Essential Ballet isn't new either. It features the Kirov Ballet in an outdoor performance in Moscow's Red Square, and before that on stage at London's Covent Garden, with Princess Diana in attendance. Both performances, in fact, date from the early 1990s. The dancing is of high quality, albeit essentially conventional. The filming techniques are also unadventurous, though if you like the dancing you can at least say no tricks distract you. This is a DVD for ballet enthusiasts, but will be less attractive to those hoping for an innovative approach.
Finally, a bizarre pair of CDs from Warner Music Taiwan. There have been many ruses used in trying to introduce classical music to a wider audience, but none can have been more strange than the claim that here is something to send you to sleep! But this is what Warner Music have done with two recordings of pianist Daniel Barenboim playing Bach's Goldberg Variations and Beethoven's Diabelli Variations. They date from 1991 and 1994 and were perfectly satisfactory, if less immediately striking than Glenn Gould's 2002 triple-CD from Sony (SM3K 87703 -- reviewedTaipei Times Oct. 4, 2002) and Piotr Anderszewski's fine DVD (Virgin Classics 7243 5 99467 9 5 -- reviewed Taipei Times July 18, 2004) respectively. Now, however, they have been re-packaged in soporific mode, with tracks divided into those that are like a soft breeze and genuinely sleep-inducing (are they really that boring?), others that are "chirpy at night" (what can that mean?) and the rest -- ones where Bach and Beethoven are unavoidably energetic and awake -- as music of a "dancing angel." Neverthe-less, this compilation enjoys the advantage that later this month the prestigious Zurich Ballet will be basing their performances in Taipei on the same Bach work (Oct. 29, 30 and 31).
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