Liszt Piano Concertos

Liszt Piano Concertos concert disc contains (in order they appear on the disc):

1. Wagner A Faust Overture  

2. Liszt Piano Concerto No. 2 

3. Wagner Siegfried Idyll 

4. Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1 

5. Liszt Consolation No. 3 

6. Liszt Valse oubliée No. 1

This was performed 2011,  as part of the Klavier-Festival Ruhr,  at the Philharmonie Hall in Essen. Daniel Barenboim is the pianist. Pierre Boulez conducts the Staatskapelle Berlin. Directed for TV by Enrique Sánchez Lansch; Director of Photography was Nyika Jancsó, Audio Producer was Georg Obermeyer; edited by Steffen Herrmann; produced by Paul Smaczny. Released in 2012, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: C-

A Faust Overture

The first number on this program is A Faust Overture for orchestra. The conducting, playing, PQ, and SQ are fine to excellent.  But the picture/video content is a miserable disappointment, because this number has a bad case of DVDitis. The video shown would maybe be appropriate for a DVD with its low resolution. But it is unacceptable for an HDVD.

For complete information, see our standards for a symphony orchestra recording in HDVD. But briefly, the low resolution of a DVD forces the cameraman shooting a symphony to use close-up shots of the conductor and small groups of players, usually in a frantic road-runner race of rapid video cuts. But with the power of HDVD cameras, you can shoot the whole orchestra and the larger sections of the band in a way that closely represents what is really happening on the stage. With an HDVD, you should start off with long-range shots and move in only when the score calls for it.

Well, this video of A Faust Overture from Lansch and Jancsó does not have a single whole-orchestra shot even thought it is the first number on the program. (By whole-orchestra shot, I mean a shot that shows every player in a frame that takes up 100% of the TV screen; i.e., as close as you can get and still see it all. In this video we do get, before the concert starts, a shot from the back of the hall in which the players take up about 40% or the screen. This doesn't count. At that range, even the HDVD image doesn't have good resolution, and you can't tell much (if anything) about any individual,  almost ant-sized player on the stage.)

The next step down from a whole-orchestra shot would be a large-part-of-orchestra shot. This A Faust Overture video has exactly one of these, and you have to wait 10 and 1/2 minutes to get it (see 10:38). This is about an 85% shot, is quite nice, and proves that 100% shots were easily available to the director here.

One step further down would be a whole-large-section shot. This video has 5 of these, mostly the 4 bass fiddles. Then we note 6 shots of entire smaller sections. We never get even one clear shot of all the violins, the violas, or the cellos.

So if we are not going to get to see the orchestra, what do we get for our money? Well, we get 48 shots of the conductor. 24 of these are OK close up shots of Boulez that show you what he's doing (which at his age is as little as possible). The other 24 shots are made over the backs of at least 7 players and in some cases over the backs of something like 40% of the players. These "back" shots are a usually a waste of time as far as seeing the conductor. They are positively insulting to the players, who are the only folks on the stage making any noise.

Next comes 29 part-section shots, many of which involve confusing panning and zooming amidst a sea of heads and string instruments. There are also 21 solo shots, another DVD favorite because it's so easy to get the focus right with one object in the frame.

To be fair, there are some good shots embedded in this mess. At 9:05 is a neat shot of multiple wind sections. At 10:43 there's a decent shot of the trumpets, bones, and tuba. My favorite shot is a solo at 12:41 of Mathias Baier, the principal bassoon. This image, with its startling PQ and colors, is as arresting as a Van Gogh painting. This may not be fair to Mr. Baier (who did not sign up to be a movie star), but you imagine that he might just be as sweet, brusk, and quirky as the instrument he plays. And let's be thankful for that one 85% shot mentioned before. The TV director would have done a better job for us than he did by simply letting the camera run at that 85% angle for 13+ minutes. But, alas, it only runs about 2 seconds.

Everything is turned upside down in this A Faust Overture from what an HDVD of a symphony should be. This drags down what could have been an "A" grade to a "C" or "D" for the overture.

Liszt Piano Concerto No. 2

It's astonishing to see all that Barenboim is doing these days in HDVD recordings. In this concerto he demonstrates tremendous percussive strength, but I thought he was hitting rough patches in some of his runs and jumps. Still, I would say the conducting, playing, PQ, and SQ are all pretty impressive and enjoyable. Alas, DVDitis in the video content again smells up the room.

The warm-up is over, and this is the main event. But still there is not a single 100% whole orchestra shot in this segment of the program. (Sorry, the long distance shot at 30:46 doesn't count as explained above.) There are no shots of the violins, violas, or cellos as single sections. Granted, in a concerto, there will usually be much less for the larger forces of an orchestra to do than in an overture or symphony. The  instrumental soloist is the center of attention, and the orchestra is often in a quiet supporting role. But when the orchestra does weigh in, you want to a comprehensive view of the performance, not just more single players or small sections.

So what do we see in this video? There are 100 cuts of Barenboim, mostly quite short. In my view, it would be better to have, say, 25 to 50 cuts, each of which lasts longer. True, this is a fast-moving, exciting concerto. But when I see this live, I see it in exactly one cut. Each time the video presents a new angle, there is mental overhead as I have to figure out what is happening. I find doing this 100 times in a 23 minute piece more than a little tiring. If the director would simplify the video, it would be easier for me to enjoy what Liszt is trying to tell me.

Next, following the DVD pattern of road-runner race, we are treated to 22 shots of the conductor, of which 9 show mostly the backs of players. Then there are about 55 shots of individuals or part sections, which are often marred by confusing panning around.

But  I do note one improvement in this video over the opening A Faust Overture. For this concerto, we do get about 8 solid 85% part-orchestra shots (for examples, see 19:18 and 36:16). These are always the same and always too short. But they do provide some counterbalance to the high fragmentation of the rest of this piece.

And there is some good stuff to brag about. I liked the shot at 18:36 where the camera shows how extremely powerful bass notes can be played by the right hand. Barenboim reaches over, rotates his hand 90% to the keyboard, and strikes notes with three fingers on one key. You can't pick up something like this from a CD.  Starting at 23:18 it's time for a cello solo. You see Barenboim in focus and Andeas Greger, the principal cello, out-of-focus in the background. (With a telephoto camera in this situation, the field of focus will normally be shallow.) At exactly the right moment, the camera shifts focus to Greger, who then begins his famous mellow passage. It's touching to see how the visual as well as the aural center of attention shifts to Greger until his solo is over at 23:46. And at 35:18, we get to see most of the violins and cello together in a beautiful shot that is sadly too brief.

In summary then: the recording  for the Concerto No. 2 is better than what we saw before, but a "C" is all I could give under our standards.

Wagner Siegfried Idyll

The Siegfried Idyll was originally scored for 13 players to be played in a private home. In modern concerts, 26 or more players are typically used. But this is still intimate. HD cameras could easily show the entire band in thrilling detail,  so certainly we should expect plenty of whole orchestra shots in this HDVD presentation. Are you kidding? Lansch and Jancsó seem to be perversely intent on absolutely preventing anyone who buys a Blu-ray from Accentus from ever clearly seeing an entire orchestra---not on their watch! 

Well, there is a shot at 49:57 where I think I count at least some body part of 26 players. And at 50:16 for a moment I think I see parts of 27 players before the camera inexplicable starts to zoom in, reducing what we can see. Maybe both of these shots show all the players (and I'm counting wrong). But I think it's fair to say there is no shot in this Idyll that clearly shows you all the members of the orchestra and lets you confidently count their number.

So what do we see? For starters there are 54 shots of a petrified tree conducting. When you consider that this was written for 13 voices, what does the conductor do other than act as a metronome? And if 37% of the shots in a video are concerned with such a relatively modest task, does this suggest that you are proud of the players?  Next you see what you see in almost all DVDs of classical music: an endless-loop rat-race of cuts from the conductor to a soloist, followed by panning through a few nearby players, and then a cut back to the conductor, etc. This is about all you can do with low-resolution DVD cameras---but it's inane to use HD cameras this way on a chamber orchestra.

Summary for Siegfried Idyll: this is the worst video yet of the 3 numbers reviewed so far. The grade for this should be "F."

Liszt  Piano Concerto No. 1

This mini-review is getting too long! I watched the Piano Concerto No. 1 again without taking notes. The video content is similar to that of the Piano Concerto No. 2 reviewed above.

Summary for Disc

The title of this disc is Liszt Piano Concertos. But it has four works of roughly equal length. I'm going to blend the C grades from the concertos with the lower grades for the other items and give the disc a "C-." This video might make a B+ or A quality DVD. But merely publishing a DVD-style video in Blu-ray form doesn't hack it. HDVD has vastly superior capabilities than DVD. In the case of  symphony music, HDVD makes vastly superior video content possible. To be successful at selling HDVDs of symphony recordings (at the higher price point), Accentus will have to provide superior video content created to take advantage of the strengths of HDVD.

Update on Thursday, April 26, 2012 at 7:42AM by Henry McFadyen Jr.

Jeremy Nicholas reviewed this title on page 81 of the May 2012 Gramophone. He praised the filming and recording, but you can't tell if he saw the Blu-ray version (my guess is he saw the DVD).  Nicholas compares Barenboim's piano playing to old records made by Emil von Sauer, who was a pupil of Liszt and would really know how Liszt should sound. Nicholas concludes that Barenboim and Boulez are too old and staid to do Liszt piano concertos. In our review above, we complained a recording that falls short of what an HDVD should be. Our comments together with the Nicholas spin suggest we should wait for another HDVD of the Liszt concertos.