When Kit Armstrong was only 14 , he overcame his mentor Alfred Brendel's reluctance to take on pupils. Brendel said ''He played so beautifully that I thought to myself, 'I have to make tiem for him.' It was a performance that really led you from the first to the last note.'' Soon Armstrong was winning international prizes both as pianists and as composer and was appearing as soloist at some of the world's foremost venues. At the Concertgebouw, Armstrong mesmerized his audience with Bach's monumental Goldberg Variations - preceded by earlier polyphonic variation masterpieces by William Byrd, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and John Bull. ''Enlightening and exhilarating'' (Revierpassagen). ''Armstrong's phenomenal recital was so exceptional that every attempt to describe it falls short'' (NRC).

When the revered writer Alessandro Manzoni died in 1873, Verdi was unable to bring himself to attend the funeral. Instead he composed his monumental Messa da Requiem in Manzoni’s memory and conducted its first performance on the first anniversary of the writer’s death. In addition to its profound spirituality, the work also brings together all the finest qualities familiar from Verdi’s operas, qualities that include endless melodic lines and powerful musico-dramatic effects. The present performance was recorded in Los Angeles’s legendary Hollywood Bowl in August 2013 and brought together three superstars from the world of music: the conductor Gustavo Dudamel, the tenor Vittorio Grigolo and the bass-baritone Ildebrando D’Arcangelo, all of them at the top of their form. “It was an important and exceptional evening … That experience involved a radical and wondrous rethinking of the Requiem on Dudamel‘s part.” (Los Angeles Times)

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Nothing else that he wrote is as all-encompassing as the Mass in B minor, not even the great Passions,” says Herbert Blomstedt about Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Opus summum”. The Dresdner Kammerchor and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig under the musical direction of Herbert Blomstedt have merged ingeniously to conclude the Bachfest Leipzig with this unrivaled work – a work that bears close connections to choir and orchestra, as well as to Herbert Blomstedt himself. J. S. Bach Mass in B minor, BWV 232 Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. Performing this monumental work is the ever-capable Dresdner Kammerchor conducted by Herbert Blomstedt. Featured soloists include Christina Landshamer, soprano, Elisabeth Kulman, alto, Wolfram Lattke, tenor, and Luca Pisaroni, bass.

Vincenzo Bellini is widely regarded as the last and greatest composer of bel canto opera, and his most famous operas, Norma, is one of the leading works in the genre. Even Richard Wagner said of Norma: "If we weep from emotion on hearing it, it's nothing to be ashamed of. " This release is a new production of the opera, directed by Grammy Award-nominated director of opera, theatre, and film, Kevin Newbury. Sondra Radvan stars as a captivating Norma in a performance in which the New York Times described as "powerful, elegant. " Gregory Kunde performs as Pollione. Operatraveller. com wrote of his performance: "something very special. The word 'historic' is used perhaps a little too often but tonight there really is no other adjective to describe the sensational performances offered to us by Sondra Radvanovsky and Gregory Kunde. "

Christopher Wheeldon's acclaimed new Cinderella for the Dutch National Ballet is an imaginative interpretation of a much-loved classic. Inspired by the original Brothers Grimm fairy tale, Wheeldon gives the characters renewed depth and complexity, complementing Prokofiev's celebrated and colorful score. With sets and costumes by the renowned designer Julian Crouch, supported by stunning stage effects, this world premiere production is a truly magical experience, bringing an age-old fairy tale into the 21st century.

There is no better repertoire with which to display a leider singer than the Schubert Song Cycles. For this release, baritone Hermann Prey tackles Schubert’s Die Schone Mullerin, Schwanengesang accompanied by Leonard Hokanson and Winterreise accompanied by Helmut Deutsch. As a bonus, this release includes an interview with Prey on these song cycles and a documentary on the artist. “In his finest interpretations Hermann Prey sang “Winterreise” and “Die schone Mullerin” with a captivatingly natural phrasing that flowed organically like a river and as such was the very opposite of the more intellectual approach of his rival, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.” (Die Zeit online) “The velvety, silky timbre of his soft-grained and yet distinctively striking baritone voice, his charm, his excellent diction and the naturalness of his delivery spiced with a hint of emotion- it is all this that distinguishes the truly outstanding lieder singer.” (Opernglas)

This 78 minute black & white and color DVD documentary includes rare, previously unpublished photos, newly unearthed performance footage, & private interviews.

Bel Air Classiques presents Wagner’s mystic masterpiece “Parsifal” in a brilliant staging by Dmitri Tcherniakov in the spectacular Staatsoper Berlin. Wagner’s last completed opera, it was begun in April of 1857 but wasn’t completed until twenty-five years later. It is loosely based on the 13th century epic poem Parzival by Wolfran von Eschenbach, in which an Arthurian knight quests for the Holy Grail. Wagner referred to this work as a “festival play for the consecration of the stage,” rather than an opera. This international cast of outstanding singers lights up the stage, and Daniel Barenboim’s interpretation of the score shimmers in the spotlight.

Award winning director Damiano Michieletto has brought together these two short operas, both of which are set in a poverty-stricken Southern Italy village in the early 1980s where the Mafia has a stranglehold. Music Director of the Royal Opera, Antonio Pappano, conducts this star studded cast which includes charming Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek, vivacious Italian soprano Carmen Giannattasio, and exhilarating Latvian tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko. These two works are prime examples of verismo opera- a genre of opera which focuses on the everyday struggles of the common man rather than on mythical or historical legends. Extra features included in this set are Introduction to Cavalleria Rusticana, Introduction to Pagliacc, an interview with Antonio Pappano on the music, and a cast gallery.

From grand spectacles to poignant close-ups, experience Helgi Tomasson's bravura interpretation of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet like you've never seen it before. With passionate choreography, spine-tingling swordsmansip, and a celebrated score by Sergei Prokofiev, San Francisco Ballet's passionate retelling of the Bard's greatest tragedy has packed houses around the world. Romeo & Juliet is one of the Company's most popular and widely toured ballets and has been seen by more than 200,000 people since it premiered in 1994. Choreographed by Helgi Tomasson, with sets and costumes by Jens-Jacob Worsaae, this visually stunning production and the brilliant dancers of San Francisco Ballet bring this powerful and touching tragedy - and Renaissance-era Verona - vivdly to life. "Tomasson lifts Shakespeare's complex and familiar language off the gilded pages and translates it into lucid classical choreography that is visceral, fresh, and ultimately sublime" (Huffington Post).

This release celebrates the testimony of Edgar Morin. Sociologist, philosopher, former research director at the CNRS, founder of journals, and also a committed and warm man. Edgar Morin is one of the most important French thinkers of his time. Illustrious throughout the world, his books are translated into thirty languages and he is a Doctor Honoris at multiple universities. Morin's work is obsessive over the concern for knowledge - that it is neither mutilated nor compartmentalized.

Star tenor and director Rolando Villazón’s staging of La Traviata at the Festspielhaus in Baden Baden is “visually spectacular” (The Huffington Post) and made for “an enthusiastic reception for the premiere” (Stuttgarter Zeitung)! Villazón “proves again his excellent narrating skills on stage” (WDR Klassik). “The setting and opulence of the stage captivates the spectator, as do the stylized costumes designed by Thibault Vancraenenbroeck for circus artists” (Stuttgarter Zeitung). Olga Peretyatko as Violetta delivers “a fantastic portrait of the title role wavering between adolescent joie de vivre, mature insight and anguish” (Stuttgarter Zeitung). Her partner is the tenor Atalla Ayan as the jealous Alfredo, who delivers a “beguiling interpretation with a dark, warm timbre and rich top notes” (Stuttgarter Zeitung). Simone Piazzolla as Alfredo’s strict father Giorgio Germont adds fine vocal lines to provide a strong sense of “Italianità” on stage (Neue Zürcher Zeitung). Conductor is Pablo Heras-Casado, “a great hope of a new generation of conductors” (WDR Klassik).

This impressive four-DVD set features four documentaries that revolve around the lives and careers of four of history’s finest conductors. The first is “I Am Lost to the World,” a documentary about Carlos Kleiber, that includes several musical excerpts conducted by Kleiber. The second is “Journey of a Lifetime,” which focuses on Sir Georg Solti. The film includes interviews with Valerie Solti, Valery Gergiev, and more. “Larger Than Life” revolves around Leonard Bernstein, and includes interviews with his children and other music giants like Stephen Sondheim and Gustavo Dudamel. Finally, “Maestro for the Screen,” is about the life of Herbert von Karajan and shows the fascinating development of Karajan’s language for filming orchestral productions and starts with the very first concert production in 1957 in Japan, followed by the impressive cooperation with director Henri Georges Clouzot in 1965 to Karajan’s own film company Telemondial.

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 Hockosterwitz Castle and from Bavaria Weikersheim Castle, the latter intercut with wild life.

This production ''offers all an Italian-opera-lover could possibly desire'' wrote the FAZ after the revival of this ''forgotten gem'' at the Bregenz Festival. The festival continued its rediscovery series with ''Amleto/Hamlet'', an opera by Verdi contemporaries Franco Faccio and Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet. Premiered in 1865 in Genoa and restaged in 1871 at Milano's La Scala, ''Hamlet'' was only revived in 2014 concertante in the US before its ''triumphal rebirth'' at the Bregenz Festival, where the opera was also recorded for the first time ever. Faccio, who conducted the first performance of Verdi's Aida in Italy and the world premiere of Otello and Boito, Verdi's librettist of Otello and Falstaff, skillfully and effectively challenge the conventions of Italian opera, which they watned to revitalize by infusing it with the spirit of Shakespeare's drama. Anticipating the musical language of later Italian verismo composers, the opera combines lovely musical interludes with superb vocal writing. Heading a supreme cast, Pavel Cernoch as Amelto delivers superbly, ''using his colorful tenor skillfully to develop the transformation of the insecure youngling to the ice-cold avenger'' and ''granting the work large scale''. Under the baton of Paolo Carignani with the Vienna Symphoniker and Prague Philharmonic Choir ''it carried terrific punch''. Olivier Tambosi's ''excellent staging served it well, with a clear focus on the high points''. ''In the intermission and at the end there was vociferous enthusiasm of the audience for the later first encounter with this music''.

One of our day’s most legendary performers, pianist Rudolph Buchbinder has been appearing on stages all over the globe for the last fifty years. Later this year, in celebration of his 70th birthday, he will be honored in numerous concert halls, including Carnegie Hall, Suntory hall, and the Berliner Philharmonie. The Kurier newspaper described this performance with rave reviews. “It is not every day that Brahms sounds so perfect as this.” (Kurier) They also praised Buchbinder as a “phenomenal piano virtuoso.” In the Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein, under the baton of Maestro Zubin Mehta, Buchbinder performs for this release the First and Second Piano Concertos of Johannes Brahms. These works demand a soloist with a wide range of both interpretal refinement and technical skill, both of which Buchbinder brings to the table. “What Rudolph Buchbinder, the Vienna Philharmonic and conductor Zubin Mehta delivered at the Musikverein easily deserves the accolade ‘milestone’.” (Kurier)

A film by Lillian Birnbaum and Peter Stephan Jungk

With:
André Previn, Mia Farrow, Renée Fleming, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Tom Stoppard, David Finck, and others

Bonus:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:
Piano Quartet No. 2 in E flat major, K. 493
Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, K. 478


André Previn, piano
Rainer Küchl, violin
Günter Seifert, viola
Franz Bartolomey, cello

André Previn is one of the leading musicians of our day. The eighty-one-year-old cosmopolitan pianist, conductor and classical composer has not only received no fewer than four Academy awards for his film adaptations but was also one of the most influential jazz musicians of the fifties and sixties. A Bridge Between Two Worlds is a portrait of Previn's fascinating musicianship and also looks candidly at his private life, including his relations with his two ex-wives, Mia Farrow and Anne-Sophie Mutter. As a bonus, this release features Mozart's two Piano Quartets K. 478 and K. 493 with André Previn at the keyboard.

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo 2.0 / Dolby Digital 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, German, French, Spanish
Booklet notes: English, German, French
Running time: 52 mins (documentary) + 55 mins (performance)
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)

From grand spectacles to poignant close-ups, experience Helgi Tomasson's bravura interpretation of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet like you've never seen it before. With passionate choreography, spine-tingling swordsmansip, and a celebrated score by Sergei Prokofiev, San Francisco Ballet's passionate retelling of the Bard's greatest tragedy has packed houses around the world. Romeo & Juliet is one of the Company's most popular and widely toured ballets and has been seen by more than 200,000 people since it premiered in 1994. Choreographed by Helgi Tomasson, with sets and costumes by Jens-Jacob Worsaae, this visually stunning production and the brilliant dancers of San Francisco Ballet bring this powerful and touching tragedy - and Renaissance-era Verona - vivdly to life. "Tomasson lifts Shakespeare's complex and familiar language off the gilded pages and translates it into lucid classical choreography that is visceral, fresh, and ultimately sublime" (Huffington Post).

Designed to be the follow up to the best-selling 2012 'Ballets for Children' box set, Fairytale Ballets collects performances from the Paris Opera Ballet and Dutch National Ballet troupes of some of the most popular ballets in the repertory: Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Cinderella and Copp�lia. With a handsomely bound box and individual slipcases for each ballet featuring a specially-commissioned cover illustration from the artist that designs the covers for the top-selling Terry Pratchett fantasy novels. Intended to specifically appeal to the 10-16 age group, but all fans of these immortal ballets will find much to be compelled by with this budget priced box set.

John Wayne's first television special, originally aired as Swing Out, Sweet Land on NBC-TV in 1970, is a patriotic and poignant journey through American history - with music, comedy and many famous friends. As host and narrator, Wayne walks through pivotal moments in America's past. His guests include Jack Benny as a citizen asking George Washington (Lorne Greene) about that dollar he supposedly threw across the Potomac River; Bob Hope and Ann-Margret entertaining the troops at Valley Forge; printer Red Skelton discussing dissent with apprentice Tom Smothers; Lucille Ball as Miss Liberty; and Bing Crosby as Mark Twain, philosophizing with freed slave Frederick Douglass (Roscoe Lee Brown). Also: Dean Martin as inventor Eli Whitney; Michael Landon as Peter Minuit, buying Manhattan Island from an Indian (Bonanza co-star Dan Blocker); brothers Rick and David Nelson fighting on opposite sides in the Civil War; Phyllis Diller as a 19th-century Presidential candidate; Dan Rowan and Dick Martin as the Wright brothers; Celeste Holm and Dennis Weaver as the parents of young Abraham Lincoln; Greg Morris as Crispus Attucks, a Negro who died in the Boston Massacre. Musical highlights include Ribbon of Steel by Johnny Cash, This Is a Great Country by Glen Campbell, Oh, Susannah by Roy Clark, Clementine by Leslie Uggams and God Bless America by the cast. JOHN WAYNE'S TRIBUTE TO AMERICA is a lavish and thoughtful timepiece of 20th-century television entertainment, presenting a parade of legendary stars in a humorous and hopeful celebration.

Polychoral music is so synonymous with 16th century Venice that it is easy to forget that the longest flourishing of this style- possibly even its invention- took place in Germany. Whether or not it was in Munich with the works of Orlande de Lassus that the Gabrielis first encountered its effects, polychoral music came to define German textures and techniques for over a century. Both apprentices and rivals to their Italian counterparts, composers such as Hieronymus Praetorius, Schutz, Hassler and Scheidt, as well as Austria’s Biber, fostered a tradition whose influence would extend all the way to the motets of Bach. This performance places a giant of Baroque choral music, Biber’s Missa Salisburgensis, alongside the Venetian choral works of Monteverdi from which it takes its inspiration. The combination is a heady one, a triumphal musical celebration uniquely appropriate to mark the 200th anniversary year of Salzburg’s affiliation with Austria.

This comprehensive 3 DVD set, starring Anton Lesser, Daniel Radcliffe, Ian McKellan, Maggie Smith, explores the life, times and work of Charles Dickens, the great Victoria author. The full content of this box set demonstrates how much Dickens drew upon his own experiences when writing fiction. DVD 1 - Uncovering the Real Dickens - the great author's fascinating biography, presented by Peter Ackroyd is an innovative mix of documentary and dramatic reconstruction which vividly portrays his extraordinary life. Resembling the plot of one of his novels, this lavish literary production sets out to blur the lines between Dickens' fiction and his own life. The cast includes Anton Lesser, Prunella Scales and Timothy West (176 minutes).DVD 2 - David Copperfield - the classic 1999 BBC version of the most autobiographical of Dickens novels staring a star cast Bob Hoskins, Daniel Radcliffe, Maggie Smith, Ian McKellan, Zoe Wanamaker and Nicolas Lyndurst. Three hours of classic BBC drama. (186 minutes). DVD 3 - a Christmas Carol - at his house, a group of friends and relatives listen to Dickens as he tells his Christmas story. Anton Lesser as Dickens, brings this classic ghost story to life in a masterly and haunting way. (97 minutes).

Before moving into the Elbphilharmonie, chief conductor Thomas Hengelbrock and his NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester performed a “Brahms Marathon” with all four symphonies of the Hamburg-born composer in the historic Laeiszhalle. Brahms’ music has always played an important role in the history of the orchestra, whose defining interpretations of the symphonies by Brahms and Bruckner have become the ensemble’s artistic hallmark. The orchestra, founded in 1945, was led by outstanding conductors such as Günter Wand, Christoph Eschenbach and Christoph von Dohnanyi. Since 2011, chief conductor Thomas Hengelbrock is in charge of continuing the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester’s history. In the bonus program ''Discovering Brahms'', Thomas Hengelbrock offers interesting background information on all four symphonies. “The evening was more than worth it” (Hamburger Abendblatt).

The rich baritone delivering memorable melodies like "Sundown," "Carefree Highway," "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," and the title song made him a mainstay of the '60s-'70s singer-songwriter boom and a national treasure of his native Canada. This documentary portrait captures Gordon Lightfoot at 80 as his reflections upon his life and six-decade career are complemented by observations from contemporaries and admirers like Anne Murray, Ian & Sylvia, Randy Bachman, Geddy Lee, Sarah McLachlan, more. 90 min. Widescreen; Soundtrack: English; Subtitles: English; theatrical trailers.

In the garden of a Baroque villa, a chamber orchestra is playing Mozart’s wonderful quartets and quintets, and everywhere is pervaded with echoes and references to the composer’s world. As if by magic or conjured by the imagination, figures emerge from the shadows of the labyrinthine garden: they are Mozart’s characters, and they play with – or perhaps make fun of – the guests at the party, embroiling them in their well-known amorous dalliances. With lightness and irony, this journey into the universe of Mozart tips its hat to the 1700s also with the scenery and costumes, and fills the garden with fun and passionate virtuoso dances, which follow each other dynamically and quickly with constant changes in the mood. Like in a dream where everything is jumbled together, where reality and illusion merge.