Igor Stravinksy - The Final Chorale / Arnold Schonberg - Five Orchestral Pieces DVD

Film 1: The Final Chorale tells the story of Igor Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments a piece he composed in 1920 in memory of Claude Debussy. Using for the first time a montage technique juxtaposing short musical sequences and blocks of sound Stravinsky constructed his work as a bold and majestic piece with complex tempo relations which until today still strike musicologists musicians and audiences alike by their originality. Frank Scheffer tells this neo-classical musical adventure in a moving documentary taking the structure and character of the composition... as the basic form for the style and editing of the film. His narration includes an interview with Robert Craft archival material on Stravinsky and performances by the Netherlands Wind Ensemble conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw.Film 2: Written in 1909 Five Orchestral Pieces is one of Arnold Schonberg's most famous compositions representing the revolutionary step from tonal to atonal music. In the composer's own words it was just No architecture no build up just an uninterrupted flow of colours rhythm and moods.Conductor Michael Gielen rehearses and performs Schoenberg's Op. 16 with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic. Each of the five movements is interspersed with interviews as Gielen Carl Schorske and Charles Rosen who discuss various aspects of Schoenberg's life and works. Rosen also performs the last movement of Schoenberg's Three Piano Pieces Op. 11. [show more]

Read More