolfgang Koch in the two baritone roles of Amfortas and Klingsor.

Unlike the deep pit of Bayreuth, where the opera was first performed, the orchestra in the Große Festspielhaus is placed on a raised platform, bringing it closer to the heart of the drama and revealing the full precision and refinement of Dresden’s great opera orchestra.

In this biographical and musical road movie by Andy Sommer, Antoine Wagner, a young (30-year-old) photographer living in New York, heads to Switzerland on the trail of his great, great-grandfather, the renowned composer Richard Wagner.

It is not widely known that Wagner spent several years in Switzerland - first as a political exile then as an artist who had become famous. It was in that country that he wrote his great theoretical essays, began working on the composition of 'Der Ring des Nibelungen' and wrote 'Tristan und Isolde', the 'Wesendonck-Lieder' and 'Die Meistersinger'. There, too, he lived the two great love stories of his life: first with Mathilde Wesendonck and later, with the woman who would become his wife, Cosima Liszt.

In order to apprehend this complex personality, Antoine Wagner returns to Zurich and Lucerne and the sites where his ancestor had lived, meeting historians, musicologists, musicians and enlightened amateurs. He also sets off on a mountaineering expedition in contact with grandiose, violent Nature, exploring those landscapes that Wagner so admired and which were a profound source of inspiration for him.

Is it really possible to stage Wagner’s Ring on a single day? The composer’s great-granddaughter, Katharina Wagner, who now runs the Bayreuth Festival, was keen to stage Cord Garben‘s abridged version of the cycle at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, but in the event things turned out rather differently.

When she and her team arrived at the Colón, they found that the rehearsal conditions were not what they were expecting, and so she decided that the task should be entrusted to a different director. Valentina Carrasco took over at short notice and together with the singers and the set and costume designers she staged the Ring in a seven-hour version never previously seen and all on a single day!

The documentary provides a thrilling and visually memorable account of the long journey taken by this version from its inception to the first night.

PICTURE: 16:9, HD

SOUND: PCM STEREO, DTS 5.0

RUNNING TIME: 93 MINS

SUBTITLES: ENGLISH, GERMAN, FRENCH, SPANISH, KOREAN, JAPANESE

AVAILABLE WORLDWIDE

Designer JUHANI PIRSKANEN

Directed for video by AARNO CRONVALL

Ilkka Bäckman's acclaimed production takes place outdoors in the huge courtyard of Finland's 500-year-old Olavinlinna Castle – a majestic and impressive setting, which gives the production an atmosphere and realism. Hildegard Behrens, at the height of her career, is the tragic Senta, whose destiny is to redeem the Dutchman from his fate. The German bass-baritone, Franz Grundheber, sings the title role, and Finland's own Matti Salminen is the Norwegian sea captain, Daland.

SUBTITLED IN ENGLISH, FRENCH, GERMAN, SPANISH

DOLBY DIGITAL 2.0 STEREO 139 MINS

REGIONS 2-6

NTSC 4:3

COLOUR

DVD-9

Production by Robert Lepage

Production by Robert Lepage

Production by Robert Lepage

Production by Robert Lepage

"This was one of the most beautiful New Year's Concerts since Karajan and Kleiber. Franz Welser-Möst knows how the music of the Strauss-dynasty, the music of Lanner and Hellmesberger has to sound" Österreich on the 2011 NY Concert

Sony Classical is pleased to announce the release of the recording of one of the world’s most famous classical music events: the New Year’s Concert 2013 with the Vienna Philharmonic under the baton of celebrated conductor, Franz Welser-Möst. He returns to direct the 2013 celebrations after his acclaimed debut in 2011. Maestro Welser-Mőst is the former Music Director of the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

The annual New Year's Day Concert in the stunning Vienna Musikverein has been an exalted tradition for more than seven decades and the resulting recordings with works from the Strauss dynasty and their contemporaries are among the classical market's most important releases.

The concert will be broadcast on TV and radio to over 70 countries around the world with an estimate of more than 40 million viewers.

The programme traditionally revolves around waltzes and polkas by the Strauss family (Johann father and son as well as Josef and Eduard Strauss) whose music has enjoyed recent chart resurgence. The proven formula blends well-known classics with premieres of works that have never been performed before at the New Year´s Concert and the result is invariably both joyful and moving. The programme will remain a closely guarded secret until a few days before the event, but it can already be revealed that in 2013 the concert will include more premieres than ever before and probably some unexpected surprises. As is tradition, the concert will include the famous waltz The Blue Danube and the Radetzky March.

Major stars of the international opera stage come together with the Chor und Orchester of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, under the internationally acclaimed conductor Donald Runnicles, in this opera gala in aid of the German AIDS Foundation.

Highlights from operas by Rossini, Verdi, Meyerbeer, Wagner, Delibes, Sartori are performed by world-class musicians from around the globe.

Heading the star-studded line-up were established artists of the calibre of Adrianne Pieczonka, Vivica Genaux and Simone Kermes, while the younger generation is represented by tenors Francesco Demuro, Antonio Poli and Teodor Illincai, as well as the exciting soprano Kristin Lewis and mezzo-soprano Anna Smirnova. The result was truly an evening to remember.

Picture format DVD: NTSC 16:9

Sound format DVD: PCM Stereo

Region code: 0

Booklet notes: English, German, French

Runnning time: 75 mins