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
Solomon, this 10-minute survey necessarily involves almost laughable concision.
All in all, this DVD simply takes on too much. Add to this the fact that the celebrated frescoes don't include the actual crucifixion (the subject of Haydn's music) at all, and you quickly conclude that the whole thing should have formed the subject of two DVDs, at the very least, rather than one.
And then there's the music itself. This reviewer can't be convinced that seven pieces (here given in their orchestral, rather than string quartet, versions), all of them slow and in a spirit of lamentation, can ever be made to work. You can readily imagine Haydn getting to his final, extra, movement -- representing the earthquake that reportedly coincided with Christ's death -- with heart-felt relief. This bit at least could be loud and fast.
The third DVD, containing Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, falls somewhere between the other two. This time there's no "listening guide," but the plus is that the visual accessories -- frescoes on the inside of the dome of the Santuario dell Beata Vergine dei Miracoli in Saronno -- are of limited extent and interest. They thus form an appropriate background rather than an intrusive and overly dominant feature. Pergolesi's music -- the product of an 18th century teenage genius who heaped on feeling to a degree not previously heard -- is excellently sung (by Barbara Frittoli and Anna Caterina Antonacci) and played. Some laid-back remarks from Muti on the Italian musical tradition constitute one of two bonus items; the other looks at Pergolesi himself.
Finally, a CD. Saint-Saens' Carnival of Animals is a piece of music the educated classes play to their children in the hope of endearing them to otherwise nightmarish piano lessons. The highly colorful sleeve of this incisively bright and highly recommendable new version reinforces this function. It's music the composer, largely known in his day as a pompous academic, refused to have played during his lifetime. Today it's his best-known creation. The CD contains several back-up Saint-Saens items, not all immediately engrossing. The best of them is the lively Septet for string quartet plus double-bass, piano and trumpet.
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
A sultry sea mist blankets New Taipei City as I pedal from Tamsui District (淡水) up the coast. This might not be ideal beach weather but it’s fine weather for riding –– the cloud cover sheltering arms and legs from the scourge of the subtropical sun. The dedicated bikeway that connects downtown Taipei with the west coast of New Taipei City ends just past Fisherman’s Wharf (漁人碼頭) so I’m not the only cyclist jostling for space among the SUVs and scooters on National Highway No. 2. Many Lycra-clad enthusiasts are racing north on stealthy Giants and Meridas, rounding “the crown coast”
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and