Mahler: Symphony No. 1 in D major 'Titan' - DVD video

This series of DVDs will make the publicly broadcast BSO concerts from this era available for the first time since they were broadcast. This rare material represents some of the earliest televised concerts with the Boston Symphony and Erich Leinsdorf, and has been restored using the greatest care and state-of-the-art techniques. It is of exceptional musical interest and historic value.

The BSO’s Music Director for seven seasons, Leinsdorf had a long and distinguished career, having worked with Toscanini and Walter, conducting at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Cleveland Orchestra and Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra in addition to his tenure at the BSO.

Born in Mahler’s city, just over eight months after the composer’s death, Leinsdorf began his career as assistant to Mahler’s own assistant and protégé, Bruno Walter.

He played an important role in building an audience for Mahler’s symphonies during his tenure at the BSO, which came just before the Mahler boom in the 1960s.

Leinsdorf recorded all of Mahler’s symphonies apart from the Fourth for RCA Victor; recordings which became the benchmark both for sound and performance quality.

Intense, warm and expressive, his performance of Mahler’s First Symphony is an intensely personal account whilst Till Eulenspiegel – which was a party piece for the BSO during his tenure - is performed with great precision and finesse.

Two of ICA’s BSO DVDs featuring Charles Munch as conductor, have been awarded the Diapason d’Or in France’s Diapason magazine.

1DVD

Sound format: LPCM Mono

Picture format: 4:3

Running time: 78’

Subtitles: n/a

Menu languages: English

Booklet languages: E/F/G

Region code: 0

Territory Restrictions: None

This DG concert will capture some of the highly-anticipated Los Angeles Philharmonic Opening Night Concert (8 October 2009) led by newly-appointed Music Director Gustavo Dudamel

"The 28-year-old Venezuelan conductor who has been taking the musical, and conducting, world by storm" (Gramophone) in his inaugural concert live from LA's Walt Disney Hall will lead the orchestra in Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D Major.

The DVD will include a 25-minute documentary

The Berliner Philharmoniker, one of the worlds leading orchestras, and their Artistic Director Sir Simon Rattle, are highly acclaimed all over the world. Their 2010 tour concluded with their first visit to Singapore.

They present Mahler’s unique and breathtaking First Symphony – once dubbed “Titan” in homage to Romantic novelist Jean Paul – as well as Rachmaninov’s hugely evocative late Symphonic Dances.

In this concert, the Berliner Philharmoniker beautifully capture Mahler’s love of nature and Rachmaninov’s nostalgic memories of Russia.

Picture format DVD: NTSC 16:9

Sound format DVD: PCM Stereo, DD 5.1, DTS 5.1

Region code: 0

Booklet notes: English, German, French

Running time: 120mins

The Places

The journey starts in Switzerland, in the canton of Thurgau, leading from Steckborn and the Bodensee to the Rhine Falls. From Styria, in Austria, comes Hochosterwitz Castle and from Bavaria Weikersheim Castle, the latter intercut with wild life from the Austrian Assling Nature Park. The tour ends amid the strangely shaped mountains of the Dolomites in Southern Tyrol, a region divided between Austria and Italy.

The Music

In a remarkable way Mahler, in his symphonies and songs, has seemed to reflect the world of today in all its bewildering variety and has now won an established place in concert repertoire. Distinguished as a conductor, his fame as a composer has grown over the years since his death. The music included here is Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, nick-named Titan, not for its massive power, but after the book by Jean Paul, a strong influence over earlier romantics and over Mahler at this stage in his career. The symphony breathes the spirit of the Austrian countryside, reflected in Mahler’s songs.

Video Format • NTSC / Colour / 4:3

Audio Format • DTS 5.1 / Dolby Digital

The latest instalment in MTT’s and SFS’s engaging Keeping Score series explores the life and works of Gustav Mahler, in two documentaries and two live performances.

Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony present the latest instalment in their acclaimed Keeping Score series, exploring the life and music of Gustav Mahler. In the year marking both the 100th anniversary of the composer’s death and the founding of the San Francisco Symphony, ‘Mahler: Origins and Legacy’, focuses on the enigmatic composer with two one-hour documentaries and two live performances. “Gustav Mahler was a visionary musician,” says MTT. “In his compositions he made reference to many styles, building his huge symphonies from materials abstracted from songs, dances and marches from many cultures. His symphonies, or worlds, as he called them, represent the many ways that people make music and why they make music. In Keeping Score: Mahler, we walk in his footsteps, visit the places and sounds that influenced his life.”

Keeping Score: Mahler is designed to engage, educate and entertain viewers of all musical backgrounds, from classical music enthusiasts to those hearing Mahler’s music for the first time. With MTT and SFS firmly established among the leading interpreters of Mahler’s music, these programmes are a fitting culmination to their decade-long Mahler recording project. To coincide with its release, MTT and SFS will embark on a three-week European tour performing Mahler’s works including Prague and Vienna where there will be special screenings of Keeping Score: Mahler.

“Like a cry of Nature”: thus the expression mark that opens Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony – and the programme of the Festival 2009 which takes up Nature as its guiding theme. Mahler, in the First Symphony, shaped the “cry of nature” into a musical vision of an entire human life in four stages – from a spring-like upsurge of feelings through desire and suffering, to the end of earthly existence and the entrance into Paradise.

The opening treats listeners to a spectacular début as the twenty-two-year-old Chinese pianist Yuja Wang plays Sergei Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto. In her Lucerne appearances she displays the full range of her artistry as Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto demands not only lyricism and intimacy but brilliance and virtuosity.

Claudio Abbado has realised a dream with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. The orchestra consists of an exclusive ensemble of handpicked musicians like Kolja Blacher and Sebastian Breuninger, Natalia Gutman, Clemens Hagen and Jens Peter Maintz.

Claudio Abbado is undeniably a supreme Mahler conductor and his best selling recordings with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra – symphonies No. 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 9 have already been released on EuroArts – have set new standards in interpretation of works by Gustav Mahler.

Picture format DVD: NTSC 16:9

Sounds formats DVD: PCM Stereo, DD 5.1, DTS 5.1

Region code: 0

Booklet notes: English, German, French

Running time: 79 mins

FSK: 0

In 2008 Gramophone named the present-day Staatskapelle Dresden one of the ten best orchestras in the world. Under its current principal conductor, Fabio Luisi, this venerable ensemble deploys its sumptuous sonorities on Mahler's grandiose First Symphony in a performance fulsomely praised in press reviews. The Austrian pianist Margarita Höhenrieder has enjoyed acclaim as the result of her successes in a whole series of international piano competitions.Among these awards was first prize in the prestigious Busoni Competition in Bolzano.

Bonus Documentary: Margarita Höhenrieder - Portrait of an Artist

Mahler's Symphony No. 1 'Titan' enhances the timeless images of some of the most beautiful and breathtaking landscapes and majestic landmarks of Europe. This volume of the Naxos Musical Journey takes us on an incredible trip through the wonders of Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Italy. From majestic mountain views to the River Rhine; from a magnificent castle perched high over a valley to the dramatic natural wonder of the Dolomites, this is a memorable trip as dramatic and inspiring as Mahler's music itself