Bruckner Symphony No. 4

Bruckner Symphony No. 4 (the "Romantic"). Christian Thielemann conducts the Dresden Staatskapelle at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden in 2015. Directed for TV by Agnes Méth. Released 2016, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound output. Grade: NA

With only one symphony, this is not a generous title. Christian Hoskins, writing in the February 2017 Gramophone (page 31) complains of Agnes Méth's "rather restive directorial style." H'm, sounds like a case of DVDitis. Hoskins prefers another Blu-ray recording of this made back in 2009 by Thielemann.

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Here's news about high-definition video disc ("HDVD") recordings of opera, ballet, classical music, plays, fine-art documentaries, and paintings. In the journal below are independent (and hard-to-find critical) reports on hundreds of HDVDs. Pick the best titles for your excelsisphere.

Feb 25. We have just completed one of our most ambitious reviews: Einstein on the Beach opera, the surreal 4 and 1/2 hour cult legend. Kudos, encomiums, and accolades to Opus Arte for giving us this authoritative and weirdly fascinating recording, which we grade A+. Absorbing and learning Einstein is uniquely challenging. We try to help out by providing aids not included in the keepcase materials: an accurate libretto and a list of segments in the opera with correct Opus Arte time stamps. Good luck!

We have some other good grades with an A for the recent Met The Pearl Fishers (Les pêcheurs de perles) and a B- for an earlier The Pearl Fishers from Naples. Also, we recently gave an A- for the new Don Quixote from the Vienna State Ballet.