Des Knaben Wunderhorn

Des Knaben Wunderhorn concert. Pierre Boulez conducts the Cleveland Orchestra in 2010 at Severance Hall in Cleveland. Soloists Magdalena Kožená and Christian Gerhaher present the standard twelve songs from Mahler's Wunderhorn collection. The adagio from Mahler's Symphony No. 10  (unfinished) is also performed. This title, originating with Clasart Film und Fernsehproduktions GmbH, was produced by Herbert G. Kloiber and directed for TV and video by Wiliam Cosel.  Released 2011, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: F

Two years before, the Cleveland Orchestra recorded a Bruckner Symphony No. 7  that was presented in HDVD and made by many of the same folks who created this Des Knaben Wunderhorn.  I gave the Bruckner Symphony 7 a bad grade for a number of reasons. But two years is a long time in our business, so one might hope that subject Des Knaben Wunderhorn would show a lot of improvement. No such luck.

True, this Wunderhorn doesn't suffer from motion artifacts or the pervasive line defects (dreaded "jaggies") that plagued the Bruckner S7. And this Wunderhorn does have 22 minutes more of music than the ridiculously short Bruckner S7 title. But subject title still has problems aplenty to cause it to crash and burn.

Let's begin with PQ. Bad resolution is the most obvious issue---the picture is so fuzzy it almost looks as if it started life as a VHS tape or DVD. And color balance is even worse with faces of strange rose, pink, and dirty yellow hues. I've heard of post-production filters that get rid of picture noise but wind up making flesh look like plastic. This might account for the plethora of puffy plastic-people players in this film who look like they have sun-burns or jauntice, or both.

This title was apparently shot primarily for DVD presentation. It therefore abounds with  short-comings in video content that afflict it as an HDVD. For more on this see our HDVD  Standards for Grading Symphony Orchestra Concerts of Symphonies, Concertos, and other Large-scale Compositions.

SQ is also weak here for a recording done this recently. Overall, I find the sound harsh and restrictive. (No need to desecrate the cadaver by mentioning the absence of 96 kHz/24 bit sound sampling.)

Because of all these irritating problems, it's hard to form a judgment about the  performance by the Cleveland Orchestra.   I thought they didn't sound good at all  in the adagio from Symphony 10. They sounded better in the songs.

Now we move on to the singers. Christian Gerhaher managed somehow to look and sound presentable even with the strange coloration of his face in the video. Alas, poor Magdalena Kožená wears the ugliest (deliberately) wrinkled black jacket you ever saw anywhere accented by striking black bags under her eyes. Her image is degraded further by  ugly jewelry (her fault) and yellow skin tones from the bad video (not her fault).  She looks like she showed up for work after spending the night on a park bench. Add to this her tendency to make extravagant faces and the result is video disaster. Maybe her singing would be acceptable to one listening to a CD, but it isn't remotely good enough to overcome the pitiful visual presentation on this disc.

The bonus interview with Boulez is worthless.

This is the first Accentus title to be produced by someone other than Paul Smaczny and associates. I wonder how the astute folks in Lepzig managed to get involved with it. Somewhere, there must be a lawyer to blame. You might think that I'm a bit upset by this HDVD. Well, you're right.  My reasons are easy to understand.  I paid about $36 for this and spent maybe 10+ hours of my life watching it and then writing about it. Now I have my say: "F."