DVD Videos

Staged by Patrice Chéreau

The legendary production of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, formerly released by Warner Music, again available on DVD.

A splendid opera under the musical direction of Daniel Barenboim and staged by his close friend Patrice Chérau.

When Alban Berg saw a performance of the existentialist drama Woyzeck by Georg Büchner, he said it left such a tremendous impression on him that he immediately made up his mind to set it to music.

Berg is recasting Büchner’s fragmentary drama in a nearly expressionistic way. His music tears into the flesh. Berg’s Wozzeck is not just an opera about social compassion, it is an opera in which fear finds consummate musical expression.

This extraordinary performance at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden was staged by Patrice Chéreau who can be called one of the greatest theatrical directors of this century.

Outstanding opera singers Franz Grundheber, Waltraud Meier, Graham Clark, Günter von Kannen and Mark Baker and many others complete this great opera performance.

Picture format DVD: NTSC 4:3

Sound format DVD: PCM Stereo

Region code: 0 (worldwide)

Subtitles: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish

Booklet notes: English, German, French

Running time: 97 min

This DVD includes Brahms outstanding Trio in A minor for clarinet, cello and piano as well as the Trios Nos. 1, 2 and 3 for piano performed by the well–acclaimed pianist Elena Baschkirova, who established in 1988 the International Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival. Wenzel Fuchs (clarinet), Maxim Vengerov (violin),

Boris Pergamenschikow (cello) and Dietmar Schwalke (cello) complete this extraordinary ensemble.

New Release on Euroarts's sub-label: Recorded Excellence – Historical Value. The aim of the new series is to make accessible to music lovers and collectors top-quality recordings documenting extra-special concert performances that were hitherto unreleased or were no longer available, either for the first time or as re-releases on DVD.

Brahms is famous for his blend of Classicism in form with a Romantic harmonic idiom. There is a singular beauty in the music Brahms wrote towards the end of his life, compositions of an autumnal melancholy to which the Trio for clarinet is particularly well suited.

Picture format DVD: NTSC 4:3

Sounds format DVD: PCM Stereo

Region code: 0 (worldwide)

Booklet notes: English, German, French

Running time: 117 mins

This interpretation of Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw by Michael Hampe was recorded in 1990 at the Schwetzingen SWR Festival in a co-production with the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, London, and the Opera of Cologne in 1990. The Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra played under the direction of Steuart Bedford, an expert in Britten’s orchestral language.

Based on the novel by Henry James The Turn of the Screw is certainly more than just a beautifully spine-chilling gothic story. In his musical rendering, Britten succeeds in masterfully portraying the fateful relationships of the characters involved. Helen Field, Menai Davies, Machiko Obata and Richard Greager bring the characters in this moving plot to life in a very impressive way and convince the audience with superb voices.

BONUS: Introduction to the opera.

Sound Format: PCM Stereo

Picture Format: 4:3

DVD Format: DVD 9 / NTSC

Subtitle Languages: GB (Original Language), DE, FR, ES

Running Time: 114 mins (Opera) & 8 mins (Bonus)

FSK: 0

Every year the Berliner Philharmoniker invites artists for the orchestra’s traditional birthday concert on May 1st.

In 2012, the guests were Gustavo Dudamel, conducting, and Gautier Capuçon (cello) and was performed at the Spanische Hofreitschule in Vienna - A spectacular and unique setting for a thrilling and historic music event.

The Spanish Riding School has, to this day, a long standing relationship with music: The famous “Musikverein” was founded here in 1812. Furthermore, Haydn’s musical career started in its back garden!

Hosted by Valerie Solti

The Solti Centenary Concert in Chicago celebrated Sir Georg Solti’s 100th birthday on October 21, 2012, featuring the World Orchestra for Peace. This unique ensemble owes its existence to the vision of its founder, Sir Georg Solti, who believed passionately in peace and the power of music and musicians to be ambassadors for peace.

Charmingly hosted by Solti’s widow, Lady Valerie Solti, and featuring soloists such as Angela Gheorghiu and René Pape as well as members of the Georg Solti Accademia, this memorable evening presents musical highlights, all of which played a significant role in Solti’s life and career.

Besides excerpts from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberflöte and Don Giovanni or Verdi’s La Traviata and Rigoletto, this concert finds lovely musical moments in the 'Adagietto' from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, Strauss’ Don Juan and Bartók’s masterful Concerto for Orchestra. Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever as the encore closes the performance with a smash.

Conductor Valery Gergiev was a good friend of his advisor Georg Solti. Together with Lady Valerie Solti and the World Orchestra for Peace he carries on Solti’s vision and maintains his memory.

Special Bonus Feature: “Solti’s Vision”, a film about the World Orchestra for Peace

Sound Format: PCM Stereo, DD 5.1, dts-HD Master Audio 5.1

Format: DVD 9 / NTSC

Subtitle Languages: DE, FR / DE (Bonus)

Running Time: 112 mins + 21 mins (Bonus)

FSK: 0

Worldwide available

Director: Jean-Pierre Ponnelle

New Release on Euroarts's sub-label: Recorded Excellence – Historical Value. The aim of the new series is to make accessible to music lovers and collectors top-quality recordings documenting extra-special concert performances that were hitherto unreleased or were no longer available, either for the first time or as re-releases on DVD and Blu-ray Disc. The main focus is on artists and repertoire. The new series will showcase defining concert moments of music history.

Digitally remastered and restored from 35mm film. Including intensive and high-quality audio and visual restoration.

In the last part of five DVDs, seven-time GRAMMY® Award-winning pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim performs Sonatas 29 to 32 of the so-called 'New Testament' of music, Ludwig van Beethoven's thirty-two piano sonatas.

Composed over twenty-five years and embodying the shift of musical taste from the Classic to the Romantic, their performance requires a musician of extraordinary versatility. Daniel Barenboim is one such pianist – his recordings run the gamut from Bach and Mozart to Bruckner and Bartók. Infollowing in the footsteps of such masters as Artur Schnabel, Barenboim truly shows himself to be among the greatest living musicians.

Picture format DVD: NTSC 16:9

Sound format DVD: PCM Stereo

Region code: 0

Booklet notes: English, German, French

Running time: 125 mins

The Italian and international press were unanimous in their praise for Peter Grimes at La Scala, which revived the tradition of Britten's operas on the lyric stages of Italy. A strong British cast was marshalled by the baton of Robin Ticciati, who has already won golden opinions for his opera conducting.

Richard Jones's production focuses on the fisherman as the outsider in a brutal society, cut off by mutual suspicion and misunderstanding: an unforgettable production of an opera that never loses its power.

Extra feature: Interviews with cast and crew.

Subtitles: EN/FR/DE/JP/KR

Running time: 168 minutes

When it comes to shaping a musical event for the ears and the eyes, the monumental majesty of Anton Bruckner’s (1824–1896) symphonies and the exhilarating vibrancy of St. Florian’s monastery in Austria are a perfect match – especially when they are captured on film so thrillingly by such an eminent director as Brian Large.

The Fourth Symphony marks a major milestone in Bruckner’s attempt to establish a symphonic design suitable to sustain his innovative musical thought. Not surprisingly, the score was subjected to extensive revisions. The Fourth, in fact, represents the most convoluted revision history of all his symphonies – and this for a composer for whom variant editions of a work, often involving substantial changes, became the norm. The result is that the identification of the “authentic” final score that should be performed is a matter of ongoing debate for many of his symphonies – in particular the Fourth.

Franz Welser-Möst, the Music Director of The Cleveland Orchestra and General Music Director of the Vienna State Opera, is an acknowledged Bruckner specialist who has developed a passion for the composer’s Fourth Symphony – called the “Romantic” by its creator – in its infrequently played first edition (1888/89).

The Cleveland Orchestra, called the most European of America’s prestige formations, has been setting new standards in Bruckner interpretation for several years now through the “expertise” of Franz Welser-Möst, who “elicits a grandiose interpretation from his technically unsurpassable ensemble … It was an excellent concert … as anticipated.” (Austria’s leading daily, Die Presse).

Sound Format: PCM Stereo, DD 5.0

Picture Format: 16:9

Format: DVD 9 / NTSC

Running Time: 74 mins

FSK: 0

Leading Chopin interpreter Nelson Freire is the soloist in Chopin’s lyrical and brilliant Second Piano Concerto. On the podium the young French conductor Lionel Bringuier makes his Proms debut conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra and gives a sizzling performance of Roussel’s Symphony No.3 and of Ravel’s score for the ballet 'Daphnis et Chloé' - Suite No 2.

Chopin wrote his concerto at the age of 19 while crazily in love with an opera singer, but it's the work itself which is the object of adoration for soloist Nelson Freire who describes himself as having something of a 'crush' on the piece after first hearing it as a teenager.

The three other works on the programme chart French music over a century of changing musical tastes, beginning in 1844 with Berlioz's vivid evocation of a swashbuckling pirate adventure in his overture 'Le corsaire'. By 1912 the tides of modernism influenced Ravel's lavishly scored, pastoral ballet Daphnis and Chloë, with its famous opening soundscape of dawn breaking over the forest canopy, and by the 1930s Roussel's Third Symphony reflected the trends of neo-classicism.

"It was around the beginning of the second movement of Albert Roussel's Third Symphony that the playing of the BBC Symphony Orchestra – under the outstanding 23-year-old French conductor Lionel Bringuier, making his Prom debut – moved into top gear. From that point on, the orchestra's awareness of its own sound, collectively and individually, became heightened to an unusually compelling degree. The playing stayed on this exalted level until the end of the concert, which closed with Ravel's second Daphnis and Chloé suite...shaped with a certainty of direction that never compromised the music's inherent sensuousness. It provided a sensational climax to the evening."

George Hall, The Guardian 13/8/2010

Recorded live at the Royal Albert Hall, 08/2010,

Running time 95 min.

Booklet: French, German, English

Image 1DVD9, Colour 16/9, NTSC

Sound: PCM Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1