DVD Videos

Students: Hayley Wolfe (Violin) & Marisa Gupta (Piano)

Maxim Vengerov is recognised as one of the world's most exciting and brilliant violinists. His exceptional talent emerged when he was very young. He gave his first recital at the age of five and went on to win First Prize in the Junior Wieniawski Competition when he was ten years old, confirming his promise as a violinist of rare talent. Still in his mid-thirties he is now acknowledged throughout the world as one of the great musicians of our time. He is also an outstanding teacher and is Professor of Violin at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Perceptive, entertaining and always sensitive to the individual personality and ability of his pupils, he has an extraordinary ability to convey his insights into the music and inspire his students.

In this masterclass, he works on the first movement of Beethoven's Violin Sonata no 4 in A minor.

DVD + CD

The Dialogos ensemble presents a highly original DVD. Here, far from the traditional filming of a staged performance, Alpha and Katarina Livljanic offer a genuinely cinematographic work based on the epic poem of the Croatian writer Marko Marulic. Musically speaking, this project comes into the category of a ‘reconstruction’, inspired by listening to and studying Dalmatian Gregorian and Glagolitic sources from the time of Marulic and by melodies of oral tradition. In this research, it was necessary to study the most archaic layers of what is known as Glagolitic chant. This repertory, curiously sung in the local vernacular even though it belonged to the Roman rite, was preserved in manuscriptswritten in the Glagolitic alphabet used in medieval Croatia. The archaic beauty of the text is fabulously illustrated here by images of incredible aesthetic refinement. For lovers of fine sound recordings, Alpha offers as a bonus CD the audio version of the project as realised at the time of filming.

1 DVD (Subtitles: French, Croatian, German, English - Time: 66’, not including making of - PAL) + 1 CD Bonus - DVDpack

Andre Rieu’s series of concerts from Sao Paulo broke a record for the number of consecutive concerts by one artist by performing thirty nights in a row. Live in Brazil, is a recording of one of those concerts, moving away from Strauss’s Vienna to the fun-filled fiesta atmosphere of South America.

This release is the first complete recording of all of Cage’s works for organ, plus 4’33” (on this DVD version only).

The organ is ideally suited to Cage’s aesthetic — its multitude of stops make it the ultimate prepared instrument. The fact that sound emanates from a number of pipes placed at discrete locations in space nicely accords with Cage’s idea of the separation of sounds in space. And it represents vast possibilities that could be released as sound through the use of chance operations. For this reason Cage’s organ music occupies a small but quite important place within his output.

For Some of 'The Harmony of Maine' Cage selected 18th-century American hymns by Billings, Law, and Belcher and altered them by extending certain tones and removing others through chance operations so as to attenuate the functional harmony underlying them. Here and there, melodic fragments from the original hymns remain. The 1978 and 1987 works were written for the German organist Gerd Zacher, an important champion of new music.

American organist Gary Verkade, a student of Gerd Zacher, is on the faculty of the Musikhögskola in Piteå, Sweden. He has appeared at major festivals and concerts throughout Europe and the USA. Verkade was one of the registrants in the first German performance of Some of 'The Harmony of Maine'. The DVD allows the listener to enjoy the sounds of the spectacular organ and its acoustic in surround sound while viewing Tim Chu’s painterly films of the organist with the up to six registrants needed for some of the pieces.

Includes booklet with trilingual notes by Rob Haskins.

DVD BONUS:

– Gary Verkade discusses performing Cage on the organ, how “chance” is applied to the performances and gives musical examples (31 minutes)

Performance of 4'33"

Dedicated stereo and 5.1 surround mixes.

Boris Kuschnir was born in Kiev in 1948 and studied the violin at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire with Boris Belenky and chamber music with Valentin Berlinsky of the Borodin Quartet. His many encounters with Dmitri Shostakovich and David Oistrakh (with whom he also studied), had a lasting influence on his artistic development. Both as soloist and chamber musician he has made numerous recordings, notably the complete Mozart piano trios for EMI.

Boris Kuschnir also has a world-wide reputation as great violin teacher. Being Professor at both the Konservatorium Wien University and at the University of Music in Graz, his reputation as a teacher has won international recognition.

Released on DVD for the first time – and the first release from ICA of this astounding artist – this is a rare glimpse into Ashkenazy as a pianist, in the intimate surroundings of a studio.

Captured at the BBC’s Glasgow Studios in 1987 for their Music in Camera series, Ashkenazy demonstrates his talent and artistry as a pianist through this solo performance.

Born in Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod), in Russia in 1937, Ashkenazy started playing piano at the age of six, showing prodigious talent. He defected from the Soviet Union to London in 1963, becoming an Icelandic citizen in 1972, and later taking up his current residence of Switzerland – all the while maintaining his artistic integrity. As his career as a pianist blossomed, he took up the baton, becoming principal conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the conductor laureate of the Czech Philharmonic.

A multifaceted performer, his talents as a pianist helped him to mould a career that has been recognised with many rewards, including second prize at the 1955 International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, first prize at the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Brussels a year later and joint first, together with John Ogdon, at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1962. He is a multiple Grammy Award winner and is widely considered to be ‘one of the great virtuoso pianists of our era’ (The Guardian).

This DVD showcases Ashkenazy at the peak of his powers as a pianist, performing Schubert’s Impromptus D946 Nos. 1 & 2 and the Wanderer Fantasy, alongside Schumann’s widely-loved Arabeske and Piano Sonata No.1 – a piece that is certainly an unusual and interesting choice for such a recital. His calm exterior means that all of his energy is projected into infusing this performance with the variety each piece affords.

The recital demonstrates Ashkenazy’s versatility and musical skill through the extreme contrasts of the Impromptus, the lyrical, song-like grace and virtuosic flair of the Wanderer Fantasy, and the elegant yet exciting rendition of Schumann’s innovative Piano Sonata No.1.

Sound format: Enhanced Mono

DVD format: NTSC

Picture format: 4:3

Running time: 82’

Subtitles: n/a

Menu languages: English

Booklet languages: E/F/G

Region code: 0

Territory Restrictions: None

Beethoven wrote his Piano Concerto No. 3 around 1800, at a time in which the ambitious composer had created his fi rst important works in Vienna, such as the “Pathétique” Sonata and the “Moonlight” Sonata – personal works full of power and passion, with which he distanced himself from his mentor and model, Haydn. This performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under the direction of its principal conductor Mariss Jansons stars the distinguished pianist Mitsuko Uchida, who is known the world over for her outstanding interpretations of the piano works of Schubert, Mozart and Beethoven, as well as of 20th-century masters such as Schoenberg, Berg, Webern and Boulez.

Richard Strauss wrote his tone poem for large orchestra Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life) in 1898, shortly before he left Munich for the Berlin Court Opera, where he was appointed house conductor. In the imaginary hero whose eventful life is described in the work, the young Strauss apparently envisioned the freelance artist of his time, who was exposed to considerable hostility during the Wilhelminian era, just as Strauss himself in his early Munich period.

Sound Format: PCM Stereo, DD 5.0, dts-HD Master Audio 5.0

Format: DVD 9 / NTSC

Running Time: 90 mins

FSK: 0

Worldwide available

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

Violin and viola players whisper over their instruments. A guitarist waits with the closest attention for the moment to make a gesture we might easily have missed. The tuba player rises to go over to the open piano, there to send sounds echoing into its interior. Two cellists, bowing with heavy pressure down near the tailpiece, produce an urgent rasping. From the timpanist comes the sudden fortissimo that seems to shock the music to a standstill… Renowned German composer Helmut Lachenmann’s music is expressive in extraordinary ways, requiring the performers to play their instruments via unusual techniques, making for both compelling listening and viewing.

Lachenmann performs in and supervises these recordings with Ensemble Signal, one of America’s leading New Music ensembles. In addition to performing as narrator in „…Zwei Gefühle …“. Lachemann also is the soloist for three of his piano works.

These studio recordings followed an intensive four-concert tour of this programme. Lachenmann taught each musician of Ensemble Signal individually on his language of techniques for this project. Liner notes by Paul Griffiths.

First in a series of Lachenmann on Mode Records.

The DVD version features all of the music with full video in 5.1 Surround Sound (Dolby and 24-bit DTS) as well as a dedicated stereo mix.

DVD BONUS: 20 minute documentary of Lachenmann in conversation with Seth Brodsky (Assistant Professor of Music at The University of Chicago), filmed at New York’s Miller Theatre.