These DVDs are particularly fine because they root music in history, mixing archive footage, musical and performance extracts, and modern interviews. Gergiev takes a conservative stand, saying that rule by the crowd can never work in a country like his, and the dark harmonies of Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 8 make you almost believe him.
Opus Arte’s 2005 DVD Chopin Piano Music (containing a BBC film made in 2003) has Alfredo Pearl playing all the Preludes, Freddy Kempf playing all the Etudes, and Angela Hewitt playing the Sonata in B Minor. Filmed in stately homes, with over two hours of keyboard close-ups, the effect is, in the final analysis, fatiguing. An element of creative fantasy such as is routine on popular music videos would have been welcome. As it is, pianists and music students will benefit most from the low-risk approach adopted here, fine as the performances undoubtedly are.
Lastly, Taiwan’s Evergreen Symphony Orchestra has a wonderful DVD of its Inaugural Concert in Taipei back in 2003. The most moving items are three Taiwanese folk songs, two set by Tu Min-hsin (杜鳴心), one by Masaaki Hayakawa. But the feeling of youthfulness and excited commitment is everywhere inescapable and, under the baton of Lim Kek-tjiang, the newly-formed ESO finally won me over to Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, something that even Taiwan’s National Symphony Orchestra hadn’t quite managed to do.
All these DVDs of ESO concerts are well worth watching, and this one is as good as any to begin with.
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