Kronos Quartet - In Accord dvd movie.|
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List Price: $24.99 Our Price: $21.99 You Save: $3 Features • Classical • Color • DVD-Video • NTSC In Theaters : 1998 DVD Release : 05 September, 2000 |
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Kronos Quartet - In Accord description It's impossible to say which factor has contributed more to making the Kronos Quartet our preeminent new-music chamber ensemble: the group's effortless virtuosity or its insatiable hunger for fresh challenges. Taped in 1998 (thus reflecting the longstanding Kronos lineup that had held firm until cellist Joan Jeanrenaud departed for personal reasons after the group's 25th anniversary, to be replaced by the equally fine Jennifer Culp), Kronos Quartet: In Accord's many studio performances offer eloquent proof of the group's wide-ranging musicianship, which is equally at home in the cartoon zaniness of John Zorn, the dancing drones of Perotin's Viderunt Omnes, or the slowly unfolded anguish of Alfred Schnittke's Collected Songs. Regrettably, director Manfred Waffender not only throws in a number of irritating directorial flourishes, but he also films the proceedings primarily as a series of close-ups of the individual players, which frustrates attempts to view the interactions and unspoken communications that are the heart of chamber music. He mercifully calms down during the somber pieces, though remains at best merely a competent chronicler of the onstage action. But from Hamza El Din's hypnotically churning "Escalay" to the sprightly excerpt from John Adams's "John's Book of Alleged Dances," from the medieval mysticism of Hildegard von Bingen to Harry Partch's muscular and vigorous exploration of an even more ancient music, there's a wealth of treasures for the ear. --Bruce Reid |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | Decent first dvd release from the Kronos Quartet |
| The DVD serves as something of a broad overview of the group's work. They play pieces from every style and period that they've worked in, but mostly stick to the short pieces. Each piece has an introduction by one of the quartet where they discuss what the piece means to them, the piece's background, or just general info about how they work together. This stuff is fairly informative, but of course you'll skip through it after the first viewing. Which brings us to the music. The performances are uniformly great, the ordering and such is great as you are never bored. If anything the DVD is too short and i would have liked to see something a little more long form. That being said, many of the pieces are really moving, particularly Collected Songs Where Every Verse Is Filled with Grief, the Adams piece, and Escalay. The sound is well done and its fun to walk around the room and stand where each of the players would be playing in the sound field. You can actually walk from the cello over to the first violin, etc. The direction is a little overly self-conscious at times, but you don't care, you are buying it for the music ;-) | |
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