Having the option of following a score or reading an analysis of the music's structure while watching a DVD will be a novel experience for most people. They're available, however, on some new DVDs featuring conductor Riccardo Muti and the La Scala, Milan orchestra, and exceptionally pleasurable they are too.
The items all follow the same basic pattern. Muti and his orchestra are filmed playing in Italian venues notable for their paintings, frescoes and the like. The cameras linger over the visuals thus made available, while bonus items fill you in on such things as the featured artists and the origins of the music. But it's the two optional functions that make these DVDs so remarkable.
Following music in a score, and reading analytical notes are, of course, both accessories that have been available before. But whereas previously you had to balance a score on your knee, adjust the lighting and hope you didn't lose your place, now all is done for you. So too with the analytical commentary, previously available as printed notes in a CD booklet or a concert program.
With these DVDs you have the great advantage of these aids being keyed in to the music at the moment you're hearing it. "Here comes a theme of typically classical nostalgia," or "Now Mozart decorates this musical idea in chromatic fashion in a minor key" appears at the bottom of the screen at the exact moment you're hearing the music, with the camera featuring the oboist or clarinetist who's introducing the new material.
All three of these DVDs carry the option of following the score. You click on it as a subtitle choice, and the printed music then fills the whole screen, with the performers faintly visible in the background. Only two of the DVDs, though, contain a musical analysis.
The degree of success of this varies, however. By far the most successful is the concert filmed in Naples. It contains Haydn's 104th (and last) symphony, Mozart's motet Exultate, jubilate (written when he was 17), and a rare piece by the 18th century Neapolitan composer Nicolo Porpora, Salve Regina. All three are intensely enjoyable, with sopranos Ruth Ziesak and Angelika Kirchschlager both excelling in their respective items. An 18-minute bonus on the Naples Conservatory is also full of interest.
All three works are masterpieces -- the Haydn symphony complexly structured and masterful in every way, the Mozart motet effortlessly beautiful and exuberant, and the Porpora a ravishingly sensuous and intelligent work, sung with great panache by Kirchschlager.
The venue for this concert is the interior of the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Europe's oldest working theater. This provides ideal background visuals without being overpowering in its own right. The second of these DVDs, Haydn's Seven Last Words of our Savior on the Cross filmed in the church of San Francesco in Arezzo, suffers by contrast from over-kill.
This church is famous for the frescoes of Piero della Francesca it contains. The camera zooms in on details of them at what are judged appropriate moments, and a quick survey of the mural sequence forms the bonus item. Considering that these pictures show the history of the tree from which was cut the cross for Christ's crucifixion, perceived in some traditions as having been already growing in the Garden of Eden and put to good use by, among others, King
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