DVD Videos

In 1913, with Europe on the brink of war, a fashionable Parisian audience reacted with hostile frenzy to the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's new work, The Rite of Spring. The ballet's shocking music and dance provoked a riot that evening and soon afterwards was recognized as perhaps the most revolutionary piece of the 20th century. It still has that reputation today.

In this DVD, Michael Tilson Thomas and the musicians of the San Francisco Symphony take you from the salons of St. Petersburg to the villages where Stravinsky found inspiration in the earthly power of Russian folk music and dance. MTT then retraces Stravinsky's journey to the cultural crossroads of pre-war Paris. There, in collaboration with the great impresario Diaghilev and his star dancer Nijinsky, Stravinsky developed the shocking, erotic, and violent evocation of pagan Russia that became The Rite of Spring.

Nearly a century after this wild rainforest of sound was performed, The Rite of Spring remains as exhilirating and liberating as music can be. MTT and the San Francisco Symphony show you why.

Aaron Copland's music reflects the transformation of the American experience that took place during his lifetime. Born in 1900 in Brooklyn, he witnessed the wild confidence of the Jazz Age, the fears of the Great Depression, and the rallying of the nation as it entered World War II. His ideal was to write music that would express how it felt to live those experiences.

Copland wrote classical music in his own special way. He transformed it to capture the energy of American's bustling cities and the vast quiet of its empty plains. He created a musical style that evoked the diversity of the American people. The sounds of Jewish music, African-American jazz, folk songs, cowboy ballads, and Latin American dances all played their parts in his compositions, which he hoped would bring people together in times of crises.

Today, Copland's music seems comforting and celebratory. Sixty years ago it was a wake-up call that gave Americans a critical sense of their own identity.

Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony explore the music of Copland and the cityscapes, landscapes, and social and political developments that shaped it.

“Giulini was uniquely exceptional: kind, charming and warm-hearted,” says Sir Simon Rattle, principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and, in his youth, assistant to the revered maestro in Los Angeles. “And his music-making reflected this: he made music on the strength of his love of music. The last truly great man.”

This DVD celebrates the musical quest of one of the great symphonists of the twentieth century, Jean Sibelius, as seen through his music, his letters, his diaries and the words of his wife Aino, who was with him for more than sixty four years. It is an intimate account, using film and Sibelius’ music and words, of a great artist’s struggle with his medium, with the world and with himself – as deeply felt an artistic quest as any in the history of music and frequently expressed in memorably poetic terms.