HDVD ARTS

Alphalist

This alphalist gives you general information about HDVDs now available. Each title on this list in red is a link to detailed information about the title from our archives. If a title isn't red, it's new and we are still gathering information about it.  Scroll to the bottom for more information about the alphalist and how to use it.

About the Alphalist

Ignore ``A'' and ``The'' and the like beginning a title. Click on a title for a link to more information.

Type codes are: A = animation; B = ballet; C = concert; D = dance; Doc = documentary; O = opera; O/ta = operetta; P = play; PA = plastic arts. The numbers after the type show the year the title was published. All discs are Blu-ray unless otherwise indicated.

The Grades "A" thru "X" mean:

• A+ = "must have" title with exemplary content and disc engineering. To earn an A+, the title must have broad appeal. And it must be something you can enjoy over and over.
• A = excellent content and satisfactory disc engineering.
• A- = exemplary or excellent content with some reservation.
• B = a fine title you will probably like a lot if the subject interests you.
• C = damnation of faint praise. But will no doubt have appeal to some folks.
• D = don't bother to buy it unless you have a real good reason.
• F = fire somebody for signing off to publish this.
• X = special case that needs further explanation. Some of these discs are of undeniable quality, but they may be too obscure or too specific to appeal to the majority of HDVD connoisseurs. See the title description for more information.
• X-APH=Audiophile recording, often too expensive to recommend to typical fine-arts fan. See the title description for more information.
• Help! = This title has not been graded yet because we haven't had time to adequately review it. If you are able give us a grade, with reasons, this will help us assign a grade to the title.

Our experience working on this alphalist has taught us to feel compassion for all those who toil writing indexes and tables of contents. The typical disc has only one or two major works, and these are easy to show on the alphlist. To avoid clutter, the alphalist deals with major works only. But many discs have recordings of numerous works.  If you want to see if your favorite piece, song, or encore has been presented in HDVD, try our search tool.

Some discs have unique or generic titles.  Examples of this are the Karajan Memorial Concert (which features the Beethoven Violin Concerto and the Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 ) and recital discs such as the Opera Gala. We make a judgment call how best to put these on the alphalist. If you don't quickly find something on the alphalist, maybe we made a bad call. Try the search tool.

If you see a little superscript number1 next to the name of a title, that means there is more than one major work on the list from the same disc.

Excluded Titles

Not all fine-art HDVD titles make it on the alphalist. Our definition of HDVD requires at least 5.0 sound. So we usually exclude titles with only stereo sound.  We also will exclude a title if we feel the video source is too poor to take advantage of high-definition TV. Stated differently, we usually don't accept DVD-quality video spruced up in Blu-ray dress. Here are Blu-ray titles we exclude from our alphalist because they don't meet our definition of HDVD. We hasten to say that these discs all show excellent productions and will be of interest to many viewers for many good reasons:

• Kulture Pirates of Penzance for stereo sound only and poor PQ.
• Kulture La Bayadère for stereo sound only and poor PQ.
• Kulture Romeo & Juliet ballet for poor PQ.
• BBC Hamlet with David Tennant and Patrick Stewart. This video was based on a famous recent stage production of Hamlet by the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was then revived as a movie shot on locations to be shown on British television. Fine movie music was written for the film; but, probably because it was intended for broadcast television, the sound was recorded in stereo sound only.
• Arthaus Callas assoluta for stereo sound only and lack of content that benefits from high-definition video.
• Dacapo Antikrist opera for poor PQ.
• The NHK Ozawa Beethoven Symphony No. 7 & Mahler Symphony No. 9 video is pitifully obsolete with DVD-grade performances shot in 1989 and 2002. The stereo sound is unlistenable to one who is used to the 96 kHz/24 bit 5.0 PCM sound provided by NHK on recent HDVD recordings like their Brahms Symphony No. 2 & Shostakovich Symphony No. 5. The NHK Ozawa Beethoven Symphony No. 7 & Mahler Symphony No. 9 might be of interest to a fan of the Boston Symphony Orchestra---but this is legacy material to us.
• The Gaumont Carmen film (Francesco Rosi) has images with a pleasing "film-like" feel, although soft compared to the sharp images we now enjoy with HD live recordings. The cinematographic treatment works well, and it's a delight to see and hear Placido Domingo and Ruggero Raimondi in their youthful, most handsome prime. But what lets this disc down is the 1984 movie sound --- dynamically compressed, almost harsh, with a very narrow sound stage. The voices are bearable, but the throttled orchestral sound is a huge, huge disappointment compared to Blu-ray standards. So this title must be excluded for poor SQ. Gordon Smith.
• The Kultur Blu-ray issue of Paul Czinner's Der Rosenkavalier from 1961 is probably the best video yet of this much-loved motion picture recording (with Karajan, Schwarzkopf, Jurinac, Rothenberger, and Edelmann at the Salzburg Festival). But both the PQ (grainy and bleached) and SQ (muffled stero) are now hopelessly dated.
• The ITV Studios Hamlet with Laurence Olivier is a classic film, but we don't report it here due to PQ and lack of surround sound.
• The MGM Kenneth Branagh Much Ado About Nothing from 1993 is a very nice adaptation, but it has only stereo inputs to the AVR.
• The House of Classics Messiah with the Choir of King's College was a much-loved DVD, but neither PQ nor SQ were improved enough in the Blu-ray version to qualify here.
• The ECM Sounds and Silence Blu-ray is far removed from our mission even though ECM is an important player in producing modern classical music records, mostly on CDs. But we would welcome, for example, an HDVD from ECM featuring the music and/or life of Arvo Pärt, a composer who has worked with ECM.
• In 2011, NHK published 5 related titles, with music from the Saito Kinen Orchestra directed by Ozawa, that appear to be legacy material. As best we can tell, they do have the audiophile features that appear in the Saito Kinen recordings from about 2006 on. We have therefore excluded NSBS-15069, NSBS-16033, NSBS-16035, NSBS-16037, and NSBS-16052.
• We also exclude the Argerich Beppu Festival recording HSBS-16667. Half the disc is definitely legacy material from 2001; the 2007 segment appears to be Argerich playing with a student orchestra.

Grades and exclusions come mostly from Henry McFadyen, Jr. with help from Gordon Smith and his L'OperaDou jury. (Usually, the highest of the grades from McFadyen, Smith, or the jury is posted.) McFadyen takes full responsibility for all errors of fact or judgment.