Piano Concertos (Schiff)

Sir András Schiff in 2015 conducts the Orchestra Cappella Andrea Barca and plays piano solo during the Salzburg Mozart Week (Mozartwoche). The performances are Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 (Schiff playing piano and conducting); Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 22 (Schiff playing piano and conducting); and Schubert's Symphony No. 5 (Schiff conducting). Directed for video by Hella-Brit Giese. Music was recorded with 96kHz/24-bit sound sampling (per report from Wonk Bryan Balmer); released 2016, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound output. Grade: NA

"Schiff" in German means "ship." "Barca" in Italian also means "ship." The Italian phrase "Cappella Andrea Barca" could be translated "András Schiff Band."

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Here's news about high-definition video disc ("HDVD") recordings of opera, ballet, classical music, plays, fine-art documentaries, and paintings. In the journal below are independent (and hard-to-find critical) reports on hundreds of HDVDs. Pick the best titles for your excelsisphere.

Feb 25. We have just completed one of our most ambitious reviews: Einstein on the Beach opera, the surreal 4 and 1/2 hour cult legend. Kudos, encomiums, and accolades to Opus Arte for giving us this authoritative and weirdly fascinating recording, which we grade A+. Absorbing and learning Einstein is uniquely challenging. We try to help out by providing aids not included in the keepcase materials: an accurate libretto and a list of segments in the opera with correct Opus Arte time stamps. Good luck!

We have some other good grades with an A for the recent Met The Pearl Fishers (Les pêcheurs de perles) and a B- for an earlier The Pearl Fishers from Naples. Also, we recently gave an A- for the new Don Quixote from the Vienna State Ballet.