Bohm Mozartt

This luxuriously cast film of Mozart's beloved opera buffa features a host of legendary interpretations, including Kiri Te Kanawa's exquisite Countess Almaviva, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as her philandering husband, Hermann Prey as the wily title character, Mirella Freni, a delight as his no less savvy bride Susanna, and Maria Ewing, hilarious as the lovesick page Cherubino. Director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's imaginative camera-work tellingly emphasizes character and mood in this immortal story of love, intrigue and class struggle, set against the historical background of ancien regime Europe sliding inexorably towards revolution.

…[Böhm] may be an octogenarian, but he directs the opera for the most part with a spirit and an urgency that many a young man might envy. Most of the accompanied recitatives are alert and fiery, and in this particular work they carry a great deal of the emotional weight. Here and there I find myself at odds with a choice of tempo. Especially in the closing scenes, some of the orchestral recitative seems to need to go more slowly; it is inclined to lack the proper sense of momentousness. I was a little surprised too at the quickish tempo for the opening aria and, most of all, for the great quartet in Act III, which has more turbulence and urgency than usual, particularly with its sharply contoured dynamics and its incisive accents.

Verdi, Wagner, Beethoven, Bach…Germany’s premer jazz bassist Dieter Ilg has instigated several creative projects, in which he has taken the great composers of Western classical music off in new directions. Here, alongside pianist Rainer Böhm and drummer Patrice Héral, his focus turns to Ravel.

This DVD of Ariadne is a 1978 film based on Filippo Sanjust’s Vienna State Opera production. The bustling Prologue is set in the backstage area of the mogul’s palace and the 18th century costumes fit neatly. In the opera proper, the stage is transformed into a very stagey desert island with an improbable set of stairs leading to the heroine’s cave, the action spilling over into the theatre’s side boxes at times. While there’s nothing particularly imaginative about the production, it never distracts from the main event–the music. Strauss was profligate in his melodic gifts, his ability to make a reduced orchestra sound big, and his wonderful obsession with the female voice, which yields many glorious moments in the opera. Lavish casting helps.

Bohm conducts Bruckner's 1889 revised score which represents the composer's final thoughts on his Third Symphony. As Bruckner matured - artistically speaking - his thoughts turned towards a more Beethovenian "Classical" view of symphonic music, in the Brahms mould, and the references to Wagner's - the Third's dedicatee - music were excised, all but one, from the score of the Third Symphony. This purity of symphonic form allowed Bruckner to present his musical thoughts in such a way that the music's inner logic conveyed a more well-structured architecture, allowing Bruckner's - and not Wagner's - voice to ring-out, loud and clear.

Karl Böhm conducting the Requiem: one of the foremost Mozart conductors of the 20th century in one of Mozart’s most admired works. Singers Gundula Janowitz, Christa Ludwig, Peter Schreier and Walter Berry join forces to form a brilliant cast of soloists. Taped in 1971 at the Piaristenkirche in Vienna, this is a rare document of outstanding artistic quality.

Teresa Stratas has been called the world's greatest living singing actress, and she is seen and heard at the peak of her powers in the title role of director Götz Friedrich's spine-chilling version of Salome. on of the most highly acclaimed opera films ever made - with Strauss's score in the expert hands of his protégé Karl Böhm, conducting the Vienna Philharmonic.

This is the most beautiful of Mozart playing, his last piano concerto given here by Emil Gilels with total clarity. This is a classic performance, memorably accompanied by the VPO and Böhm. Suffice it to say that Gilels sees everything and exaggerates nothing, that the performance has an Olympian authority and serenity, and that the Larghetto is one of the glories of the gramophone. He's joined by his daughter Elena in the Double Piano Concerto in E flat, and their physical relationship is mirrored in the quality, and the mutual understanding of the playing: both works receive marvellous interpretations. We think Emil plays first, Elena second, but could be quite wrong. The VPO under Karl Böhm is at its best; and so is the quality of recording, with a good stereo separation of the two solo parts, highly desirable in this work.