Beethoven Symphony No. 4 and Symphony No. 7.

Beethoven Symphony No. 4 and Symphony No. 7. Recorded 2010 live at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. Vladmir Jurowski conducts the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Program also includes the Coriolan Overture. Directed for TV by Olivier Simonnet. Released  2011, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: F

I know a wealthy man who prefers to drive around in an old pick-up truck rather than in his new Rolls Royce. So I can understand why some folks prefer the period instrument sound to that of a modern orchestra.   Richard Lawrence in the October 2011 Gramophone reports (page 102) that he saw this on DVD. He loved the music, but suggested that listener "throw a blanket over the screen." So I conclude that the performance is good.  96kHz/24 bit sound sampling was not used. But The SQ is par for the course with HDVDs with  Master Audio sound.

Alas,  this disc has maybe the worst video of any HDVD symphony recording to date, and this is hard to excuse for a project done in 2010.

The light in the dingy looking Théâtre des Champs-Elysées was dim. The camera crew didn't seem to have a clue what to do. Many aspects of PQ are bad. Resolution is fuzzy throughout and colors are grayed out at the same time that there is glare on the players' sheet music. 75% of the views (except for the conductor shots) have an obvious focus or depth of field of focus issue. There are even several shots where nothing is in focus! (There are also motion artifacts early in the recording, but this seems to improve in subsequent segments.)

But the real killer is horrible picture content, and this disc might be used to illustrate a lecture on "All the Ways to Violate Huang's Law for a Good HDVD of a Symphony."

I made detailed notes on the opening segment, the Coriolan Overture, which lasts 7:49 minutes. Even though the overture opens the show, there is no shot of the whole orchestra during this number. This violates the primary responsibility of the TV director in HDVD to show the entire orchestra as much as feasible. There are 30 conductor shots, 20 instrument-only shots, and 6 shots of portions of the orchestra from the rear ("back shots"). So for almost half of the overture, you don't see the face of a single player! I do count 11 nice, coherent shots of solos and sections. The rest of the video is mostly part-section shots with lots of confusing panning around. In total, there are about 118 cuts in less than 8 minutes. This is  adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder working overtime.

I then made notes on the 1st movement of Symphony No. 4. It's worse. Well over half of the movement is devoted to instrument-only shots (61!), conductor shots (54), and backs. There still is not a single shot showing all the orchestra although there are 7 showing most of it. The rest is more ADHD. Well, I did note one really nice shot a 14:11 showing a row of winds.

The rest of the concert is more of the same, althought slightly less frantic. In the 3rd movement of Symphony No. 4, we finally get a 100% shot of the orchestra at 29:46. It looks like a VHS image.

Summary: This music recorded here would maybe be fine as a CD. The video probably should have been scrapped as worthless. And for sure it should not have been published in Blu-ray;  ergo, the grade is "F."