Documentary Video
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BABY BOOM YEARS: 1948
Mahler: Symphony No. 1 / Chailly, Gewandhausorchester [Blu-ray]
Also available on standard DVD
Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 is an incomprehensible wonder of music history, rigorously peculiar, disturbingly new, and timelessly modern. “Wie ein Naturlaut” (Like a sound of nature) is indicated above the first notes of the symphony. It is both the prelude and the key to his symphonic cosmos as a whole. Mahler captures this music of the world, transforms it into a symphony in the old, comprehensive sense of the word and uses it to create his masterpiece of harmony. Composed over the course of just a few months at the beginning of 1888 in Leipzig, this symphony is a true musical awakening. Riccardo Chailly and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig bring Mahler’s sounds of nature to life in a riveting performance. This production was recorded live in January 2015 at the Gewandhaus zu Leipzig. As a bonus, this release also includes an exclusive interview with Riccardo Chailly.
Yun: Inbetween North and South Korea
John Cage: Journeys In Sound
Bellini: I Capuleti e i Montecchi
John Cage: Journeys In Sound
Haydn: The Creation / Steinaecker, Musica Saeculorum
FRANCOISE DOLTO & L ECOLE DE L
GUSTAVE MOREAU ET AUTRES FILMS
The Baton: A Documentary by Michael Wende
65 Minutes
Dolby Digital 2.0 16:9
NTSC
Region 0
German & English
Paths Through the Labyrinth
ABBA FOREVER: THE WINNER TAKES IT ALL
DEEP BLUES
JAZZ ON A SUMMER'S DAY (1959)
BILLIE (2020)
ELVIS '56
Solti - Journey Of A Lifetime
SOLTI – Journey of a Lifetime Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Sir Georg Solti A film by Georg Wübbolt
Featuring:
Valerie Solti
Valery Gergiev
Christoph von Dohnányi
Sir Peter Jonas
Clemens Hellsberg
Ewald Markl
and many more as interview partners as well as several musical excerpts conducted by Sir Georg Solti
Bonus:
Dmitry Shostakovich: Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Op. 10
Sergey Prokofiev: Symphony No. 1 in D major, Op. 25, “Classical”
Modest Mussorgsky: Khovanshchina: Prelude
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Georg Solti, conductor
R E V I E W:
SOLTI: JOURNEY OF A LIFETIME • Georg Solti, cond; Chicago SO • C-MAJOR 711708 (DVD: 106: 00) A film by Georg Wübbolt
MUSSORGSKY Khovanshchina: Prelude. PROKOFIEV Symphony No. 1, “Classical.” SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 1. Live: Chicago 1977
What is Georg Solti’s place in the pantheon of podium titans? He gained celebrity when he led the first complete recording of Wagner’s Ring to be issued. He created a comparable sensation when he took over the Chicago Symphony and led that orchestra in concerts and recordings that dazzled with their brilliance, virtuosity, and tonal splendor. In the 1970s Harold C. Schonberg, the influential chief music critic of the New York Times , pronounced Solti and Karajan the two most significant conductors of the age, characterizing Solti’s sonority as “molten gold,” in contrast to the “silvery” Karajan sound. As is usual, extravagant acclaim soon led detractors to weigh in, and Solti’s recordings began to be criticized as crude, unyielding, over-driven, excessively muscular, and lacking in nuance and refinement. Although he holds the record for the number of Grammy awards, his many recordings of standard symphonic repertoire rarely turn up today on lists of preferred versions, and he did not make BBC Music magazine ’s list of the 20 greatest conductors, as selected by a poll of 100 currently active conductors. (Nor, astonishingly, did Otto Klemperer or Bruno Walter.)
The centennial of Solti’s birth in 2012 saw the release on DVD of two documentaries about his life and career. The other one, which I have not seen, was reviewed by Lynn René Bayley in Fanfare 36:3. It is nearly three times as long as the one under review here and apparently more thorough and detailed, with a lengthier supplement of complete performances. The C Major release combines a 52-minute documentary with 54 minutes of performances by the Chicago Symphony. Filmmaker Georg Wübbolt was also responsible for a documentary on Carlos Kleiber that I reviewed in 35:1. As in that earlier effort, he follows the standard technique of interspersing commentary by those who knew the conductor, worked with him, or followed his career, with clips from rehearsals and performances. Solti himself is much more of a participant in the commentary than was Kleiber, who stopped giving interviews early in his career. Wübbolt also follows his earlier practice of shifting rapidly from one commentator to the next, which generates a fast-paced narrative but also leaves loose ends and unanswered questions. As in his earlier documentary, there are issues one would like to have discussed in greater detail. It is also sometimes hard to keep track of the identities of the commentators and their connection to Solti, since they are often not again identified when they reappear. They include Solti’s widow, Valerie, Christoph von Dohnányi, who served as his assistant in Frankfurt, Valery Gergiev, and the critic Norman Lebrecht, along with musicians and officials of the Chicago Symphony, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Frankfurt and Munich opera houses, the Bayreuth Festival, and others. Considering the importance of opera in Solti’s career, the absence of singers with whom he worked from the ranks of commentators is surprising and regrettable. The film is mostly in German, with English subtitles, although there is some narration and comment in English. Solti himself speaks in German.
The documentary provides a succinct overview of Solti’s career: his musical training in his native Budapest under Bartók, Ernö Dohnányi, and Leo Weiner; his 1937 visit to Salzburg, where he met Toscanini and was recruited to serve as a repetiteur; his second meeting with Toscanini in Lucerne in 1939, on the eve of World War II, which resulted in his being stranded in Switzerland for the duration of the conflict. In postwar Germany, he finally had the opportunity to begin a conducting career, since most German conductors were temporarily barred by the victorious Allies from performing. He first headed the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, where life for him was very difficult. The opera orchestra (“all Nazis” according to Solti) did not take kindly to being led by a young Hungarian Jew and showed it. In 1951 he moved to the somewhat friendlier territory of Frankfurt. His career took a giant step forward when producer John Culshaw selected him for the Ring project over more senior and established figures, perceiving him as someone who was more amenable to the demands of the recording studio and capable of achieving the results Culshaw envisioned for this ground-breaking effort. The Decca Ring is said to have led to Solti’s appointment to head London’s Royal Opera, although most of Ring operas had not yet been released when this selection took place. After his successful although controversial tenure at Covent Garden (1961-71), where he brought the company to “the highest international standards,” he had had enough of presiding over opera houses and wished to devote himself to symphony orchestras. As music director of the Chicago Symphony (1969-91), he perhaps reached the peak of his career, bringing the orchestra to a level of world-wide acclaim it had never before approached. Not so successful was his brief tenure with the Orchestre de Paris (1972-75), described in the film as “a terrible orchestra” where “no one goes…except for the money.” Curiously, the documentary does not mention his involvement with the London Philharmonic, which he led in the years 1979-83 and with which he recorded Elgar’s symphonies and several Mozart operas, among other works. When Karajan died in 1989 prior to the Salzburg Festival, Solti was urgently requested to take over the production of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, which he did with some reluctance. Up to then he had never been invited to conduct at Salzburg or at the Berlin Philharmonic. There was no love lost between the two conductors, but they did listen to each other’s recordings to find out how the other was approaching a work. In Solti’s final years, he renewed his ties with Munich in guest appearances with the Bavarian Radio Symphony and returned to his homeland to lead the recently founded Budapest Festival Orchestra in a recording of works by his three teachers.
When the commentators attempt to characterize Solti’s style as a conductor, words like energy, vitality, and fire crop up repeatedly and are underscored by images of his abrupt, even violent movements on the podium. These movements, according to one observer, provoked orchestras to play loudly, and he had difficulty getting them to play more softly. In addition to fire, according to Gergiev, he possessed “icy control.” Other commentators mention his perfectionism, focus on detail, and special concern for rhythm, which are reflected in his practice of singing, or rather chanting, a passage to demonstrate how it should go. The Vienna Philharmonic cellist Werner Resel emphasizes and, I think, exaggerates the role of recordings in establishing Solti’s reputation, arguing that Solti “didn’t make a career by conducting concerts and delighting audiences but by making records that turned out to be great.” This gentleman apparently missed the decades in which Solti was thrilling audiences with his Chicago Symphony concerts, in Europe as well as the U.S. Peter Schmidl, another VPO musician, makes the surprising and demonstrably false claim that “Solti’s great career as a conductor became possible only when Böhm had stopped conducting and Karajan had died…and when Bernstein was no longer around,” in other words, in the last seven years of Solti’s life. The same observer, however, expresses regret that Solti was not called earlier to Salzburg, where he could have achieved great results.
The concert performances included as a supplement are drawn from a 1977 telecast featuring Russian music. The Khovanshchina Prelude is performed in Rimsky-Korsakov’s smoothed-out and comparatively bland revision. In the Prokofiev “Classical” Symphony, Solti’s weighty approach and the massive sound of the Chicago Symphony are perhaps not the best fit for this light and frothy music, but the piece is brilliantly played and enjoyable to hear. The fast-paced, forceful, and once again brilliantly played Shostakovich is the most satisfying item on the program. As was his practice, Solti tends to set a tempo and stick to it, without much inflection for expressive purposes, and with the solid, steady rhythmic underpinning that was one of his hallmarks. Others may bring more mystery and sense of underlying menace to this work, but with Solti the menace is quite overt. The sound is free from distortion, brilliant in tutti, and wide in dynamic range, if a bit opaque and lacking in spaciousness.
Returning to the question I posed at the beginning of this review, I have no definitive answer. Solti’s Ring , which has just been reissued in an expensive, hefty “super deluxe” edition and is said to be by far the best-selling classical recording of all time, retains its status, as does his Mahler Eighth, although even they are not without their detractors, as witness Lynn René Bayley’s unfavorable comments in 36:3. Solti’s legacy as an opera conductor, in Wagner, Strauss, Verdi, and, somewhat surprisingly, Mozart, seems to me secure. Although he was never one of my favorite conductors, he was one who engaged my interest, and I have a good many of his recordings of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, and others on my overburdened shelves. I will retain these performances as having enduring value, even if they would not necessarily be among my first choices for the works in question. Solti remains a worthy contributor to the almost infinite variety of performance that enriches our experience of music. For those interested in his life and career, the Wübbolt documentary, despite the shortcomings noted, offers a concise overview with many insights.
FANFARE: Daniel Morrison
1977 Video Production
Picture format: NTSC 16:9 (documentary) / 4:3 (bonus)
Sound format: PCM Stereo
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Languages: English, German
Subtitles: French, Spanish, Korean
Running time: 52 mins (documentary) + 55 mins (bonus)
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)
Glenn Gould - Russian Journey
Note: This Blu-ray Disc is playable only on Blu-ray Disc players, and not compatible with standard DVD players.
A film by Yosif Feyginberg
The date is May 2nd, 1957. Stalin died only four years before and perestroika is still a long way off. However, the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, who is just 24, arrives in Moscow for an exceptional tour: he is the first North American musician to play behind the iron curtain. This is the story that Glenn Gould in Russia tells by revealing documents from the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that had remained classified for years. Witness accounts from musicians such as Ashkenazy and Rostropovitch, parts of the original recordings of Gould’s concerts in Moscow and Leningrad, as well as a recording that had never been released before of his lecture-recital in Leningrad make this an invaluable documentary revealing an aspect of Glenn Gould’s artistry that few people are aware of.
DETAILS:
Picture format: 1080i High Definition
Sound format: PCM 2.0 (Historical material: Mono)
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, German, French, Korean
Running time: 60 mins
No. of Discs: 1 (Blu-ray)
GENIUS IN EXILE
Glenn Gould - The Russian Journey
A film by Yosif Feyginberg
The date is May 2nd, 1957. Stalin died only four years before and perestroika is still a long way off. However, the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, who is just 24, arrives in Moscow for an exceptional tour: he is the first North American musician to play behind the iron curtain. This is the story that Glenn Gould in Russia tells by revealing documents from the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that had remained classified for years. Witness accounts from musicians such as Ashkenazy and Rostropovitch, parts of the original recordings of Gould’s concerts in Moscow and Leningrad, as well as a recording that had never been released before of his lecture-recital in Leningrad make this an invaluable documentary revealing an aspect of Glenn Gould’s artistry that few people are aware of.
Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM 2.0 (Historical material: Mono)
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, German, French, Korean
Running time: 60 mins
No. of DVDs: 1
R E V I E W:
GLENN GOULD: THE RUSSIAN JOURNEY • Glenn Gould (pn); various artists; Yosif Feyginberg (dir) • C MAJOR 714108 (DVD 56:00)
What could have easily been a dull and routine affair—after all, little film footage and few recordings exist of Gould’s historic May 1957 tour of the USSR—turns out to be a stunning and fascinating film that riveted my attention from first to last. Part of this documentary’s charm, and value, comes from the fact that Gould’s trip is explored in full detail, including his initial shock at not being able to sleep in a double bed and a postcard he sent back home to his dog! All of this, plus the warm reminiscences of the men and women who met him, acted as guides and/or translators, or heard him play, not to mention the actual voice of Gould himself recalling the ups and downs of his journey, adds layer upon layer to the story until you actually start to feel that you are watching a documentary made at the time, as if Glenn Gould himself had been able to participate in its making.
What caused such a furore? As this video tells us, part of it was the fact that Bach, so long a musical persona non grata in the Soviet Union for his strong association with religious works, came as a revelation to most of his Soviet audience. The hall for his first concert in Moscow—the complete Bach The Art of Fugue, a work most people had never even heard—was not even half full when he began. Partway through the first half, however, people ran out of the hall to pay phones and called friends, relatives, colleagues, and told them that they had to come down ASAP and hear this man. By the time the concert ended, the hall was packed, not only with breathless lay spectators but also with musicians, and the Russian audience went absolutely berserk. In ensuing performances, and there were several, Gould opened up his repertoire to include the other love of his life, composers of the Second Viennese School. He even gave a lecture-demonstration of their music before an audience of lay listeners, students, and even professors at the Conservatory. The entire Russian musical world seemed to want to absorb Glenn Gould like a sponge. As one of them put it, halfway through the concert-lecture on Berg, Webern, and Schoenberg, some of the students became restless; it was all a bit too new and foreign for them, and they begged him to play Bach. “We brought him back down,” the commentator said. But Gould responded positively to the rapt attention he received, and to a certain extent I think that it was upon his return to North American concert life that he became increasingly restless about performing in person because he felt that the majority of audience members were inattentive or only half-listening.
Yet his impact on the Russians, and theirs on them, went much further than just playing and talking to them. Sviatoslav Richter, at the time (as Gould relates) practically unknown in the West, went up to him after a concert, congratulated him, and invited him to one of his own. Mstislav Rostropovich then later recalls something that Richter had told him: “I can play Bach as well as Gould, but I won’t do it because it would take me too much time to rehearse it and too much concentration!”
Nowadays, there is a counter-reaction to Gould’s Bach. Once viewed as ultra-modern, crisp and unbelievably lucid in the revealing of the inner voices, it is now sometimes thought of as willfully distorted: the slow sections are played too fast, the fast sections even faster or too slow. Yet for others, Gould’s architectonic approach to the music remains miraculous simply because, for all its clarity and consistent tempo, it lives and breathes. It has feeling despite, not because, of its rapid pace. And that is what is often missing in the playing of modern-day pianists who approach Bach; yet all of them should be thankful to Gould for making it acceptable to play Bach on the piano and not only or always on the harpsichord or clavichord. The crisp, staccato sound of his particular Steinway model is forever etched in the minds of his listeners.
After Gould returned to Canada he was unable to go back to the USSR again; after 1964, the welcoming window of opportunity closed for a very long time. But he continued to talk about the Russians on his CBC television programs, to play their music (the video includes clips of him performing the Shostakovich Piano Quintet and a Prokofiev sonata), and to talk about the difficulties the Russian people faced under the Soviet system. He sent his recordings to them to be reproduced on the Melodiya label and continued to receive warm letters from those he had met and some he had not. It was, in short, a very cathartic experience for him, even if he did beg his doctor for “those little yellow pills” (valium) that calmed him down so he could take them on his trip.
This is a fascinating and extraordinarily well-put-together documentary of an exceptional trip, and time, in the life and career of an exceptional pianist. I highly recommend it.
FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley
Ballet du Capitole - Trois ballets de Kader Belarbi
CHILDREN OF THE BEIJING OPERA
Renee Fleming in Concert
Also available on Blu-ray
Two unforgettable evenings showcase the artistry of Renée Fleming alongside Christian Thielemann’s mastery of the Austro-German Romantic idiom, as the Salzburg Festival honours one of its founding fathers, Richard Strauss, and the Staatskapelle Dresden draws on the deep well of its living Bruckner tradition. The mixed vocal and symphonic programmes feature five lieder by the prolific Austrian songsmith Hugo Wolf in addition to four of Strauss’s finest and an opera scene featuring Fleming in one of her career-defining roles, Arabella. At Dresden’s Semperoper, the Staatskapelle’s then newly appointed music director leads them in Bruckner’s lyric Seventh in which the composer mourns the death of Wagner, whereas in Salzburg, Thielemann helms the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra for the spectacular mountain journey of Strauss’s titanic Alpine Symphony. Filmed in High Definition and recorded in true Surround Sound. "Thielemann, whose reading is satisfyingly spacious, reveals the work's structural mastery in intermingling and transforming its many themes. The excellent video director Michael Beyer expertly lays out the orchestra in front of us, following the music sensibly so that we can relish Strauss's detailed scoring...[Fleming] sings gloriously and the result is ravishing " (Gramophone)
