Then follow 40 minutes showing Tortelier performing, first in a concert in Paris (Beethoven's Third Sonata for Cello and Piano, given complete), then, plus wife and children, at the UK's Norwich Festival.
Monsaingeon also directs a 1992 performance by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau of Schubert's Die Schone Mullerin ("The beautiful Mill Girl") song-cycle. Fischer-Dieskau recorded this sequence many times and was for decades the world leader in Schubert lieder. This is a late version, with Christopher Eschenbach at the piano. It's enjoyable enough, but the real gem is the Bonus item of Fischer-Dieskau coaching a young baritone (Matthias Rettner) in the Count's great aria Vedro mentrio sospiro' from Le Nozze di Figaro. The master's own performance of this can be heard on the fine film of the opera directed by Jean-Pierre Ponelle (DGM 00440 073 4034, reviewed Taipei Times Aug. 4, 2005).
Many other DVDs in the series are recordings of concerts. There's Francis Poulenc playing his own Concerto for Two Pianos (with Jacques Fevrier), Byron Janis playing Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto and Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (with half an hour of Julius Katchen playing Brahms most magnificently as a Bonus), and Eugen Jochum conducting Bruckner's mammoth Seventh Symphony in 1980. All are extraordinary, especially the last which almost converted me to Bruckner's boa-constrictor-like late symphonies, first insinuating themselves round you, then crushing you to death in massive climaxes.
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