The Places
The capital of Shaanxi Province, Xi'an, its name translating as 'Western Peace', was the Chinese capital during the Tang dynasty (618-906 A.D.). The Big Wild Goose Pagoda, completed in 704 on the orders of the Empress Wu Zetain during her period of rule as Empress of the Zhou dynasty, soon replaced by the restored Tang, is one of the oldest such structures in China. Of particular interest is the tomb of the Emperor Huang, regarded as the founder of the unified Chinese nation, and the remarkable terracotta warriors and horses discovered around the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang Di, founder of the Qin dynasty who died in 210 B.C.. The tour ends with vies of the precipitous Huashan (Flower Mountain), so called from its five peaks, groups in the shape of a great flower.

The Music
The music chosen for this tour of Xi'an is played on traditional Chinese instruments. The excerpts include, to accompany the terracotta warriors, a contemporary composition inspired by Zhang Ji's poem 'Night at the Maple Bridge' giving particular prominence to the zhongruan, a form of Chinese lute of ancient origin. Other instruments heard are the Chinese transverse bamboo flute, the dizi, the Chinese plucked zither, the guqin, and the Chinese lute, the pipa. A glimpse of operatic stage performance finds a place for a Shaanxi opera tune, an example of the music to be heard in the many regional forms of Chinese opera.

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: Dolby Digital 2.0 / Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Booklet notes: English, Chinese
Running time: 66 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

The music chosen for this tour of Guilin is played on traditional Chinese instruments. Performing the music are wind and string ensembles known as "silk and bamboo," from their silk strings and bamboo pipes, and ensembles that also include percussion.

This series of DVDs features travel scenes accompanied by classical music.

The Places

The tour of Norway takes us from the capital, Oslo, with its harbours, parks and imposing buildings, to Bergen, the birthplace of Edvard Grieg, and its surrounding countryside, with a glimpse of Grieg’s house at Troldhaugen. Trolls make their presence known, before a final return to Oslo and to the sculpture display of Vigeland Park.

The Music

The music chosen for this tour of Norway is by Norwegian composers, of whom the best known is Edvard Grieg. Included are excerpts from his incidental music for Ibsen’s drama Peer Gynt and for Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s Sigurd Jorsalfar. Other composers featured are Christian Sinding, composer of the famous Rustle of Spring, and Johan Halvorsen.

This series of DVDs features travel scenes accompanied by classical music.

The Places
Our tour of the Czech Republic takes us through the countryside, following the River Vltava to Prague, the capital city, visiting some of the great buildings that lie on its course.

The Music
The music chosen for our tour starts with the first great Czech nationalist composer, Bed?ich Smetana, who left a monument to his country in his cycle of orchestral pieces, Má Vlast (My Country). The younger composer, Antonín Dvo?ák, established a still greater reputation in music that reflected his native Bohemia in all its variety.

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: Dolby Digital / DTS Surround
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Running time: 59 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

NIGHT MUSIC, Vol 1

The Places
Most of the places visited reflect a spirit of calm and tranquility, although the glimpse of Venice dwells briefly on carnival revellers. Other scenes range from the Bavarian Chiemsee and the Swiss Engadin to the marshy tracts of the Camargue in the South of France, with its wild horses.

The Music
The music matches the reflective mood of the scenes shown. Included are movements from Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik and Symphony No. 40, and from Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, with Pachelbel’s ingenious Canon. From Tchaikovsky comes a Mélodie, a composition that formed part of a thank-you letter to his hostess and patron, whom he was never to meet face to face, and from Debussy the popular Clair de lune. The recording ends with Faure’s Sicilienne, familiar in so many forms and transcriptions.

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: PCM Stereo / Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Running time: 56 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

The Places - Potsdam owes it's development as a garrison town to the soldier king of Prussia, Frederick William I. The park and palaces of Sanssouci, however, largely reflect the very different taste of his son, Frederick the Great, who reigned from 1740 to 1786. The park of Sanssouci, established first in 1725, includes later changes in a number of distinct horticultural styles, with lay-out in Dutch, French and English taste. The Music - Bach's set of six concertos known as the Brandenburg Concertos was completed in 1721 at C+¦then, where Bach was director of court music, possibly using some compositions written during earlier years at the court of Weimar. Bach presented the set to the Margrave of Brandenburg, prefaced by a dedication in French, from which it seems that the prince had asked Bach for something of his at a meeting some two years earlier in Berlin. There is no indication that the works were performed, and at the Margrave's death in 1734 the manuscripts were sold, apparently in a lot of 77 concertos 'by different masters'. The fame and wide popularity of the Brandenburg Concertos was to come later. Included here are the first three concertos and a Siciliano.

AUSTRIA

The Places
The places visited include Hohenwerfen Castle, the Weissensee, Styria, Linz, Aggstein, Hallein and Baden.

The Music
The music chosen for this tour of Austria consists of Mozart’s Violin Concertos Nos. 3 and 5, written during his early adulthood in Salzburg.

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: PCM Stereo 2.0
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Running time: 56 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

Thierry Lancino' vast Requiem is a challenging and eloquent contemplation on human mortality which the composer describes as 'both an epic fresco and sacred ceremony'. in a paradox which brings the Christian into dialogue with the Pagan, Lancino presents.

Playing on Fritz Kreisler’s own ‘Bergonzi’ violin (c. 1740), Henning Kraggerud presents a program of Kreisler’s compositions for violin. + Filmed in the intimate surroundings of Oslo’s historic ‘Old Lodge’, this is a world premiere recording of many of these arrangements for violin and orchestra. + Mr. Kraggerud introduces the works himself, and leads the Oslo Camerata in a sparkling, thrilling concert. + Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962), one of the greatest violinists of his, or any other, generation, also performed many lovely, little works in the style of past, obscure composers to whom he gave attribution that he slyly kept the public from learning that the pieces had, in fact, been composed by him. + Violinist, violist, composer, and director Henning Kraggerud is a naturally gifted artist who combines an unusually sweet and colorful tone with intelligent expression and impressive virtuosity. + He is Professor at the Barratt Due Institute of Music in Oslo.

The scenes shown all breathe an air of peace and tranquility. Starting with an evening landscape in Bohemia we move to a lake in the Tyrol to the Museo Vela with it's gesso figures Bavarian craftsmen fashioning glass and the Corniche near Cannes in the South of France. Other scenes include the ancient Chapel of St Sixtus at Eygalieres the Church of St Jakob at Tramin night in Madrid and a nocturnal view of Seville the whole culminating in the great Basilica of St Mark in Venice.

The Places
The Canton of Ticino (German Tessin) is the only Swiss canton to have Italian as its official language. It is bounded on three sides by Italy and boasts spectacular mountain scenery, with waterfalls, rivers and lakes. The capital of the canton is now Bellinzona, but was earlier shared with Locarno and Lugano. A feature of the landscape lies in the great lakes that are within its territory, including part of Lago Maggiore, into which the Ticino and Maggia flow.

The Music
Robert Schumann was born in 1810 in Saxony, studied in Leipzig, lived in Dresden and, in 1850 moved to Düsseldorf as director of music to the city. He died in 1856, after a severe mental breakdown, from which he never recovered. In 1840, in spite of the objections of her father, he married the young pianist Clara Wieck, daughter of his former teacher. It was particularly after this marriage that he turned his attention to larger scale compositions, of which his Piano Concerto is an example, inspired by his wife. The other work heard here, the Intermezzi, Op. 4, dates from an earlier period, devoted in particular to the composition of shorter piano pieces, when a career as a pianist still seemed possible for him.

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: PCM Stereo
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Running time: 51 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

The Places - the scenes shown are of the Benedictine Abbey and Church at Einsiedeln, in the Swiss canton of Schwyz. The monastery, in origin dating from the 10th century, was largely rebuilt in the 18th century to designs by Caspar Moosbrugger of Vorarlberg, a former lay brother in the community, and has long been an important centre of pilgrimage to the shrine of the Black Madonna, now in a black marble chapel built in the early 19th century. The impressive interior of the church contains frescos by Cosmas Damian Asam and stucco work by his brother Egid Quirin Asam. The Music - the tour is accompanied by the third and fourth of the four Orchestral Suites by Johann Sebastian Bach and a Concerto for oboe, violin and continuo by Antonio Vivaldi.

Also available on Blu-ray

Adapted from Thomas Mann’s 1912 novella, Death in Venice was Benjamin Britten’s last opera, the composer insisting on its completion while delaying badly needed heart surgery. The starkly simple narrative of a famous but failing novelist travelling to Venice to seek inspiration only to find unhealthy infatuation and deadly cholera, is given a chamber-like precision and clarity through Britten’s score, becoming a haunting drama filled with musical symbols, disquieting mystery and richly evocative atmospheres of Venice and its strange characters. Willy Decker’s Teatro Real production was described as ‘one of his most brilliant stage works… a remarkable technical feat.’

Also available on Blu-ray

Valery Gergiev, fresh from his appointment as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra in 2015, takes his new ensemble to the BBC Proms for a concert of the utmost in drama and vivid musicianship. The brilliant young Uzbek pianist Behzod Abduraimov performs Rachmaninov’s thrillingly virtuosic Piano Concerto No. 3, while the Russian stage and film actor Alexei Petrenko recites the text in Galina Ustvolskaya’s resonant and profound Symphony No.3 ‘Jesus Messiah, Save Us!’. The programme also features a hypnotic Ravel Boléro, an alternately tender, florid and witty Rosenkavalier Suite, and the rousing Hungarian March by Berlioz.

SPAIN

The Places
The tour starts in the countryside near Sancti Petri, and shows other aspects of the fertile landscape of Andalusia, leading to the historic hillside town of Medina-Sidonia, seat of the Guzman family whose Duke led the Spanish Armada in 1588. The resort of Sitges in Catalonia is followed by the great Cathedral of Seville, reputedly the largest Gothic church in the world, and towns that reflect the Moorish past of this region of Spain.

The Music
The French composer Maurice Ravel inherited from his mother, of Basque origin, a strong interest in Spain. Spanish elements influence much of his music including the Rapsodie espagnole, completed in 1908, Ravel’s first major orchestral work and a demonstration of his originality and of his gifts as an orchestrator. The music moves from the stillness of night to two characteristic Spanish dances and a final Spanish fiesta. Isaac Albéniz enjoyed a double career, winning an international reputation as a virtuoso pianist and doing much to establish Spanish music in a form acceptable at home and abroad. He divided the later years of his life, a period of deteriorating health, between Paris, Barcelona and Nice, years which saw the composition of his Iberia.

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: PCM Stereo / Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Running time: 55 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

The tour takes US first to the carnival celebrations in Basel, with it's elaborate displays. There follows a visit to Vigeland Park in Oslo, with it's characteristic figures, the work of Gustav Vigeland. The music chosen for this tour is by Schumann. His Carnaval accompanies the carnival in Basel, flowers in the countryside are depicted in Blumenstuck and the granite figures in Vigeland Park, in Oslo, are matched with Scenes of Childhood.

SICILY

The Places
Sicily has enjoyed a remarkably varied history, held by Phoenicians and Carthaginians, it became part of Roman territory, later to be occupied by Ostrogoths, recaptured by the Byzantines, ruled by Saracens, and occupied by the Normans, followed by German, French, and Spanish overlords. It was only in the mid-nineteenth century that the island was drawn into the unified country of Italy. The historical changes that Sicily has undergone are reflected in its culture.

The Music
The music chosen for this tour of Sicily is by Beethoven and consists of three of his best known piano sonatas, the Pathétique, the Moonlight and the Appassionata.

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: PCM Stereo 2.0
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Running time: 57 mins
No. of DVDs: 1