Bruckner Symphony No. 5

Bruckner Symphony No. 5 recorded 2013 by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Although I haven't found any published verification of this, Zoltan Glied (who has always been right in the past) reports that this disc, released 2014, was recorded with 96kHz/24-bit sound sampling and has both stereo and 5.0 dts-HD Master Audio output. Grade: NA

Thank you Zoltan for the tip on the sound sampling! RCO has recorded other material with 96kHz/24-bit sound sampling. The best example would be their Mahler Symphonies 1-10 in a box set. The performances and sound were commendable. But the video was so bad we wound up with a D grade!

Buy on Amazon

What's New

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.