Sibelius: Symphony No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 82 - DVD & Blu-ray videos

‘Luckily for all of us, it wasn’t enough for Leonard Bernstein to compose music and conduct orchestras. He felt equally compelled to talk about music – to try and explain what made it tick, what made it good, and what made it affect us in all the ways that music does. The other piece of good luck was that Leonard Bernstein and television came along at the same time. They were born for each other.’ (Jamie Bernstein)

The films on this DVD are taken from the ‘Symphonic Twilight’ series of TV programmes made in the mid-Sixties that were the brainchild of Humphrey Burton, then the newly appointed Head of Music and Arts Programmes for the BBC.

In his booklet notes for this DVD, Burton reveals himself to have been instrumental in bringing Bernstein the conductor to the wider British public, who knew him foremost as the composer of West Side Story. In 1965 Burton persuaded Bernstein to conduct the LSO at the Royal Albert Hall and the resulting Mahler 8 was a spectacular occasion, broadcast to the nation.

The following year, they put together these programmes, filmed specifically for the new television audience. The works Bernstein chose to record are twentieth-century orchestral masterpieces, for which he is known to be a champion. His recordings of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony for CBS Records and Deutsche Grammophon were acclaimed by critics worldwide, and his interpretation of The Rite of Spring in 1959 elicited an enthusiastic ‘Wow!’ from Stravinsky himself! They are accompanied on this DVD by an in-depth interview, given here as a bonus and subtitled in French and German.

Sound format: Enhanced Mono

DVD format: NTSC

Picture format: 4:3

Running time: 83’

Subtitles: F/G

Menu languages: English

Booklet languages: E/F/G

Region code: 0

Territory Restrictions: None

These are four great symphonies that have all played a special role in the close collaboration between the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and conductor Thomas Dausgaard. The symphonies are recorded in the beautiful Koncerthuset in Copenhagen. The Danish National Symphony Orchestra is specialized in Scandinavian repertoire.

Bonus material: In a series of interviews, Thomas Dausgaard explains his close collaboration with the orchestra, the concerts and the four great yet altogether very different masterpieces by Brahms, Dvorak, Sibelius and Nielsen.

Running Time Total: 168 minutes

Picture 16:9, HD

BD: DTS-HD MA 5.1, PCM Stereo

Subtitles Bonus: English, French, German, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Italian

These are four great symphonies that have all played a special role in the close collaboration between the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and conductor Thomas Dausgaard. The symphonies are recorded in the beautiful Koncerthuset in Copenhagen. The Danish National Symphony Orchestra is specialized in Scandinavian repertoire.

Bonus material: In a series of interviews, Thomas Dausgaard explains his close collaboration with the orchestra, the concerts and the four great yet altogether very different masterpieces by Brahms, Dvorak, Sibelius and Nielsen.

Running Time Total: 168 minutes

Picture 16:9, HD

DVD: DTS 5.1, PCM Stereo

Subtitles Bonus: English, French, German, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Italian

Joshua Bell lights up the stage with this dazzling performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, the centerpiece of the Nobel Prize Concert© in honour of the 2010 Nobel Prize Laureates. Part of the official Nobel Week, this tribute concert opens with music by Beethoven that urgently evokes the spirit of freedom from tyranny. And closing the evening is a glowing account by Sakari Oramo and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic of Sibelius’s monument to orchestral majesty, the titanic Fifth Symphony.

BONUS: Interviews featuring Joshua Bell, Sakari Oramo and Mario Vargas Llosa, 2010’s Nobel Laureate in Literature

Picture Format DVD: NTSC 16:9

Sound Formats DVD: Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1, PCM Stereo

Region Code: 0 (worldwide)

Running Time: 91:25

Disc Format: DVD 9

FSK: 0

The only available DVD of Bernstein conducting Sibelius. Includes DTS 5.1 sound!

Recorded live at Wiener Musikvereinssaal 1990, 1986, 1987, 1988. These ecstatic performances were the object of stellar reviews.

"Bernstein painted a canvas of late-romantic splendour with the Philharmonic's sound - the incomparable brilliancy of the strings, the glowing intensity of the brass - in a way that only the greatest conductors can." Salzburger Nachrichten about Symphony No. 1

"Bernstein makes this concert to a sensational sound adventure." Neue Kronenzeitung about Symphony No. 2

Running Time 166 Minutes

Picture 4:3, colour

Sound PCM Stereo, DTS 5.1

NTSC · 16:9, PCM Stereo

Region code: 0, FSK: all audiences

Booklet notes: English

Running time: 56 mins

Esa-Pekka Salonen, musical director of the Los Angeles Philarmonic Orchestra until summer 2009, is one of the most brilliant conductors of his generation. He has recently taken up the position of Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London. Although he studied at the Sibelius Academy, it took him years before considering conducting works of Finland's emblematic composer, Jean Sibelius. "To me, an ideal concert of Sibelius should be like the shattering ice, during springtime, in a Northern river: intense, beautiful, terrifying and inevitable. I am not sure if someone can ever do that, but we can at least try." During Summer 2007 in Verbier, Salonen lead the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra, and took up this challenge in Sibelius' Fifth Symphony. He also conducts one of his own works, L.A.Variations. Premièred in 1996 and commissioned by the Los Angeles Philarmonic, this piece was written in order to highlight the virtuosity and the power of this orchestra, a challenge brilliantly taken by the UBS Verbier FO.