Bruckner Symphony No. 8

Bruckner Symphony No. 8. Christian Thielemann conducts the Staatskapelle Dresden in 2012. Directed for TV by Henning Kasten. Released 2014, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA

Peter Quantrill wrote of this in the August 2014 Gramophone (page 33) that "the sense of instrumental soloists and the choirs listening and responding to one another is palpable, making the Adagio a genuinely live experience albeit still one suffused with the satisfaction of its own beautiful existence (especially noticeable on Blu-ray)." This is the first time I've seen in Gramophone acknowledgement of the superiority of Blu-ray technology over other video formats.

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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.