The Cleveland Orchestra Centennial Celebration concert performed September 29, 2018 at Severance Hall. Franz Welser-Möst conducts the Cleveland Orchestra. Features pianist Lang Lang. The concert includes the following pieces:
Mozart Piano Concerto No. 24
Richard Strauss “Symphonic Fantasy” from Die Frau ohne Schatten
Johann Strauss, Jr. Wiener Blut
Ravel La Valse
Directed for video by Michael Beyer. Herbert G. Kloiber was Executive Producer for Clasart Classic/belvedere records. Released 2019, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: D
Herbert G. Kloiber was a highly successful Austrian media mogul in the field of popular movies and TV programs, especially in German language markets. He has a personal interest in the fine arts and is a friend of fellow Austrian Franz Welser-Möst. Working with Bryan Large, Kloiber brought us a wonderful Bruckner Symphony No. 4 (published by Arthaus) and a gorgeous Ein Deutsches Requiem, both with the Cleveland Orchestra and Welser-Möst. These two titles are on the very short list of excellent videos of symphony music made in Western countries. (Most of the good symphony videos in Blu-ray come from NHK in Japan.)
Kloiber also produced several recordings of Brahms major works under the Clasart/belvedere names using the American videographer William Cosel and the German videographer Michael Beyer. Generally we have been severely disappointed with these efforts because of massive issues with DVDitis.
Subject title was shot at Severance Hall in Cleveland by Michael Beyer late in 2018, and once again we have a product that’s terribly crippled with DVDitis. (We suspect this was the first time Beyer tried to record a symphony concert in the United States.)
The Cleveland band under Welser-Möst is one of the elite orchestras in the world. This was a gala event played before patrons and political dignitaries. It must have been a bravura performance. Our comments here deal with the poor job done in making the video. See our special article on DVDitis for more information. But here’s the essence of the DVDitis problem. With the standard video definition of a DVD, low resolution forces the videographer to make many short, close-up clips of the orchestra to create a mosaic for the viewer of what happened. With high definition cameras, the videographer can do much better: he can make longer, larger scale clips that actually show the whole orchestra at work.
So the chief hallmark of a DVD is many brief close-up clips of small groups of payers. The chief hallmark of a good HDVD video is an abundance of lengthy whole-orchestra and other large-scale shots.
We choose our initial screenshot below because it allows us to see the large number of cameras that Beyer had. Start with at least one camera high in the back of the hall (used to make our 1st screenshot). We see a camera close to the stage on the 2nd balcony. Maybe there was a similar camera on the left of this balcony. On the left between the audience and the stage there is the Severance Hall boom camera that can provide dramatic shots of most of the orchestra area from the front or from above. Another camera is located at the front of the audience near the boom but close to the center of the stage for close-up views of Lang Lang. There is a camera on a tripod facing across the piano to get images of Lang Lang’s face. Another camera is located on the stage floor to get close-ups of the soloist (from his left) and the conductor. There are two large mobile cameras on stage left next to the orchestra and another similar camera on stage right.
So Beyer had at least 9 cameras (maybe 10 or more). The booklet credits 12 cameramen at work and 1 crane operator. With all those people and gear available, there must have been a big temptation to shoot a lot of clips! Ironically, in shooting symphonies, the more you do, the worse the outcome.
Look more closely at the stage in our first screen shot. The light is dim and there are shadows on the rear of the stage. Why so dark? TV cameras need a lot of light! In this image you see the whole orchestra, but we do not call this a whole-orchestra view. To us, a whole-orchestra view gets as close as possible while showing all the instruments. We call this an “architectural shot”:
Next below an even worse architectural shot:
Finally, the videographer gives us next below a completely worthless view while the orchestra is playing! If you want to show the glory of the hall, fine. But do this before the playing starts while the lights are bright throughout the building. We call this an “anthill” shot:
So we are off to a bad start. As discussed, the main hallmark of a good video of a symphony orchestra is a generous number of whole-orchestra (“WO”) shots. To help us keep track of what the videographer is doing, we invented the Wonk Worksheet. We also published the Instructions for the Worksheet. We filled out a a Wonk Worksheet for the Lang Lang concerto and the La Valse number that ended this program. (This particular Worksheet is rather complicated because it presents data from who different segments on the disc, but all the information is accurate.)
From the Worksheet, you can see that there are only 2 static whole-orchestra views in the Lang Lang segment. In addition, there is a WO shot as part on an aggressive pan and another WO shot made with a zoom from the boom camera. Panning and zooming is OK when done rarely, sparingly, and very slowly. But when they got their hands on that boom, Beyer’s folks could not resist the temptation to start shooting a Star Wars film with the Cleveland Orchestra.
There are also 3 part-orchestra (“PO”) views, all parts of pans with the boom camera. Next below is a PO shot from the panning boom. We would also call this a realistic shot of the soloist at rest. It’s “realistic” since this could have been seen by an audience member from the balcony:
Next below is a similar shot from the end of the extended boom camera. This is not a realistic shot since nobody in the audience could see this. We consider this a trick or gimmick shot. With world-class performers like Lang Lang and the Cleveland orchestra as the subject, trick shots are at best an undesirable distraction. At worst, they are just attempts by the cameramen to show off at the expense of the artists who hired them:
The next two shots below were made from the boom also. If they were made as a static shots, they would be excellent PO images and good realistic views of the soloist (since they could have been seen by a member of the audience in the balcony):
The next 4 shots below are unrealistic soloist shots. They could not be seen by anyone in the audience. Videographers love to add these trick shots to the mix to add variety to the recording and show how clever they are. We enjoy these stunts well enough, but we think it better if more than 50% of the shots of the soloist are realistic. In this Mozart concerto, only 30% of the shots of Lang Lang are realistic and 70% are tricks. We think this is more distracting than helpful in appreciating the artistry of Lang Lang:
Here we also get the “keyboard wedge” optical illusion caused by bass note keys being out-of-focus:
There are some good shots in this video. Next below are 3 fine multi-section shots that truly help the home viewer enjoy what the whole orchestra is doing:
But there are also a distressing number of errors in the video file. What is the purpose of this next shot below with the conductor out-of-focus and the image of the bottom of a violin?
Next below is a horrible shot of the out-of-focus conductor made over the backs of the 1st violins. This is insulting to the players and the conductor. With 9 or more cameras going, is this the best the editor can do?
And here’s another shot from La Valse. This is an instrument-only shot, which we dislike because it denigrates the musician playing the instrument. Still, we accept a shot like this if makes a point. But here on the disc, you can’t hear the harp at all. So it’s a double error. Are we being too strict? Well, symphony musicians are trained to never make a mistake. So anyone making a recording of a symphony must also be held to the same high standard. The finished video of a symphony performance should be as close to perfection as was the performance that was recorded:
Now let’s review how we use our special article on DVDitis and the Work Worksheet to grade a symphony video. Here are the main guidelines:
“A good HDVD should have a slow pace with more than 10 seconds per video clip on average (longer the better). 20 to 40% (higher is better) of the clips should be large-scale "supershots" (whole-orchestra, part-orchestra, multiple-section, and large-section shots). Conductor shots should be less than 20% (way less really) of the clips in the video. Further, we require that more than half of the shots of the soloists should be realistic.”
We didn’t make up these guidelines ourselves. We extracted them by watching most of the Blu-ray symphony videos published so far to determine which recordings were the easiest and most pleasing to watch. Although most of the symphony Blu-rays made in the last 10 years are atrocious, we have enough good ones to give us the guidance expressed above.
So let’s look now at the numbers for the Lang Lang concerto. There were a total of 268 clips during 1909 seconds of playing time, which results in a pace of 7.1 seconds per clip. This is too fast and flunks the pace test. There are 43 supershots out of 268 total clips, or 16%. This flunks the supershot test. There were 43 conductor shots (44 really) for a passing conductor score of only 16%. But only 30% of the shots of Lang Lang are realistic, which is another flunk. We reduce the grade one step for each flunked test: the grade is D.
The La Valse segment was just as bad. The pace was an absurd 5.2 seconds per clip, which would be fast for a pure DVD and is intolerable for a HD recording of a symphony. Only 12% of the clips are supershots. And the number of conductor shots is 21%, which is also a flunking mark. In the La Valse, there were 22 instrument-only shots, the laziest video shot there is.
So Doctor Disc arrives at the follow diagnoses of DVDitis: the Lang Lang segment is terminally ill and the La Valse is dead on arrival. We can’t recommend this title generally, but folks in Cleveland would have a special reason to buy and enjoy it. That’s consistent with our D grade.
We hate to give such bad grades after all the money and effort Mr. Kloiber invested. But he’s not alone. Of the roughly 300 symphony titles published in the last decade in Blu-ray format, maybe 30 of them took good advantage of HD video capability. 90% of what has been done by the likes of Accentus, Arthaus, C Major, DG, Euroarts, RCO, Naxos, etc. has been a colossal waste because the discs were really just DVDs that could not take advantage of HD video. But at least Mr. Kloiber has some successes and wasted less than the others.
And there is also a bright side to all this! The era of DVD is finally ebbing. We now have 4K and HDR available to finally kill off SD TV in the fine-arts sector. And for those who are willing to take the plunge and try to make high-quality classical music products, the market is wide open. Let’s hope that Mr. Kloiber and others like him will realize this and start to produce the kind of products music lovers deserve.
Here is a clip from this recording (rancid with DVDitis) which was shown on TV as part of PBS’s Great Performances series:
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