DVD Videos

Award-winning director and cinematographer,Thomas Riedelsheimer (director of the acclaimed Rivers and Tides), takes us on a journey through a universe of sound with percussionist Evelyn Glennie. While exploring the role of deafness in Glennie’s music-making, Touch the Sound challenges our understanding of the senses and celebrates Glennie’s uncanny gifts. Believed to be the first full-time solo percussionist in the West, Dame Evelyn Glennie has performed with nearly all of the world's major orchestras in front of several presidents and world leaders. In concert, she plays up to 60 instruments including the gamelan, xylophone, marimba and timpani. Outside percussion, she is also adept on the great highland bagpipes. On stage, the percussionist performs barefoot in order to feel vibrations from her instruments, and often stands at 90 degrees to the audience so they can see the drum skins vibrating. Her personal collection includes 1,800 instruments, several of which Glennie designed herself, and she keeps percussion kits in six countries to facilitate her hectic touring schedule. Outside the world of classical music, Glennie has achieved fame for her collaborations with artists including Sting, Ray Davies, Fred Frith and Bjork. She is the vice-president of Hearing Concern and Deafness Research UK, and president of The Beethoven Fund for Deaf Children, which provides musical therapy units to schools for the deaf and partially-hearing across the UK. Evelyn's activities also include lobbying the Government on political issues; her consortium with Sir James Galway, Julian Lloyd Webber and the late Michael Kamen successfully led to the government providing £332 million towards music education.

“A feast for the senses.” New York Daily News

“Beautifully shot and filled with gorgeous music.” Chicago Tribune

“Rewarding, thought-provoking and subtly visceral.” Hollywood Reporter

“Potent and Imaginative!” Los Angeles Times

Extraordinary concert recording of the music of Eleni Karaindrou - filmed in her hometown of Athens in 2005 - previously issued on CD (4765278) two years ago.

Material is effectively a summary of her greatest music for stage and, especially, screen.

Seeing/hearing Karaindrou in concert is a unique experience – as audiences everywhere are discovering.

Watching the way the traditional instruments ensemble, playing their ‘folk’ instruments are embraced by the banks of orchestral strings is particularly fascinating.

Soloists include the great singer Maria Farantouri, the voice of Greek freedom, plus Eleni herself at the piano.

For newcomers, this DVD is a perfect introduction to her haunting music.

Released simultaneously with her new film score, Dust of Time.

Eleni Karaindrou is far more than a ‘soundtrack composer’. Her music, for key films by Theo Angelopoulos and others, stands very ably by itself. And her concerts, with their sweeping, elegiac music are both celebrations and rituals that explore the Greek soul and Greece’s often tragic history. They are major events: Karaindrou is a star of the first magnitude in Greece, her concerts are eagerly anticipated, and press reactions ecstatic.

A 130-strong cast was assembled at the Athens Concert Hall for the three days of sold-out performances from which this concert DVD is drawn. Orchestra, choir, traditional instruments ensemble, soloists, legendary singer Maria Fantouri, the composer herself as pianist, and ECM producer Manfred Eicher as artistic and musical director. This is an epic journey in colours sounds and rhythms, shedding light on the themes of uprooting, exodus, exile and homecoming – themes that recur in Karaindrou’s work.

While material from The Weeping Meadow and Trojan Women is emphasized, the concert recording embraces music from all of Karaindou’s ECM recordings, including Ulysses’ Gaze, Eternity and A Day, The Suspended Step of the Stork and Music for Films. There’s also material new to ECM, including theatre music for Chekhov’s The Seagull, and the film score for Tonia Marketaki’s The Price of Love.

Born in the mountain village of Teichio in central Greece, Eleni Karaindrou studied piano and theory in Athens. In Paris from 1967-75 she studied ethnomusicology and wrote and recorded songs, many successfully covered by Greek singers. A prolific composer, she has written for numerous feature films, theatrical and radio plays, TV films and series, and received countless prizes including the Fellini Award 1992 from Europa Cinema (Italy). Her closest artistic association - over 20 years - has been with the great filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos. Since 1991she has recorded exclusively for ECM which is simultaneously releasing her score to the new Angelopoulos film, Dust of Time (4766766).

Gidon Kremer is not only one of the leading violinists in the world, but also - thanks to his unquenchable curiosity and search for new impulses - one of the most fascinating musical personalities of our time. His repertoire ranges from Bach to the present, whereby a number of contemporary composers have achieved international recognition through his commitment. This DVD presents a very original programme with rarely performed pieces and Kremer's own version for string orchestra of the Schubert Quintet which makes it particularly attractive. Kremerata Baltica, a chamber orchestra, was created in 1997 by renowned violinist Gidon Kremer, who serves as the orchestra's artistic director and solo violinist.The high artistic quality of the ensemble is the result of the exceptional talent of the individual musicians and Kremer's innovative approach to repertoire. Kremerata Baltica is composed exclusively of talented young musicians (average age 27) from the Baltic States and is supported by the Ministries of Culture of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, making the group the de facto cultural ambassadors of the region. Kremerata Baltica won a Grammy Award in 2002, was nominated for another in 2003, records for Nonesuch Records (a Warner Bros. label) and Deutsche Grammophon, and it performs in all the great halls of the world.

"Gidon Kremer…the great Latvian violinist and the brilliant chamber orchestra he has drawn from his own and neighbouring republics…performed with flair, intensity, precision and delicacy." The Independent

If you want to know who Andrea Barca is, translate Andras Schiff's name into Italian — it could have been Orchestre d'André Bateau, or maybe the Andie Boat Orchestra ….

"This recording from the historical and stunningly beautiful Teatro Olimpico affords us numerous insights into Andras Schiff's approach to music and music-making, and more besides. Schiff's joy in performance is as evident to the eye as to the ear. He formed the Capella Andrea Barca specifically for the performance of Mozart in 1999 with the best Mozart interpreters: "a crack ensemble handpicked from his most musically accomplished friends and acquaintances" The New York Times

"Pity the critic faced with music that arrives in a natural state and then is allowed to speak with complete naturalness. Writing about the pianist Andras Schiff playing Mozart… you looked for traction -- a fissure or crack, or some extraordinary anomaly to hold onto, but here the critic's fingers just kept slipping off." The New York Times

+Bonus Extra 56 mins: A concert filmed by multicameras on 8 April 2001 at The Bouffes du Nord in Paris. Beethoven's Great Fugue was filmed during this concert but is shown in the documentary only.

The Artemis Quartet appeared in a motion picture early in its career, playing in an EMI production in 1996 as guests of the Alban Berg Quartet in Bruno Monsaingeon's feature-length documentary named after Schubert's quartet of the same name – Death and the Maiden. Five years later the Artemis Quartet once again performed in another film by the renowned director. Monsaingeon's 2001 documentary on Beethoven's Grosse Fuge Op.133: Strings Attached is at the same time an impressive portrait of the Artemis Quartet and illustrates how the Quartet live and work together. At the 2008 Gramophone Awards, the Artemis Quartet were awarded the Chamber Award for their recording of the Piano Quintets by Brahms and Schumann with Leif Ove Andsnes.

“Contemporary music used to be a Cinderella at the Wigmore Hall, cropping up only when a particular performer had an enthusiasm for it. But the management now clearly wants to put the Wigmore on the map as a place to hear new music. The boldest initiative so far has been to build a series of five concerts round the music of the young German composer Jörg Widmann, who's barely known in this country. On the evidence of Wednesday night's concert, given by the Artemis Quartet, they've picked a winner…After the interval they returned for Schubert's Death and the Maiden quartet. Some quartets try to capture this piece's tragic quality by being utterly unbending. These players wisely went the other way. By letting the music breathe in the first three movements, they made the grim fateful onrush of the finale seem all the more electrifying.” Rating **** The Daily Telegraph

Region Code: NTSC 0

Subtitles: F, E

Booklet: F, GB, D

Disc Format: 1 DVD 9

No of Discs: 1

Run Time: 56 mins + 56 mins Bonus

Released: 2009-01-01

1 CD + DVD

DVD of the concert performed by Bobby McFerrin and the Cor de l'Orfeó Català, in commemoration of Palau de la Música Centenary on May the 9th 2008. A mainly improvised performance involving spontaneous performances and participation from musicians and audience alike. Music by Bach, Gounod, Lennon and McCartney.

Menuhin, a name that was legendary for over 60 years, and remains so today. A good man and a great violinist, whose childhood was blessed with happiness and success unparalleled even among child prodigies. At least, that was the legend. The truth was painfully different. The violinist who inspired Einstein to remark; “Now I know there is a God in heaven”, was also a man of whom his sister could say: “We have done more harm to people we love than we ever believed ourselves capable of doing to people we didn’t love”.

Filmed in Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Moscow, New York, San Francisco and Switzerland, and using much material not seen previously from Menuhin’s own archive, this heart-rending and multi-award winning film included all the members of Menuhin’s family living at the time, who struggle to piece together what had really happened to the son of Russian/ Tartar parents who was defiantly named Yehudi – ‘the Jew’.

The Hagen Quartett is regarded internationally as one of the foremost string quartets.Their mentors include stars such as Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gidon Kremer. Having played together since childhood (the three siblings), the musicians combine exceptional freshness and passion with their unique depth of experience. Renowned for the warmth and emotion of their interpretations, it is no surprise that their interpretations of Ravel's String Quartet in F major and Schubert's String Quartet in D minor are intensely beautiful.

A series of three chamber concerts celebrated the Hungarian cellist Miklós Perényi’s 60 anniversary with one of his closest musical colleagues the Hungarian pianist András Schiff. This recording is a document of the concerts held in their alma mater the Liszt Academy of Music Budapest, which for four hours offered a unique experience of music performed by two outstanding musicians.

Perényi had finished his studies both at the Music Academy Budapest with Miklós Zsámboki and Ede Banda and the Rome Santa Cecilia Academy at Enrico Mainardi. Schiff became a pupil of Pál Kadosa at Budapest and later immersed himself in the great European schools of performance like master classes by Amadeus Webersinke and George Malcolm.

The program was compiled by Miklós Perényi and András Schiff - all three concerts begin and end with Bach and Beethoven, bookending works by Mendelssohn, Chopin, Brahms, Debussy, Janácek and Bartok.

2008 was the centenary of Messiaen’s birth, and this 2 DVD set of a selection of his organ music is a superb introduction for those new to his music and an essential purchase for all organ aficionados. Messiaen wrote in many genres, chamber, orchestral, piano solo, and enriched greatly the organ repertoire of the 20th century. Although Debussy and Ravel influenced his earliest works, orientalism and famously the songs of birds were life long influences and a source of fascination to him) Messiaen became a significant influence upon avant-garde composers such as Boulez and Stockhausen. You can sample Tanke’s approach to Messiaen, which is influenced by his study of Buddhist faith and philosophy, on YouTube (keywords: Tanke and Messiaen). The technology afforded by DVD allows the listener to view from several angles, including underneath the bench to see Messiaen’s ferociously mobile pedal parts at first feet, as it were.

Tanke plays the Marcussen organ in St Laurenskirk, Rotterdam.

Tanke has recorded the complete organ works of Messiaen for Brilliant Classics on CD, recently reissued in time for Messiaen’s centenary.

'This new set by Willem Tanke is most certainly Messiaenic heaven to me, and has placed the music far closer to my heart than any of the previous sets. This recent release is as close to perfect as I think I will find’ The Organ