DVD Videos

This new DVD marks the film debut of piano virtuoso, Vassily Primakov, performing the three Intermezzos, Op. 117 by Johannes Brahms, the four Ballades by Fryderyk Chopin, and the Sonata No. 4 by Alexandr Scriabin.

Vassily Primakov has been hailed as a pianist of world class significance, the New York Times trumpeting his “fiery intensity” and his “bold, expressive phrasing and dramatic commitment that brought the audience to its feet.”

The DVD includes the following special features: Vassily Primakov photo gallery, biographical information, Primakov discography and a digital Mp4 file, for easy copying to iPod or personal video devices.

Sound Format: 5.1 surround sound

DTS / Dolby Digital

Running Time: 68 minutes

Available worldwide

As a follow up to the Quintessence Saxophone Quartet’s Five Seasons on CD, CPO is releasing a special DVD of the live concert from 2008. The DVD showcases the Quartet’s build up to the concert, and the concert itself, plus bonus material featuring the Quartet play more jazz.

Sound format: Dolby Digital 5.1, Stereo

Region Code: 0

NTSC/PAL

Running Time: 97 Minutes

“Christopher Nupen: King of the music documentary.” Gramophone Magazine

How many people remain in good shape, both mentally and physically, at the age of 106? The answer is very few but Alice Sommer Herz is among those exceptional few. And how many have the gift of forgiveness? And how many are free of hatred? Gigi Sommer has both of those qualities. She was imprisoned, with her six-year-old son, in the Theresienstadt concentration camp and saw unspeakable atrocities. She lost both her mother and her husband in Nazi death camps but she does not hate her persecutors. That is not because they are anything other than monstrous criminals but because she has the wisdom to know that all hatred hurts the soul of the hater, not the hated and Gigi Sommer’s inspiring soul is among the things which she has kept intact and unblemished through her hundred and six years.

She was a pianist of distinction, played more than 100 concerts in the Theresienstadt camp and is in no doubt that music saved both her sanity and her life and the lives of many others in those unimaginable circumstances.

On this DVD Alice Sommer speaks with her quiet grace and wisdom about her life, her experiences and her beliefs. She also plays music by Schubert, Smetana and Beethoven in a manner that reminds us of her teacher Artur Schnabel and a bygone age in music making.

At the age of 104 she published a best-selling book, written in collaboration with her by two German writers, (A Garden of Eden in Hell), which has already been printed in seven different languages. That, and our film, We Want the Light of which she is the heroine, have made Gigi Sommer an international star.

Film remembers our artists in a way that not one of the other media is quite able to match and Gigi Sommer is an artist worth remembering.

Region: 0 (all regions)

Picture format: 16:9 FHA

Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo

Subtitles:

GB/DE/ES/FR/IT

Running time: 54 mins

In the past decade, China has entered the big league on pianists with Yundi Li, Lang Lang and more recently Yuja Wang featuring in international concerts

A documentary portrait of Chinese pianist Yundi - formerly called Yundi Li and recently signed by EMI - captures the poetic intensity of this young virtuoso as he works with the great maestro Seiji Ozawa to prepare for his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic. This is interwoven with Yundi on tour in his home country, where we meet his family, gain insight into his upbringing and are exposed to the massive scale of piano culture in China.

Yundi started his career in 2000, when he won the famous Chopin Competition, being only 18 years old, and succeeding Pollini, Argerich and Zimerman amongst others. What immediately delighted was his flawless technique and great poetry.

Includes rich material with countless testimonies, the film is punctuated by the repetition of Yundi and Maestro Seiji Ozawa in the 2nd concerto of Prokofiev with the Berlin Philharmonic, revealing a great complicity between the two artists.

Includes a bonus excerpt from a concert Yundi gave at the Festival de La Roque d'Antheron in 2004 where he performed four Liszt Scherzos magnificently and a haunting version of the Campanella.

16:9, PCM stereo, DD 5.1

Region code: 0

Original language: English

Subtitles: English, German, French

Booklet notes: English, German, French

Running time: 88 mins + 44 mins (Concert)

Live in Vienna, a Concert with André Rieu on the square in front of the Imperial Hofburg Palace in the heart of Vienna, 135 minutes of pure pleasure for the eyes and ears.

Including superb compositions from the most famous Viennese composers: Johann Strauss, Franz Lehár, Emmerich Kálmán, W.A. Mozart, Robert Stolz and many others, against the background of the most beautiful, stylish scenery you can possibly imagine.

The Johann Strauss Orchestra and Choir were joined in this wonderful concert by the Ballet of the Vienna State Opera, the Vienna debutantes from the Elmayer Dance School, the Platinum Tenors, the sopranos Dagmar Koller, Carmen Monarcha, Carla Maffioletti, Mirusia Louwerse and Suzan Erens, and the interpreter of the traditional Viennese song, Karl Moik. World-famous waltzes and melodies: the Blue Danube, Im Prater blühen wieder die Bäume, Lippen schweigen, Mein Herr Marquis, Dein ist mein ganzes Herz, Komm Zygany and many other wonderful compositions.

The expansive length of Feldman's Trio (1 hour, 45 minutes, 22 seconds) requires a new approach to listening, which takes scale, the physical experience of sound, and novel uses of musical memory into consideration. With his delicate manipulation of musical materials, Feldman blurs the listeners' sense of time as their musical memory struggles to distinguish between past and present sounds - listeners are free to lose themselves in the beauty of each musical moment.

5.1 Surround sound, presented in Dolby and 24-bit DTS. Also a dedicated Dolby stereo mix option.

Bonus video essay on Feldman and the Trio by the noted German composer and Feldman expert Walter Zimmermann, who hosted the premiere of the Trio at his Beginner's Studio concerts in Köln (31-minutes).

Recorded at Schloss Hellbrunn, Salzburg, 1986

Directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle • Produced by Horant H. Hohlfeld

Made up of wind soloists from the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the Ensemble Wien-Berlin performs two of the greatest of all chamber works in the aesthetically apt surroundings of Hellbrunn Palace, near Salzburg. The pianist is James Levine. The bonus material on this DVD features an entertaining and informative portrait of this altogether magnificent ensemble.

Bonus Film: ‘We have a lot of fun’

excerpts from LIGETI Six Bagatelles ; BERIO Opus Number Zoo; MOZART Adagio and Allegro K594 & FRANCAIX Wind Quintet No.1

TV Format NTSC 4:3

Sound PCM Stereo

Dolby Digital 5.1 • DTS 5.1

anguages: Eng, Ger,

Region Code 0 (worldwide)

Running Time 56 mins (Performance)

47 mins (Bonus)

Reissue of director Tony Palmer’s 1999 feature film.

In 1945, the new Polish Government asked for the heart of Chopin previously buried in Paris. A woman called Paulina Czernika approached the Polish Government claiming to have some love letters from the composer to her greatgrandmother, the Countess Delfina Potocka. Eventually alarmed, the Ministry began a witch-hunt against Madame Czernika – Delfina Potocka was the only woman to whom Chopin had dedicated any music – these letters were said to be pornographic, anti-Semitic and thoroughly damaging to the image of the composer as a Polish hero. Czernika ‘committed suicide’ on 17th October 1949, 100 years to the day after the death of Chopin - or was she murdered, and if so, why? Were the letters in fact forgeries? And what was the truth about Delfina Potocka?

Tony Palmer’s dramatised film tells the story of Czernika Potocka, probing a veritable mystery in a series of parallel scenes from 1945 and 1845. New light is shed on Chopin himself, not least in the interpretation of the music brought to life miraculously by the beautiful young Russian pianist, Valentina Igoshina.