About DVDs - reflections from the Editor
of Seen&Heard (PGW)
See also Arthaus Musik DVD -
An Overview by Gary Dalkin
These responses are those of a music lover who rarely watches television
and is engaged on a daily basis in live music making and reviewing musical
events for S&H. Having dipped my toe in very tentatively, Seen and Heard
a few Arthaus DVDs on friends' machines (and even reviewed the Arthaus
Tristan & Isolde with Jon West,
the same Tristan as currently
at Covent Garden ) without being totally convinced that they would change
my life, I have finally taken the plunge and purchased one. I now offer a
few first reactions - not the full reviews that some of these DVDs (but not
all) merit.
DVD players take a little getting used to, but they do provide excellent
picture clarity and good sound - I haven't explored some of their more recondite
features, nor yet got into the mysteries of surround-sound! Some DVDs are
transfers from TV programmes, with close camera work aimed at people who
need to know what a singer's glottis or a piccolo looks like in close up;
others are determined to keep the pictures on the move so as to retain attention.
More recent ones are likely to be far more sophisticated and the best of
them offer remarkable experiences.
Presentation varies and is not as good as we have come to expect (but do
not always receive) from CDs. Translated texts are sometimes rather crude.
Opera singers can make uncomfortable companions large as life in the living
room! Conventional gestures in close up do not always convey the intended
emotion. It is surprisingly hard to concentrate on the music and its performance
per se - the visuals always seem to take the centre stage of attention,
more so than may be so in the opera house.
This limited survey suggests that small may be better than large, but with
notable exceptions. I got little pleasure from two well-praised releases,
Fidelio from Covent Garden &
Aida from Milan. It was impossible
to empathise with Pavarotti awaiting suffocation or starvation to death,
but in the theatre the turbulent conflicting emotions of that last scene
can work and engage emotions.
The Marinsky Theatre production of La Forza del Destino
(100 078) is, not unexpectedly, very
traditional, which some undoubtedly will welcome, and it would seem that
the stage director, no less than Elija Moshinsky (see recent review of his
astonishing
Turn
of the Screw) must have been constrained by the situation
in St Petersburg. The orchestral playing and sound is splendid, but I was
surprised how Gergiev's baton quivered in the prelude - was he emoting for
camera? Some of the singing, led by Galina Gorchakova, is excellent, but
much of the acting and chorus work is wooden and adds nothing over a CD.
Turandot at San Francisco
(100
003) starts with a huge advantage - colourful, indeed gaudy,
set designs by David Hockney, which provide something to look at always.
But that pleasure is short-lived; the picture is prettified, as are the costumes,
but in no way does the overall production relate to contemporary concerns
- not so impossible as might be supposed. The sets for each act earn immediate
applause at curtain-up, and in the 'three riddles' scene there are spectacular
acrobatics before the serious action. Yet the central drama develops in a
conventional manner, and never engages the mind as well as the senses. Michael
Sylvester sings magnificently as Calaf (a lovely, unexaggerated Nessun
dorma) but Eva Marton, shrieking in close up, her voice seeming to me
to be in tatters, destroys all illusion, and as presented on screen turns
the famous confrontation into just another win-or-lose-all TV quiz show;
she remains less than alluring in the love-scene capitulation! The contrast,
for example, with the wonderfully original
WNO
production, which S&H covered at Oxford, and that
left us pondering and discussing for days, speaks volumes.
A Kronos Quartet DVD, In Accord (100
050), was the first to be sampled, and I was underwhelmed. It
is more of film than concert, and was accordingly reviewed by
Colin Still, as well as by
Gary S. Dalkin, who has also published a valuable
over-view of the first DVDs released,
with technical assessments . He can number me amongst the many who 'will
simply find it too gimmicky, and the music too negligible to warrant serious
attention'. I preferred the Kronos before they hit the big time and became
wedded to profitable minimalism - reviewing once at the Royal Academy of
Music, playing Sallinen to a student audience of about a dozen, is a treasured
memory (another was Evelyn Glennie, performing before a tiny handful of people
in Sydenham!).
So to my favourite DVDs to date, the main point of this little report and
intended for consideration when compiling your Christmas lists.
For opera, pleasurable surprise came from an unexpected quarter;
Falstaff (100 022) not Verdi's
masterpiece, but by the much maligned and little known Salieri. This I
recommended warmly on finding it
"a piece which, whilst falling short of masterpiece status,
demands to be Seen as well as Heard - - - this production at
the little rococo theatre in Schwetzingen Palace ideal for home viewing -
- a joy to watch - - the understatement of the stage picture benefits from
the high quality of DVD screen viewing. - - - an opera which looks good on
screen and is far more enjoyable with vision than would be possible on CD
- - -". (An equivalent pleasure is to be had currently at ENO,
La
Bohème by Leoncavallo, not Puccini's.)
The most sensational is a semi-opera, normally given in concert performance,
sometimes staged with variable success. The Damnation of Faust
by Berlioz (100 003) from
the Salzburg Festival last year, is about the most sensational musical/visual
experience I have ever had from a TV screen, and it deserves the accolades
heaped upon it (there are dissenters too, however - so perhaps my enthusiasm
reflects how rarely we watch TV!). The performance is engrossing musically
and I found impressive the filming and recording of the grandiose spectacle
mounted in the Felsenreitschule, which is carved out of a cliff-face
(as I recall from about 50 years ago, when I watched Furtwangler conduct
a dress rehearsal of The Magic Flute in which four singers were still competing
for the three parts as Ladies of the Queen of the Night!). This is the one
to go for, and I hope to return to consider it in more detail.
Finally to Jiri Kylian's Black & White 'ballets'
and Nederlands Dans Theater (100 084).
This is the one DVD of them all which I shall hope to See & Hear again
and again, anticipating undimmed satisfaction. The music is by Bach, Mozart,
Reich and Webern, given in classic recorded performances by top musicians
(including Kremer, Uchida, Quartetto Italiano & the BPO/Karajan) and
sounds magnificent here. It is placed in unusual juxtapositions & contexts,
both aural & visual (Bach's Sarabande from Suite no.2 is combined
with an electronic sound tape by Dick Heuff). Far from conventional ballet,
Kylian's abstract dance creations are endlessly inventive, sometimes menacing,
often funny, always catching the breath with their rich vocabulary of innovative
movement and the interactions between the personable dancers of Nederlands
Dans Theater. The introduction tells us that Kylian uses classical models
for his free and imaginative modern style, and that his novel figures and
sequences never fail to astonish. I cannot put it better. He has a highly
developed feeling for music and the two interact closely in these six contrasting
works, played on an empty stage but lit with astonishing virtuosity by Joop
Caboort and directed superbly for the small screen by Hans Hulscher. This,
and the Berlioz, are my 'five-star' recommendations.
Peter Grahame Woolf
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