Serge Koussevitzky conducts Brahms

Advantages: Superb production, fascinating footage, great music
Disadvantages: None whatsoever apart from wanting more

...others. Some of the conductors featured are Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Thomas Beecham, Leonard Bernstein, Herbert von Karajan, Richard Strauss, Leopold Stokowski and Bruno Walter to single out a few names. Right from the opening of the documentary you realise the high quality of the production values on this DVD as Beethoven's 5th Symphony segues seamlessly between different performances by very different conductors. Hearing the same piece conducted by Toscanini, von Karajan, Klemperer and Szell heightens the contrasts between the styles and interpretations of each of these highly individual maestri. One of the big plus-points of this DVD is that along with copious extracts from performances and rehearsals, one is given complete performances of several works including Beethoven's "Egmont Overture" conducted by Serge Koussevitzky... Read review

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Advantages: Two outstanding peices of chamber music for an unusual combination of instruments
Disadvantages: On the surface quite contrasting works, listener must be openminded

...procedures, deriving new and original ideas influenced by the chamber music of old masters such as Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann. Ligeti was influenced by the music of fellow Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, who once stated that "Every art has the right to strike its roots in the art of a previous age; it not only has the right to but it must stem from it". This makes the pairing of one of Ligeti's finest works with the Brahms Op.40 Trio a very appropriate one. Both outstanding chamber works in their own rights and certainly the two best pieces composed for this unusual combination invented by Brahms, a good recording is essential, but hard to find. There are not that many recordings in existence of these works due to the technical complexity for performers and even acclaimed recordings such as the CD by Perlman, Ashkenazy... Read review

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Advantages: Mutter's eloquence and sensitivity in older recording are enhanced here.
Disadvantages: None at all!

...As a fantastically talented eighteen-year-old, Anne-Sophie Mutter already awed me with her sensitive and thoughtful eloquence in her 1981 recording of the Brahms violin concerto (with Herbert von Karajan directing the Berlin Philharmonic). However, there?s an even deeper understanding in Mutter?s reading of the Brahms piece on this newer disc. This performance was taped live at the Lincoln Center?s Alice Tully Hall, New York City, in 1997. Kurt Masur conducts the New York Philharmonic in particularly inspired fashion. A difference of fifteen years separates the two recordings. In the time between, she married, had children, and then was widowed at a very young age. When Mutter returned to her instrument, she would bring a greater strength, emotional depth and insight to her playing, lending a maturity and assuredness to her... Read review

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