DVD Videos

Music by Smetana & Dvorak

1973 RAI documentary about La Scala' prima ballerina Carla Fracci with Amodeo Amodio, Paolo Bortoluzzi, Jacqueline De Min, Giuseppe di Stefano, Alice & Ellen Kessler, James Urbain and Franca Valeri. Carla Fracci performs excerpts from The Sleeping Beauty (Tchaikovsky), Cancan (Offenbach), Romeo et Juliette (Prokofiev). Subtitled in English, French, Spanish & Japanese. Color, 57 min. Playable in all regions.

In the year of the centenary of the birth of Karel Ancerl, one of the most distinguished conductors of the 20th century, this DVD is an invaluable and authentic document of magnificent artistic achievement and a turbulent life. The recording of the opening concert of Prague Spring 1968 captures Ancerl’s performance of Smetana’s My Country with the Czech Philharmonic which – over the 18 years he was at the helm – he managed to transform into one of the world’s finest symphony orchestras. Ancerl’s “harvest” of the fruit of many years of diligent work was in fact also the beginning of his leave-taking from his orchestra, as well as his homeland itself. At the time of the Soviet-led invasion

of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 the conductor found himself in Toronto. Save for a single guest appearance in Prague in 1969, he was never to return to his country. The second filmed concert shows Ancerl in action in 1966 with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and the outstanding Polish violinist Henryk Szeryng performing Beethoven’s violin concerto. The 1968 documentary is a unique encounter with Karel Ancerl. This compact picture of his true personality is supplemented by a comprehensive booklet containing a plethora of fascinating and not generally known biographical information.

Starting out in the Verona workshop of Bartolomeo Formentelli, this episode travels through Italy, Spain and France to trace the origins, history and development of the organ. It encompasses the classical sobriety of the Italian style, the Golden Age of the organ in sixteenth-century Spain, and the French style of the eighteenth century.

The film focuses on one specific facet of Herbert von Karajan’s artistic work: he was the first conductor who was obsessed with the filming of his musical performances in order to preserve a cultural heritage. Also as a film and TV director, he was an aesthete, a perfectionist, and a true pioneer. He once said: “Actually, I should have been born in a later era.” Television engineering was still in the fledgling stages when Karajan started. Still, his visual approach and rigid rules how to film an orchestra and soloists - and of course how to present himself as a conductor – till today have an impact on everybody who produces recordings of concerts and opera for the screen.

No wonder that Karajan’s high pretensions demanded a great deal of his entire film crew, and due to strong characters on both sides of the creative fence, once in a while simmering tensions came to head. Herbert von Karajan’s immediate co-operators, like his chief camera man Ernst Wild, the editor Gela Marina Runne, the director Hugo Niebeling, and various TV and record producers like Horant Hohlfeld, Günther Breest and Norio Ohga talk about their experiences with the Maestro.