Arthaus Musik DVD Sampler DVD

If you own a DVD player and have even the slightest interest in classical music (including its modern end), opera or ballet, then you'll want the Arthaus Musik DVD Sampler. For the price of a super-budget audio CD you get over an hour of the most convincing reasons why DVD has to be the best thing to happen to the canned versions of these art forms since the invention of stereo. The chunks you get are fairly small, but there's something for everyone, including opera from Callas to Ewing, Blomstedt's Beethoven Five, the Kronos Quartet, Ek's remarkable Sleeping Beauty,... Abbado conducting Mozart, Barenboim conducting Mozart, and a great deal more. The format allows you to scrutinise both the musical and visual elements of the performances in the minutest detail (allowing for the occasionally capricious camerawork), and of course the clarity of both is superb, if occasionally sonically unflattering when digital glare becomes intrusive. All in all, this is an excellent trailer for the Arthaus catalogue and a very good advertisement for the musical potential of the DVD format in general. --Roger Thomas [show more]

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