This live recording features a concert performance of Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette, a dramatic symphony, with solo and choral voices, in the original French language version.
Sir Colin Davis conducts the Bavarian Radio Symphony Chorus and Orchestra with soloists Philip Langridge (tenor), Hanna Schwarz (alto) and Peter Meven (bass).
Roméo et Juliette is the greatest and most satisfying of all Shakespearean works and inspired Berlioz to one of his best and successful dramatic symphonies. Intended for the concert hall, ist musical core is purely orchestral, while the outer movements are choral and vocal, their function being narrative and more theatrical. Yet the whole piece coheres magically and no other work of Berlioz more perfectly demonstrates both his poetic and the individuality of his genius.
This is the first complete television production recorded at the annual Wagner Festival in Bayreuth. Director Götz Friedrich sees the minstrel Tannhäuser as a rugged artistic individualist, much as Wagner was himself, misunderstood by his contemporaries who seek to throttle his inalienable right of expression. He turns his back on a regulated, stifling society and retreats into the world of his own impossible dreams. Whereas other productions of “Tannhäuser” show the minstrel acutally biding time in the court of Venus, in Friedrich’s version Tannhäuser’s harp triggers an imaginary Venusberg, in which the strings become a tangled web of pure sensuality. Tannhäuser discovers that a completely anything-goes society is just as restrictive in the end, and he returns to the real world. But Tannhäuser can’t go home again. Once again he lashes out at his hypocritical associates, who condemn him. His only defender is the saintly Elisabeth, who in this production is played by the same soprano who sings Venus – two sides of the coin in the eternal feminine. She prays for her own death, so that thereby Tannhäuser’s soul leaves this restrictive world for a better one in which his genius is appreciated.
Alban Berg (1885-1935) lived in the mainstream of well-to-do Austrian society. His marriage to the beautiful Hélène was thought to be made in heaven. But how can this doyen of Viennese respectability be reconciled with the composer who wrote the dark operas Wozzeck and Lulu? This multi-layered film explores Berg’s double life. Soprano Kristine Ciesinki, who features in specially-staged extracts from Lulu and Wozzeck, travels to Vienna, Prague, the USA and Germany to track down important archive documents and people who can recall the composer’s presence in their lives.
This portrait of the protégé of the late Herbert von Karajan – who, when she was only thirteen years old, proclaimed her “the greatest youthful musical talent since the young Menuhin” – shows her in performance, and talking in interview at her home in Kitzbühel about her life and her ideas on music. She is seen in concert at London’s Barbican Centre playing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Op. 35, as well as sonatas by Ravel, Franck, Tartini, Sarasate and Beethoven.
Hans van Manen’s Corps takes its inspiration from Alban Berg’s elegiac Violin Concerto and reflects the ‘longing for’ and ‘taking leave of’ expressed in the music. The nervous restlessness and often aggressive pattern of the movements capture the impotent rage invoked by the death of a loved one. The corps de ballet plays a leading role, interacting with twelve male dancers and three female dancers. This performance by the Dutch National Ballet was recorded in studio and Gidon Kremer is the soloist with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Colin Davis.
The magnificent cathedral of Regensburg is a perfect setting for this recording of Colin Davis conducting the Bayerischer Rundfunk Symphony Chorus and Orchestra in a splendid, moving performance of Berlioz’s monumental work, with tenor Keith Lewis as soloist. The performance is completed by the pealing of the cathedral bells. Regensburg Cathedral provides a superb setting for this live recording of Berlioz’s resounding Requiem, written in 1837 for the dead of Napoleon’s catastrophic wars. Sir Colin Davis conducts the Bavarian Radio Symphony Chorus and Orchestra in a magnificent and moving performance of this work, with soloist Keith Lewis (tenor).
Recorded live from the Philharmonie in Munich, Sir Colin Davis conducts the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra for this performance of Mahler’s great song symphony.
From the Munich Philharmonie comes a live recording of Sir Colin Davis conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante in E flat K364, featuring the internationally-acclaimed soloists Yuri Bashmet (viola) and Vladimir Spivakov (violin). An introduction to the concert performance is available, which shows Sir Colin Davis working with the soloists and the orchestra, documenting the painstaking preparation that goes into achieving the conductor’s musical vision.
Sir Colin Davis conducts the Bavarian Radio Symphony Chorus and Orchestra in a performance of Sir Michael Tippett’s oratorio. Written during the years before the Second World War, when Tippett’s political and social beliefs gained momentum, it is a compassionate outcry against injustice and persecution, and is enhanced by the use of Negro spirituals.
Mozart’s last work, the Requiem Mass in D minor K626, receives a strong performance from the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under Mozart specialist Sir Colin Davis in a classic recording made in 1984.
This live recording from the Herkulessaal in Munich featthe Maestro conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Chorus and Orchestra with the outstanding Peter Schreier, Edith Mathis and Trudeliese Schmidt as well as ever-popular Welsh bass Gwynne Howell.
