DVD Videos

“Anyone who was fortunate enough to have attended last year's sensational Proms performance from the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra under their charismatic conductor Gustavo Dudamel will want to view this inspirational and heart-warming DVD.” BBC Music Magazine, September 2008 *****

“The "sistema" has been going in Venezuela for more than 30 years. It is probably the most ambitious programme of music education and orchestra training in the world. This uplifting, superbly paced documentary should be required viewing for every government minister in the UK.” Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2008

“Nearly 30 years have elapsed since Boulez and Chéreau last created a new production together – the Paris premiere of the Cerha completion of Lulu. In the interim the conductor has taken on repertoire he might have blanched at in those days (Bruckner, Janácek, even Richard Strauss) while the director became more involved in the cinema and the plays of his late partner Bernard- Marie Koltès. Their return, in a staging shared by four houses, shows the old fires undiminished, although the heightened realism and visual beauty still practised by Chéreau's team (his designer Richard Peduzzi has worked with him since their schooldays) have changed little over the years and, inevitably, lack the radical edge they had in the 1970s.
Janácek's (and Dostoyevsky's) prisoners are modernised painlessly to a non-specific 20thcentury gulag surrounded (except in the river bank scene, here a huge rubbish dump, that opens Act 2) by Peduzzi's trademark steep Italianate high walls. As in all his productions and films, Chéreau's directing turns everyone into such complete and natural actors that the descriptive term 'acting' seems almost redundant.
Even in Act 3, where Janácek's dramaturgy calls for perhaps one prisoner story too many, the staging's pulse never falters. Only the plays in Act 2 feel a little too carefully stylised (and Eastern-influenced) for these prisoners to have put on themselves, although they're unfailingly reflective of the characters in the main story.
Boulez once said that he began conducting in order to achieve really good performances of modern works. Now in his 80s, he is still operating at that level in this tricky score (he uses the Mackerras/Tyrrell critical edition), treading the finest balance, as did Janácek, between reported emotion and outright passion. It really is invidious in this ensemble piece to pick out individuals, but Ainsley creates a compellingly dangerous near-ballet out of Skuratov's insanity, and Bär and Stoklossa limn beautifully the growing closeness of the nobleman Gorjancikov and the young Aljeja. The sound picture does justice to Boulez's balances, while the camera-work and editing are a lot happier than the bumpy film of the 2005 Chéreau/Aix Così.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Whatever the reason, Verbier attracts great artists and inspires them to new heights, helped by the canny casting of the festival founder and artistic director Martin Engstroem. Martha Argerich… is absolutely astounding in the finale of Bartók's Sonata for Violin and Piano No 1 with a demonically driven Renaud Capuçon. ...Nelson Freire, offers a tender, one might say avuncular, view of Debussy's Children's Corner, a contrast to the glacial Hélène Grimaud in Schumann and Ravel, and Evgeny Kissin's Liebesträume No 3 where love is clearly a cross to be borne (though his Bizet-Horowitz Variations justifiably raise the roof). Rounding off proceedings is a fired-up Joshua Bell in the finale of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. Visually, the camerawork is efficient and nothing more.” Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2008

“Who is Karel Ancerl? Only his music-making can give us the answer. Urbane, modern, uncomplicated and entirely self-possessed, Karel Ancerl makes an unsatisfactorily self-effacing interviewee for the same reasons that his recordings still compel attention.” Gramophone Magazine, July 2009

“Weissenberg has a remarkable talent, as the three Petrushka pieces prove, but he has often misused it, with harsh results. This sampling of his repertoire and his thoughts on it is worth seeing.” BBC Music Magazine, Proms 2008 ****

“If you invested in Marc-André Hamelin's recent CD 'In a State of Jazz' (see page 1328) you will have heard the eponymous Sonata and five Charles Trenet song transcriptions by Alexis Weissenberg. Here is Weissenberg himself seen first in the innovative black–and–white film of Three Movements from Petrushka directed by Åke Falck in 1965 which revived the pianist's flagging career. The print is remarkably crisp and vivid even if, as on the original film, the sound of this high–octane performance is not always in sync. The DVD's bonus features a short interview with the pianist talking about the work.
The rest of the programme has performances that reveal what an uneven player Weissenberg was. His impassive face and economic gestures seem to reflect his disengagement with some of the music (try the Bach–Hess Jesu, Joy of Man'sDesiring and the slow movement – the only part of the work here – of Chopin's B minor Sonata).
On the other hand there's a riveting Prokofiev Third Sonata (complete) and Scriabin Nocturne for the left hand alone. The longest work from the 150 minutes of the disc is Brahms's Second Piano Concerto, a lightweight reading conducted by the amiable Georges Prêtre in 1969.
From the same label comes a 1989 recital from Sviatoslav Richter given in London's Barbican Centre by the light of a 40–watt bulb. Now expressing any criticism of the great man will invite a heap of invective, but when Richter comes on stage conveying the distinct impression that he would rather be anywhere else, it does appear rather graceless. What with that, the anglepoise and reading from the score you wonder if he is in the mood to play Mozart at all.
Thank heavens he is. One can put up with any amount of eccentricity to hear K282, K545 (Sonata facile) and K310 played like this. Close your eyes – that's the best way of enjoying this, especially as the editing is a real distraction.
The three (black–and–white) bonus tracks from 20 years earlier were broadcast in October 1969.
Looking once more as though his cat's just been run over, Richter rampages through Rachmaninov's Etude–Tableau Op 9 No 3 and Chopin's Etudes Op 10 No 4 (ludicriously fast) and No 12.
Then there is the endearing figure of Tatyana Nikolaieva in her signature work, the 24 Preludes and Fugues of Shostakovich. Filmed in December 1992 just 11 months before her death at the age of 69, the setting for the 150 minutes of the cycle appears to be a capacious Victorian drawing room, the instrument illuminated by an old–fashioned standard lamp (what is it about Russians and electricity?). Talking of which, Nikolaieva, looking every inch the archetypal babushka and clad in clothes that might have been worn by Clara Schumann, lights up these works from within. Here are old and intimate friends. It's doubtful whether we'll hear them better played – unsuprisingly, as she was the composer's inspiration for the cycle (she reveals as much in the brief interview that forms the DVD's bonus). Already, this is a valuable historical document.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“This beautiful, essential disc gathers together footage of the Bulgarianborn, French pianist Alexis Weissenberg from the mid-to- late 1960s, a period that marked his return to the concert platform after nearly a decade's absence. Pride of place goes to his 1965 film of Stravinsky's Three Movements from Petrushka, directed by Ingmar Bergman's assistant, Åke Falck. It's a technical tour de force that turns Weissenberg into a glamorous visionary, fetishises his hands and transforms his piano into a modernist abstraction of planes, lines and lethal-looking hammers. More conventionally filmed, but equally mesmerising, is a 1969 French TV performance of Brahms' Second Piano Concerto, with the ORTF Orchestra conducted by an enraptured-looking Georges Prêtre. Weissenberg's detractors have often taken him to task for his supposed heavy-handedness. The weight of his playing, however, was balanced by great interpretative directness and intensity, and this performance of the Brahms is among the most searching and profound that I know. A number of shorter TV appearances give us fine examples of his astringent Chopin, his deeply sexy Scriabin and his controversial, probing Bach.” The Guardian, Friday 12 December 2008 *****

“The Italian pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1920-95) was a legend in his own lifetime - renowned for his beautifully polished sound, clarity of execution, strict fidelity to the composer and awareness of harmonic subtleties. Everything was planned to the highest degree of musical and technical perfection: Michelangeli was not one for freedoms, excesses, rubatos or outbursts of spontaneity. He played the way he was - with a seemingly unshakeable aristocratic reserve… Brahms's Four Ballades Op.10 benefit most from his introspective approach, especially in the climax to the "Edward" Ballade.” Financial Times

“Scholl‘s voice is pure and beautiful in sound, his taste exquisite, his pitch and diction immaculate. It is inadequate to compare Andreas Scholl to many other countertenors now working, even the fi nest of them. Instead one is put in mind of legendary past masters.” Fanfare

“If Budd is to be strongly recommended, Grimes has to be urged, passionately: intensely moving, beyond expectations even though those were high. Heather Harper sings with the most beautiful tone in the role of Ellen and acts with compelling sincerity. Pears himself is utterly vindicated... The whole complex character is there - and the camera follows closely.” Gramophone Magazine, September 2008

“Pears is a superb Grimes, every bit as compelling as in his classic Decca recording...What makes this performance so compelling is the excellence of the cast in general: from the beauty of Heather Harper's Ellen Orford, to the superb characterizations of Ann Robson's Mrs Sedley...A classic and a must for all Britten fans.” Penguin Guide, 2010 ****