Leonard Bernstein - Die Sinfonien [10 DVDs] - Universal/Music/DVD

"Leonard Bernstein - Mahler: Die Sinfonien" - 10 DVDs

LEONARD BERNSTEIN - MAHLER: SINFONIEN 1-3
"Interpreteurs"
Sheila Armstrong, Soprano
Janet Baker, Mezzo-Soprano
Christa Ludwig, Contralto

Edinburgh Festival Chorus
Chorus Master: Arthur Oldham

Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor
Chorus Master: Norbert Balatsch

Wiener Sängerknaben
London Symphony Orchestra
Wiener Philharmoniker
Conductor: Leonard Bernstein

"Symphonies Nos. 1,2 & 3"
Beginning with the First Symphony, Bernstein reveals Mahler's position at the hinge of modernism, while emphasizing his emotional extremism. The uplifting Second "Resurrection" Symphony, with which Bernstein had an especially long and close association, is recorded here in a historic performance from 1973, set in the Romanesque splendour of Ely Cathedral. In the Third, Bernstein encompasses the symphony's spiritual panorama like no other conductor - with the Vienna Philharmonic players alive to every nuance.


LEONARD BERNSTEIN - MAHLER: SINFONIEN 4-6
"Interpreteurs"
Edith Mathis, Soprano

Wiener Philharmoniker
Conductor: Leonard Bernstein

"Symphonies Nos. 4,5 & 6"
Bernstein's youthful, urgent conducting of the Fourth takes a refreshing slant on the symphony's classical temper, while in the Fifth he coaxes from the Vienna Philharmonic a detailed response to the work's tragic beginning and triumphant conclusion. The reverie of the Adagietto is uniquely intense in this performance. Bernstein's thrilling traversal of the epic Sixth Symphony comes from the end of his Mahler cycle in Vienna, during which the conductor and his orchestra forged an unbreakable bond.


LEONARD BERNSTEIN - MAHLER: SINFONIEN 7+8
"Interpreteurs"
Edda Moser, Judith Blegen, Gerti Zeumer - Sopran
Ingrid Mayr, Agnes Baltsa - Contralto
Kenneth Riegel - Tenor
Hermann Prey - Beritone
José vam Dam - Bass

Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor
Chorus Master: Walter Hagen-Groll

Singverein der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde
Chorus Master: Helmuth Froschauer

Wiener Sängerknaben
Chorus Master: Uwe Theimer

Wiener Philharmoniker
Conductor: Leonard Bernstein

"Symphonies Nos. 7 & 8"
Leonard Bernstein, whose performances of the Seventh were instrumental in pushing the work towards mainstream status, conducts it here with white-hot communicative power. When he prepared the huge "Symphony of a Thousand" with the Vienna Philharmonic for the 1975 Salzburg Festival there had been only one previous Austrian performance. This DVD encompasses the exultancy of the opening movement, while in the second movement, Mahler's setting of the final scene from Goethe's "Faust", Bernstein drives the music to the final redemptive blaze of glory.


LEONARD BERNSTEIN - MAHLER: SINFONIEN 9+10/DAS LIED VON DER ERDE
"Interpreteurs"
Christa Ludwig - Contralto
René Kollo - Tenor
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
Wiener Philharmoniker
Conductor: Leonard Bernstein

"Symphonies Nos. 9 & 10 / Das Lied von der Erde"
Filmed on tour at Berlin's Philharmonie, this acccount of the valedictory Ninth Symphony is an intense interpretation, expressing Bernstein's conviction that modern man had at last caught up with the message encoded in Mahler's last completed work. Having made this famous 1966 studio recording of "Das Lied von der Erde" in Vienna, Bernstein re-recorded this in Israel with the same searing subjectivity. René Kollo draws on the voice of a great Wagner tenor, while Christa Ludwig, the greatest exponent of the contralto songs at the time, is unbearably poignant in the final movement's fusion of elation and sadness.