Shostakovich Symphonies 6 dvd movie.|
Shostakovich Symphonies 6 & 9 / Bernstein, Wiener Philharmoniker buy bestselling dvd movies, videos find reviews, ratings, prices |
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List Price: $29.98 Our Price: $18.97 You Save: $11.01 Features • Classical • Color • DVD-Video • NTSC In Theaters : 1986 DVD Release : 04 July, 2006 |
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Shostakovich Symphonies 6 & 9 / Bernstein, Wiener Philharmoniker description This DVD is a fascinating document of a great conductor and orchestra playing two of the most underrated of Shostakovich's symphonies in 1985 and 1986 concerts in Vienna's Musikverein. In his spoken preface to the Sixth Symphony, Bernstein says he wants to "right a wrong"--the "wrong" being the work's reputation as unstructured lightweight piece. It is an unbalanced work, the opening Largo much longer than the remaining two movements, which can seem as mere appendages. But even at his extremely slow tempo, Bernstein makes it all hang together--the Largo moving in its icy bleakness, the Scherzo a genial joke, the final Presto (taken more as an Allegro and not a fast one at that) an opportunity for the conductor to show off his dance steps. The Haydnesque Ninth, despite idiosyncratically slow tempos is light and humorous, its sardonic touches here relished by Bernstein. The Vienna Philharmonic isn't the ideal band for Shostakovich but Bernstein makes them play beyond their natural inclinations; here they lack only a bit more vulgarity in the brass and percussion to be fully idiomatic. The net result is a pair of deeply felt, emotionally powerful performances. Director Humphrey Burton's discreet camera work is excellent, with sufficient close-ups of the conductor and plenty of section shots interwoven with close-ups of solo players to help draw attention to key musical strands. Extras include Bernstein's cogent spoken prefaces to the works. --Dan Davis |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | Memorable tribute in Bernstein' s memory! |
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Written in 1945, the Ninth Symphony had to have meant for Shostakovch a true crossroad, not only because the explicit historical moment, but because the weight of the tradition around what the number nine signified for most of composers. The ruling classes, as well as musical factions were expecting a sublime symphony hovered by a patriotic breath to commemorate the end of the war. But Shostakovich, smartly, decided to write a Haydnesque Opus, with some burlesque inflexions and passages loaded with bitter cynicism, trying to depict the landscape after the battle, with elaborated modulations, loaded of a profound nostalgia. Of course, Shostakovich was accustomed to delight the regime with his initial openings in which the marches and martial accents were very known formula to evade any possible observation for any conspicuous functionary of the regime. as well as musical factions were expecting a sublime symphony hovered by a patriotic breath to commemorate the end of the War. Although there are visible resemblances with the Sixth Symphony, this is even more acidic than the Sixth, so well built that basically left no any single hole. The formal construction was employed by Prokoviev in his Classical Symphony, although without that demoniac vision, in which the wings of death simply flies round about the countless human beings who gave their lives. Nevertheless, bellow these images there is horror too and a certain sense of fatalism and hopeless, dissimulated by that clever last movement in which the composer retakes the apparent perception of jubilee and popular joy, so desired by the Regime. I should not hesitate just for a second to include this superb performance among the ten best recordings of this conductor along his successful artistic trajectory. In what concerns to the Sixth, it's good, but there 's a supreme version in the market, hard to surmount: Fritz Reiner and The Pittsburgh Symphony of 1946. |
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