Karl Richters Vermächtnis (The Legacy of Karl Richter)

The music of Johann Sebastian Bach was at the center of Karl Richter’s life. Karl Richter breathed new life into Bach’s music by bringing it to new circles of listeners. The church musician Karl Richter (1926-1981) founded the Munich Bach Orchestra and Bach Choir in the 1950s and thus put into practice his new ideas of Bach interpretation. He departed from oppressively large orchestral arrangements, introduced a new simplicity, allowing the notes to turn directly into music. He kindled a blaze of enthusiasm for Bach that goes on to this day. “The Legacy of Karl Richter” documents the main milestones, events and people in the life of this great artist and personality. It shows his roots in the Saxon-Thuringian musical tradition and conveys something of the splendor of Karl Richter’s interpretations of Bach and Handel, which remain unsurpassed to this day. Light is also shed upon the versatility of Richter’s musical talent, which ranged far beyond Bach and Handel.

Mozart, Piano Sonata in A major, K. 331

Ivo Pogorelich is perhaps the only great pianist who became an instant celebrity for the prize he didn’t win. It was in 1980, when he was eliminated in the third round of the Warsaw Chopin Competition. An argument ensued among the jurors, and Martha Argerich, a member of the jury, resigned in protest, claiming “Pogorelich is a genius!” The scandal provoked by Argerich’s reaction made him famous overnight. The eyes of the musical world were soon upon young Ivo Pogorelich, and they have yet to be disappointed. Ivo Pogorelich was born in Belgrade in 1958 and began playing the piano at the age of seven. After his classical training at the Moscow Conservatory, he took master classes from Aliza Kezeradze, who passed on to him the tradition of the Liszt-Siloti school. In an interview with the German weekly newspaper “Die Zeit”, Pogorelich once listed the four most important things he learned from Kezeradze: “First, technical perfection as something natural. Second, an insight into the development of the piano sound, as perfected by the pianist-composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, composers who understood the piano both as a human voice … and as an orchestra with which they could produce a variety of colors. Third, the need to learn how to use every aspect of our new instruments, which are richer in sound. Fourth, the importance of differentiation.” Pogorelich won the Casagrande Competition in 1978 and the first prize of the International Music Competition in Montreal in 1980. Since the Warsaw scandal, Pogorelich has been pursuing a brilliant international career. His debuts in London, Paris, New York, Madrid, Brussels, Amsterdam, Rome, Milan and Tel Aviv were triumphs. He has performed with practically all the major orchestras in the world, and his recitals are almost always sold out. Comparing him with Horowitz, the New York Times once wrote: “He was an entire orchestra.” His often controversial and always stunning interpretations confirm the originality of his talent and intellect. In 1986 and 1987, when Pogorelich was in his late 20s, Unitel recorded a series of six recitals with the artist in venues of particularly striking beauty. The fact that the young pianist chose several pieces that are not among the most spectacular or frequently performed of the piano repertoire already hints at the unique and uncompromising character of this young pianist.

A Quiet Place

In 1986 Bernstein conducted a refined version of his own opera A Quiet Place in Vienna. It contains singable late romantic melodies as well as Broadway musical sounds, syncopated jazz rhythms and well-tempered modernity and, of course, a masterful instrumentation. Estranged family members recall the history of their relationships with each other and with their dead mother. The next morning, after breakfast and games in the garden – the “quiet place” –, they find that their hostility has given way to reconciliation.

Mahler, Symphony No.8 in E flat major “Symphony of a Thousand”

Leonard Bernstein conducted the work at the Salzburg Festival in 1975 and shortly thereafter in Vienna’s Konzerthaus, where it was recorded. The stage of the Konzerthaus was enlarged to make room for the unusually large orchestra, the two choruses, the children’s choir and the soloists. Bernstein was the first conductor ever to record all of Mahler’s symphonies not only on disk, but also on video. The Mahler cycle was the first project in the more than 20-year-long association between Leonard Bernstein and Unitel. The leading Mahler interpreter of our time, Bernstein recorded all of Mahler’s symphonies between 1971 and 1985, chiefly with the Vienna Philharmonic, producing a unique musical document and triggering a major reappreciation of Mahler’s works. “All Mahler symphonies, all Mahler works for that matter, deal in extremes, extremes of dynamic, of tempo, of emotional meaning. When it is bare, it’s extremely bare, when it is thick and rich, it’s thicker and richer than anything in ‘Götterdämmerung’, and when it is suffering it suffers to a point that no music has ever suffered before.” (Leonard Bernstein)

Bruckner, Symphony No.7 in E major

Sir Georg Solti (1912-1997), one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century, was a testament to the elegance and impeccable tastefulness of Central European music-making. Born in Budapest in 1912, he studied with Béla Bartók, Ernö von Dohnányi, Zoltán Kodály and Leo Weiner. In 1937, Toscanini chose him to be his assistant at the Salzburg Festival. After the war, Solti was appointed Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera. Further stations in his career were the Frankfurt Opera, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the London Philharmonic. Solti’s remarkable partnership with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra began in 1954, when he first led the orchestra at the Ravinia Festival. After returning to conduct the ensemble several times during the following years, he was named Music Director in 1969 and held this post for a phenomenal 22 years. He is credited with greatly extending and enhancing the orchestra’s worldwide reputation. “In Chicago he has whipped, cajoled, hammered, burnished and conjured an orchestral sound that manages to be two entirely opposite things at once. On the one hand, there is that seductive, mellow roar from the winds and brass; on the other, a meticulously controlled string tone whereby more than 60 players take on the crispness and clarity of a chamber ensemble.” (Newsweek, Oct. 19, 1987) Solti died in September 1997, just before his 85th birthday. Anton Bruckner began working on his Seventh Symphony in 1881 and completed it on 5 September 1883. The first performance was led by Arthur Nikish in Leipzig on 30 December 1884 and was a success that helped establish the composer as a major composer. The work has since become Bruckner’s most popular symphony. This recording features the Chicago Symphony under Sir Georg Solti.

The Love of Three Orchestra

Leonard Bernstein’s relationships with the orchestras he conducted were always intense. At their best, he felt that they were somewhere between a love affair and a family in which he played the role of the father. In more than 40 years on the podium, he enjoyed this special kind of relationship with a number of orchestras in the Old World and the New. “The Love of Three Orchestras” is an account of that experience, but concentrates on the three great orchestral families closest to his heart: the New York Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras. Bernstein begins by looking back to that moment in 1943 when he made his triumphant debut with the New York Philharmonic at age 25. Among the landmarks he recalls are the Young People’s Concerts and his twelve years as musical director. Bernstein’s association with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra began in 1947. His reminiscences include stories of performances during the early battle-torn days of the foundation of the State of Israel. Bernstein’s relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic began in 1966. He tells how the relationship got off to a disastrous start and recounts some of the difficulties he found in playing the music of Gustav Mahler with them. The music sequences and examples which illustrate Bernstein’s reminiscences are taken from Unitel films and videotapes directed by Humphrey Burton.

The Little Drummerboy – A TV-Essay on Gustav Mahler by and with Leonard Bernstein including excerpts from Mahler’s symphonies and song cycles

In this musical essay, Leonard Bernstein recollects and relives his experiences with the music of the great Viennese composer and conductor Gustav Mahler (1860-1911). Bernstein filmed all of Mahler’s ten symphonies for Unitel as well as Das Lied von der Erde and the Songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. The vocal soloists of these productions, Dame Janet Baker, Christa Ludwig, Edith Mathis, Lucia Popp and Walton Groenroos, underscore Leonard Bernstein’s elucidations with appropriate music examples. The recordings with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra were made in Tel Aviv, those with the London Symphony Orchestra in the Cathedral of Ely and those with the Wiener Philharmoniker in the Grosser Musikvereinssaal in Vienna, in which Gustav Mahler himself conducted. The Little Drummer Boy illustrates the fundamental concepts of Leonard Bernstein’s interpretation of Mahler’s works, and exposes not only the building material and framework of Mahler’s brilliant structures, but also the tensional pulls within them. Searching for the musical roots and the hidden truths guiding the composer, Leonard Bernstein discovers the key to Mahler’s music in the composer’s repressed Jewishness. Starting from the song Der Tambourg’sell (From Des Knaben Wunderhorn, written in 1899), Leonard Bernstein spans a broad arch over all the symphonies and concludes with Mahler’s last and greatest song, the Lied von der Erde (1910).

Schubert, Die Winterreise (The Winter Journey) D.911, op.89. Lieder Cycle based on poems by Wilhelm Müller

The internationally acclaimed baritone Hermann Prey was born in Berlin in 1929. He made his breakthrough in 1956 as Figaro in the Vienna State Opera’s production of Rossini’s “Barber of Seville”. He has since performe at all of the world’s great opera houses and festivals. Hermann Prey has always loved lieder, especially the works of Franz Schubert. This inspired him to found the Schubertiade, a festival in Hohenems, Austria, entirely devoted to this composer’s works. He also established the New York Schubertiade in 1988.