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.

Further to his two recitals (Italian Opera Arias and Gounod / Massenet Arias), Rolando Villazon's releases his 3rd recital on Virgin Classics, featuring opera arias in 4 languages: French, Italian, English & Russian. And sees Rolando Villazon's second collaboration with Michael Plasson, after their recording of Berlioz' choral works on EMI. Rolando Villazon in undoubtedly the revelation of the years 2004-2005, and has won wide acknowledgement world-wide, not to mention the 2005 Gramophone Award he has received this September for his Gounod / Massenet recital. Virgin Classic. 2006.

Gioachino Rossini
LA CAMBIALE DI MATRIMONIO

Tobia Mill – Paolo Bordogna
Fanny – Désirée Rancatore
Edoardo Milfort – Saimir Pirgu
Slook – Fabio Maria Capitanucci
Norton – Enrico Maria Marabelli
Clarina – Maria Gortsevskaya

Orchestra Haydn di Bolzano e Trento
Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli, conductor

Luigi Squarzina, stage director
Giovanni Agostinucci, sets and costumes

Filmed at Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro, Italy, August 2006

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: Dolby Digital 2.0 / Dolby Digital 5.0
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, Italian
Running time: 83 mins

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

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

The Places
Our tour of Russia starts in St. Petersburg, including churches and palaces, and, above all, the River Neva, on the banks of which Peter the Great's city stands. We visit Tchaikovsky's house at Klin, near Moscow, and travel south to Ukraine to see Sebastopol in the Crimea and Odessa. Finally we return to St. Petersburg, seeing the surrounding countryside, the city by night, the bridges and the people.

The Music
Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky succeeded in uniting strands of Russian musical nationalism with music in the cosmopolitan forms of his training. He spent his childhood and adolescence in St. Petersburg, later moving to Moscow and finally finding some refuge in the country at Klin, where his house is preserved. The music accompanying our tour is Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto and his Serenade for Strings.

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: Dolby Digital / DTS Surround
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Running time: 70 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

Wolf-Ferrari's comic opera La Vedova Scaltra (The Cunning Widow), is among the works he based on plays by Goldoni. It matches closely the conventions of 18th-century opera buffa in it's witty if skeptical look at the mechanisms governing the interplay of human relations. This production, filmed live at the Teatro La Fenice in February 2007 in celebration of the 300th anniversary of the birth of Goldoni in Venice in 1707, is the first to appear on DVD. Anne-Lise Sollied, Maurizio Muraro, and Emanuele D'Aguanno star with Karl Martin conducting in this 2 DVD set.

Capriccio - Mendelssohn, Schubert, Debussy, Etc / Renaud Capucon, Jerome Ducros, Composer: Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Schubert (Dresden), Franz Schubert, Sir Edward Elgar, Performer: Jerome Ducros, Renaud Capuçon. The notes to Renaud Capuçon and Jérôme Ducros's recital of miniatures focus on the emergence of this pair of French musicians a decade ago and the affinity they display with this repertoire. And affinity there surely seems to be. The arrangers of these pieces, Wilhelmj, Heifetz, Kreisler, Dushkin, and Píhoda themselves championed works of this kind and surely knew how to put them across. It's gratifying to add Capuçon to the list. On Wings of Song, like Schubert's Ave Maria, may be a Heifetz specialty, but Capuçon and Ducros strongly personalize them, with the violinist even providing his own arrangement of the latter. So, like La capricieuse, they display a range of persuasive dynamics and a willingness to employ a subtle palette of expressive portamentos and nuanced changes in tempo harking back to another era to make their various rhetorical points. Dynamic range seems to be one of the keys to their success: the middle section of Humoreske and the lurches of Prokofiev's "Masks" rise to an intensity to which few listeners may be accustomed, especially in an era of somewhat dutiful performances of such pieces. If a majority of them suggest triste rather than capriccio, and evoke polite rather than rowdy gatherings, the exceptions, like Dinicu's Hora staccato, provide thumping good entertainment of a more visceral kind. In fact, while Heifetz's performance may dazzle listeners with down-bow flying staccato of a brilliance never before (and never since) encountered, Capuçon's communicates hotter gypsy passion, while remaining exciting on a purely instrumental level. Still, the pervasive melancholy (for example, Capuçon has included Kreisler's Liebesleid rather than his Liebesfreud or even Caprice viennois)-exhibiting a narrower range than do similar collections by others, like Francescatti, Milstein, Heifetz, or Oistrakh, to name a few who compiled effective collections-may nudge it, despite the devotion of both performers to the kind of pieces they've chosen (including a few less familiar ones, like Strauss's "Einsamer Quelle" and the two Schumann songs), into a category that overlaps what some call "crossover." And insofar as that nudge increases it's appeal for some audiences, it's sure to decrease it for others. Still, for those who like this kind of thing, this is the kind of thing they'll like. Strongly recommended to them, but nearly as strongly recommended to others as well.

Mozart: Le Nozze Di Figaro / Barenboim, Tomlinson, Rodgers, Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Performer: John Tomlinson, Phyllis Pancella, Joan Rodgers, Richard Brünner, Conductor: Daniel Barenboim, Orchestra/Ensemble: Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Berlin RIAS Chamber Chorus, "Barenboim continues to favors a forceful, big-scale reading with often deliberate speeds for the slower numbers, a musically accomplished, thought-through account of the crucial finales to Acts 2 and 4, lively treatment of the recitative, finely-honed playing of the wind, alert rhythms and an avoidance for the most part of appoggiaturas... John Tomlinson is much better suited by Figaro than he was by Alfonso, but still wants in tonal focus... but he does at all times create a lively personality, a force to be reckoned with... Sir Geraint Evans is even more individual in his characterization - listen to the recitative before his Act 4 aria - and has the more agile voice, helped by the fact that it tends more towards the baritonal." - Gramophone

Described as 'the great Verdian bass' (Le Figaro) and a 'Mefistofele who stood out over all the others' (Der Neue Merker), Carlo Colombara brings some of the most famous bass roles to life in this wide-ranging programme. Emotions range from the pride of Escamillo in Bizet's Carmen, through the terrors of Verdi's Attila, to the tender recollections of Rachmaninov's Aleko. Mephistopheles strides powerfully through both Gounod and Boito's operas, and Rossini's comic wit contrasts with the darkness of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov.

In 1986 he won the prize for the best Italian singer in the G. B. Viotti Competition and the following year he won the As.Li.Co competition before making his début at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome in Ernani. His subsequent career has brought appearances in the most important theatres of the world, in Tokyo, London, Berlin, Vienna, Milan, New York, Zurich, Barcelona, where he now lives, Verona and elsewhere.

Featuring:
Carlo Colombara, bass
Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana • Gyorgy G. Rath
Bulgarian National Symphony Orchestra • Vladimir Ghiaurov
Prague Tchaikovsky Orchestra • Fabrizio Milani
Oscar Martos Hidalgo, director

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:

The tour visits historic sites in the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium. These include the castles of Litomyšl and Konopišt? in Bohemia, and the historic town of M?lnik, the Horological Museum at Le Locle in Switzerland, relics of war from the Bavarian Army Museum in Ingolstadt, and a glimpse of the Belgian Château of Gaasbeek.

The Music:

The tour brings two of Joseph Haydn’s most famous symphonies, written for a London concert season in 1794, Symphony No. 100, the so-called Military Symphony, and Symphony No. 101, nicknamed The Clock.

Format: NTSC, 4:3
Audio: DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1, PCM Stereo 2.0
Region: 0 (All)