Steve Reich Phase to Face

Steve Reich Phase to Face film by Eric Darmon and Frank Mallet. This is a documentary film detailing the career and music of Steve Reich. Includes bonus featurettes Talks in Tokyo with Steve Reich and A Brief History of Music by Steve Reich Grade: A

For the novice just getting into classical music, it may seem, on first glance, that classical music is dead. Not dead in the sense that it isn't being played, performed, and loved by millions of people, but dead in that seemingly no new classical music is being written. One need only visit this site to see that the interest for watching classical music exists - 85 HDVDs have been released so far of symphonic or other classical music. But an inspection of the titles shows that the music being played is distinctly older. While there are plenty of new ballets being produced and new operas being performed, it seems that new classical music is highly underrepresented.

But as the novice digs further,  he will find that modern classical music does exist. It just doesn't sound much like the works of Beethoven or Mozart. A fine example of this is the work of Steve Reich. A modern, minimalist composer, he has been writing and performing from the mid-1960s and is still composing today. His work is marked by the use of phasing - a technique where two of the same instrument play the same piece of music, at steady but not identical tempos. The result is a sound unlike most in the classical tradition. This technique, and Reich's works, have been highly influential in  the direction of modern classical and popular music.  When the history of late 20th century music is written, Reich's name will appear as one its key figures.

And now we have an excellent documentary about Reich, his influences, his methods, and his music. The film itself is only about 50 minutes - a bit on the short side. But both the topic and the man himself are so engaging that the running time is an afterthought. The film follows Reich as he travels the world from concert to concert and into recording studios where he continues to perform new music. Interspersed between the concert footage are sections with Reich discussing his life and influences. He discusses several of his most well regarded works, namely Music for 18 Musicians and Different Trains, as well as other pieces. While not exhaustive in detail, there is definitely enough to get a feel for the type of music Reich composes.

The disc also contains two extras - a brief "Q & A" after a performance in Japan, and a short discussion of "The History of Music" as seen by Reich. These are just as illuminating as the main feature. Honest and thoughtful, Reich is an excellent subject for a documentary. His passion for music is readily discerned from his discussions, but he never ventures into avant guarde pretension.

My only disappointment with this disc is that there is no extra of a complete performance of one of Reich's works. If this documentary does well in the market, perhaps HDVD producers will be encouraged to release complete concert discs. But I'm aware that this disc is advertised as a documentary only. As such it teaches the novice much about Reich and the future of classical music, and it deserves the grade of "A."

Update on Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 8:53PM by Henry McFadyen Jr.

This title has stereo sound only. We normally don't cover discs with only stereo. But we often make exceptions for documentary films that would not benefit from surround sound.

It's impressive to see and hear Reich himself talk about his own life's work. This will preclude a lot of discussion later about what Reich was trying to do. I was especially interested in Reich's comments in "A Brief History of Music." Reich explains that he is working as a successor to Bach, the classical composers, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, and Copeland in that he is merely introducing new methods based on traditional concepts of tonality and rhythm. Stated differently, he states he does not belong the de-constructionist school of Schoenberg and his followers.

This documentary suggests that Reich put a lot of emphasis in this career on providing video content to augment his music. This should appeal to HDVD fans! For example, see 14:39 where Reich got interested in a street preacher shouting out about how "It's gonna rain!" You hear this on a taxi cab radio---and you see the text on the taxi meter! It took some work to get that shot! Later at 16:31 the preacher is shown with some sophisticated artwork. Then at 18:24, there are two dancers (and their shadows) choreographed by Anne Teresa de Keermaeker in an "out-of-phase ballet." At 36:10, in the "Different Trains" segment, there is clever artwork including a display of the notes being played and the lyrics appear on street signs. Sometimes it's difficult to see if this emphasis on visuals was there at the beginning or added by the documentary film makers. But in "The Cave" segment [Track 8], we can see that the original production included big screen visuals and text displayed on the screens in three languages. And in the "Theater of Voices" segment beginning about 50:34, Reich seems to be starting a new career in the art of typography.

I'll point out that we do have some modern music in HDVD. The works of Tōru Takemitsu reminds one a bit of Reich because Tōru was another percussionist who was interested in serendipidously "found" sound. From him we have the My Way of Life concert spectacular and the just released From me flows what you call time.   We also have the Tributes-Pulse recording from Decapo which in part is a tribute to Steve Reich.  Finally, we have several  titles that might be considered to be from the de-constructionist school:  the Ives Holidays Symphony and the Boulez Notations for Orchestra.

Chopin Piano Concertos 1 & 2

This  Chopin concert program has the following music:

1. Garrick Ohlsson plays the Chopin Concerto No. 1

2. Ohlsson plays the Chopin Concerto No. 2

3. Ohlsson plays as encore the Chopin Mazurka in C sharp minor (Op. 50 No.3)

4. The Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra plays (as warm up) Bakja (Fairy Tale) by Stanisław Moniuszko.

In addition, the disc has a 53-minute  long documentary, The Art of Chopin: A Film by Gérald Caillat.

Antoni Wit conducts all the live music in 2009 with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra at the Warsaw Philharmonic Hall. The concert was directed for TV by Sébastien Glas. Gérald Caillat directed the documentary. Hélène Le Cœur produced both the concert and the documentary.  The Released 1011, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: Help!

Please help us by writing a comment that we can place here as a mini-review of this title.

Martha Argerich at the Verbier Festival

Martha Argerich at the Verbier Festival in 2009 and 2010. Works performed:

1. Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 2

2. Scarlatti Sonata in D minor

3. Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1 (David Guerrier on trumpet)

4. Bizet Symphony in C Major.

Gábor Takács-Nagy conducts the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra. The Beethoven and Scarlatti directed for TV by Philippe Béziat. The  Shostakovich and Bizet directed for TV by Anaïs Spiro. Grade: B-

I should have excluded this hodgepodge title from our website because it has only stereo sound. The stereo isn't that great either, except that you can hear the piano well in the concerti. Nor is the video very good, although it does beat DVD and has great face shots of the soloists. The Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra shamelessly seizes the now-frayed coattails of famous Argerich. Another sad thing is that idéaleaudience was too cheap to show us any pictures of Verbier, surely one of the most gorgeous festival venues in the world.

So why write this up? Well, the performances are so much fun! Argerich is a hoot, dusting off the keyboard and making more faces than a clown at her pet festival band. Their zippy Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 2 beats the performance of the same work by Barenboim on his EuroArts HDVD. (If you're going to take your girl to a picknick, would you take her in your Mazda Miata or a Mercedes limousine?) How often do you get to see the Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1, which should be called a double concerto for piano and trumpet? Finally, I was delighted by the Bizet Symphony in C Major, an ambrosial classical concoction that Bizet wrote when he was 17 and was lost for seventy years. I would never have guessed that this was written by the same man who composed Carmen. So if any of this appeals to you, maybe you should buy this to play when relatives drop in who can't handle 90 minutes of Mahler.

Update on Saturday, October 29, 2011 at 10:37AM by Henry McFadyen Jr.

In Gramophone (2011 Awards Issue), Jeremy Nicholas enthusiastically heaps praise on this Argerich/Verbier show. What he reviewed was the DVD version. If the poor guy had seen it in HDVD, he probably would have been ecstatic.

Glenn Gould: Hereafter

Glenn Gould: Hereafter documentary. This is a motion picture film, directed by Bruno Monsaingeon, about the legendary Gould. According to the release announcement, it "synthesizes an incredible wealth of archival material" and is made "as if narrated by Gould himself." Released in 2009, it has 5.0 dts-HD sound. This was the first HDVD documentary about a fine-art subject. Grade: B+

Gould was obsessed with his concept of musical performing. The word "Hereafter" in this title refers to the impact Gould still has on his obsessed fans all over the world. Gould lives, and his church grows. Monsaingeon collaborated with Gould for years. This highly original film is probably as historically accurate and as creative as any documentary about Gould can get. The thoughts and words of Gould in the narration of the film are rendered by three different actors in English, French, and German. Gould speaks from the archival material in English. Actor Rory Bremmer speaking in English convinced me that I was listening to the Gould ghost. If you watch this in French or German, there will be subtitles in your language to spook you when the real Gould speaks English from archive. All this wonderful narration is accessed thru the soundtrack and subtitle buttons on your remote control. In this way Monsaingeon starts to fulfill the Gouldian prophecy of the "participant listener" (see below). (There is no menu for this movie; nor does the booklet with the keep case  say a thing about how to access the three versions of the narration. Start pushing buttons, participant listener! You can't break anything.)

The basic framework of this movie is shot in HD and looks fine except for some motion artifacts. Much of the content comes from old motion pictures and tapes of TV shows. This is quite crude looking, but it's rendered as well as possible. The dts-HD sound is completely satisfying.

Now let's move on to the content of subject title. I knew about the eccentricities of Gould's playing style. What I didn't know about was Gould's wicked sense of humor, galactic intellect, and orator-level speaking ability. Gould worked in television in Canada for years. Because he worked from conviction, he comes across (speaking from archives) stronger than most television journalists working today. Here's Gould's pitch: professional musicians have nailed down the traditional way of playing classical music. So performing to a live audience is now at a dead end. The future of classical music is to work on new interpretations of the canon in studios where the performers can experiment and everything can be recorded. Thus the performer becomes a kind of junior composer. What the performer seeks from the historical scores are new renditions of preternatural intensity and spirituality. This will not be achieved all that often, but when it is, it's been recorded and can be shared. And the person with whom the new rendition will be shared is the "participant listener" in his home or study.

On this website, we take the position that a seeing and hearing a decent live performance will be more satisfying  than any recording can be. Although we are crazy about HDVDs for many reasons, we don't think recording technology  can  better or replace live performance. Gould apparently thought differently: he believed that an recording of an superb performance would be more valuable than a typical or normal live performance of the same work.

The idea of the participant listener seemed ridiculous in the era of long-playing vinyl recordings. But do you see now where this is going? With HDVD in your home theater, the era of the participant listener has in fact arrived: on this film I can decide if I want to "be" Gould in English, French, or German! If I can do that, why can't I get an HDVD with multiple interpretations of each of the Chopin etudes and then use bookmarks to put together the line-up that I like best? Why can't I pick from my ballet disc the full version or an abridged version? Why can't I buy a La Bohème and set it up to let me sing duets with Netrebko. Why not record operas with every protagonist carrying a hidden camera, make multiple shots, and let the viewer direct his own opera? Why can't there be a website tied to home theaters where lovers of piano music can vote on videos of piano performances submitted by anyone with the guts to upload something?

Strauss Metamorphosen, Strauss Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme & Ravel Piano Concerto in G Major.

Strauss & Ravel Concert. Vladimir Jurowski conducts the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in 2009 in Richard Strauss Metamorphosen and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Hélène Grimaud joins as soloist in the Ravel Piano Concerto in G Major. TV direction by Louise Narboni. Released 2010, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade B 

This disc has three 20th-century masterpieces for chamber orchestral that avoid the dissonance and harshness that is controversial in much modern music. First comes the Strauss Metamorphosen for 23 strings, which consists of 26 minutes of lamentations over the destruction of German honour and culture by the rise and fall of National Socialism. Next up is the jazz-influenced Piano Concerto in G Major by Ravel (the one for two hands).  The happiest piece is the last---the Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme from Strauss. (Grimaud does not play the important piano part in Gentilhomme.)  Gentilhomme  is a bit out of character for Strauss because it is conservative and jolly. But there is no lack of brilliant orchestration with frightful difficulties for the exposed soloists in the small Chamber Orchestra of Europe.

This video suffers from regretable softness and is just barely acceptable for an HDVD. This may be related to the lights (or camera settings), which put the audience and the stage outside the proscenium arch in almost total darkness while the stage is brightly lit. This makes for drama in the video. But the colors are out of kilter. Many of the faces of the musicians simultaneously seem strangely ruddy, bleached, gray, or shiny. On the other hand, the video benefits from excellent variety of shots with  interesting closeups. So I  would give the video the grade of "C-." The sound, on the other hand,  is close, crisp, and engaging. This is another example of how our HDVDs are contantly surprising us with their excellent sound quality even if the video is lacking.

I liked the Ravel Piano Concerto in G Major performance by Helen Grimaud. I compared it to the Martha Argerich performance of the same work on the 2009 Nobel Prize Concert HDVD. It's odd that Argerich seems to be the better pianist, but Grimaud  plays the piano better. On the 2009 Nobel Prize Concert disc, I see Argerich show up and earn her fee. When I watch Grimaud, I feel like an orchestra member getting excited because the soloist is making something happen! I was especially moved by Grimaud's second movement (Adagio assai)  in the Ravel. Unlike Argerich, who plays this softly, Grimaud sings out with her agagio and wrings from the piano and the orchestra everiy drop of emotion that Ravel put into the score. The Chamber Orchestra of Europe also did an excellent job of expressing both the somber emotions of the Strauss Metamorphosen and the capricious joy of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.

Considering the capacity of a Blu-ray disk, I could not call 81 minute-long disc a generous program. But all three works are substantial and not not likely to be repeated too often in HDVD. So I think the good sound and performances here offset the weak video to yield a "B" grade for this title. Also, this would be a better choice for most music lovers than the 2009 Nobel Prize Concert disc with Argerich playing the Ravel concerto because the Argerich performance is lackluster and the rest of the program is basically of pops quality.

Please help us by writing comments about one or more of the three pieces here that we can use as better mini-reviews.

The Cunning Little Vixen

Leoš Janáček The Cunning Little Vixen opera to libretto by the composer. Directed 2008 by André Engel with the Opéra national de Paris at the Opéra Bastille. Stars Elena Tsallagova, Jukka Rasilainen, Michèle Lagrange, David Kuebler, Roland Bracht, Paul Gay, and Hannah Esther Minutillo. Dennis Russell Davies conducts the Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris, the Choir of the Opéra national de Paris, and the Childrens' Choir of the Opéra national de Paris (Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine). The Chorus Master was Alessandro Di Stefano. Stage design by Nicky Rieti; costumes by Elizabeth Neumuller; choreography by Françoise Grès; lighting by André Diot; directed for TV by Don Kent. Released 2009,  disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: B

In a work inspired by a comic strip, Janáček says animals that act like people are happier than people who act like animals. People just use their smarts to destroy themselves with envy and remorse. Still, the forester (Janáček), listening to the animals, achieves the bliss of resignation. Since the libretto is free of all moorings, anything can happen. In a fiery parody of Lenin, the vixen incites the hens to revolt against the cock. When the hens hesitate, she does what a fox does to hens---she kills them all. When daddy fox woos vixen, his lines are a direct knock off of Rodolfo declaring love to Mimi in La Bohème. Well, Mimi gets a muff and then dies. In subject libretto, vixen dies and gets made into a muff. Such zaniness seems normal while intoxicated on Janáček's smooth, discord-free musical cocktail: one part shifting arrays of sound (Debussy), one part folk songs (Dvořák), and a twist of Phillip Glass (who came later, of course). This short show should be popular with children on account of the delightful presentation of the animals. And there's plenty for the adults to ponder without troubling the little ones. Impeccable production all round by the Paris National Opera; the usual menu mysteries from idéaleaudience. Henry C McFadyen, Jr.

Additional  mini-reivew:

I watched the idéaleaudience Cunning Little Vixen last night on HDVD after having seen an actual performance of the same production at the Opera Bastille a week before. At last--- a chance to compare HDVD with Live!

The HDVD does faithfully represent the work and the production. But to be totally, brutally honest, I was disappointed in the HDVD when compared to my memory of the live show. We had extremely good seats at the live opera which let us see and hear very well. Having the overtitles way up above us in the real opera hall did not make it easy to follow the "plot"--- although that isn't much of a problem for this simple libretto. Compared to the live performance, the HDVD version seemed "closed in" or even claustrophobic. Especially the close-ups! My home theater can't convey the feeling of space you get in an opera house that has ceilings 100 ft high. Nor does it convey the sense of expectation you get when 2,800 people are all sharing the same experience. With the memory of the "real thing" so fresh, I guess my home theater letdown was to be expected. And if we had been in cheaper seats further back and higher up, then I might have been happier with the HDVD in comparison to the opera house.

When I see something good in my home theater, I feel that what I'm getting is "better than being there." But my recent experience with the Cunning Little Vixen does indicate that the BTBT factor is relative. And in any case, we can't "be" everywhere. So the privilege we enjoy of seeing wonderful HDVD productions under good conditions in the comfort of our own homes remains very valuable. Gordon Smith July 2010

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. I think this performance by the Age of Enlightenment would probably be deemed pretty good by period music fans. The Master Audio sound is fine.

But this disc has maybe the worst video of any HDVD ever made, and this is hard to escuse for a project done in 2010. The light in the dingy looking Théâtre des Champs-Elysées was atrocious. The camera crew didn't seem to have a clue what to do. Everything is bad: resolution, light balance, color control, focus, field of focus, and video editing. There are even shots where nothing is in focus! 

Richard Lawrence in the October 2011 Gramophone report (page 102) that he saw this on DVD. He loved the music, but suggested that listener "throw a blanket over the screen." Well, this website is about the HDVD presentation of fine-art works. I conclude that this recording would maybe be fine or even outstanding as a CD. But it should not have been published in Blu-ray presentation: ergo, the grade is "F."