Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 and Symphony No. 2 concert. Performed 2022 at the Concert Hall of KKL Luzern as part of the Lucerne Festival. Riccardo Chailly conducts the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. Features pianist Mao Fujita. The full program is as follows:

• Piano Concerto No. 2

• Rachmaninoff arrangement of Gavotte from Partita No. 3 for solo violin by Johann Sebastian Bach (encore)

• Symphony No. 2

Directed for TV by Ute Feudel; produced by Paul Smaczny; Director of Photography was Nyika Jancsó. Released 2022, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: A for the piano concerto and B for the symphony.

Fujtia, about 24 at the time, is excruciatingly polite and self-effacing. He opened this show before a festival audience with a lot of empty seats. When he first appeared I wondered: can he really do this? But when he plays, he has both brilliant skill and a magnetic personality: half imp of the perverse and half kid in a kandy store. You become convinced that what you are seeing is the greatest thing that ever happened to him. The audience slurped him up and rewarded him with an instant standing ovation. Probably none of this would come across from a CD—hurry for Blu-ray!

In the symphony performance it was fun to see my two favorite brass players sitting side by side (Reinhold Friedrich on trumpet and Jörgen van Rijen on trombone) among other familiar faces. Something else you can’t get from a CD.

But this performance of the symphony suffers from dvditis, that evil tendency to chop the video up into (1) too many short clips with too many closeups of the musicians and the conductor and (2) not enough long-range shots of sections and the whole orchestra.

The industry is still too bogged down with old DVD habits. But the time is coming when Blu-ray will finally take over the market and DVD will be recognized as obsolete. Then the industry will have to shoot all the orchestral classical canon over again for viewing with high-def TVs. So for dvditis I reduce the grade on the concerto from A+ to A and the grade on the symphony from A+ to B.

I decided not to include a bunch of screen shots with this story as I found a couple of videos that do this well enough. One of them even offers free screening of the entire title (at least for a while).

Johann Sebastian Bach Brandenburg Concertos 1-6. Václav Luks conducts Collegium 1704 in 2021, using historical instruments, at the Hall of Mirrors at Köthen Castle. Directed for TV by Ute Feudel; produced by Paul Smaczny. Released 2022, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA

Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1, Symphony No. 2, and Symphony No. 3 concert. Recorded 2020 at the Concert Hall of the KKL Luzern. Herbert Blomstedt conducts the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. Features pianist Martha Argerich. Directed for TV by Ute Feudel; produced by Paul Smaczny. Released 2021, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA

Verdi Messa da Requiem ballet and concert. Recorded 2016 at the Opernhaus Zürich. Choreography and stage direction by Christian Spuck. Fabio Luisi conducts the Philharmonia Zürich, the Chor, und Zusatzchor (Supplementary Choir) of the Zürich Opera (Chorus Master Marcovalerio Marletta). Soloists are Krassimira Soyanova (soprano), Veronica Simeoni (mezzo-soprano), Francesco Meli (tenor), and Georg Zeppenfeld (bass). Star dancers are Yen Han, Alexander Jones, Anna Khamzina, Matthew Knight, William Moore, Filipe Portugal, Manuel Renard, Giulia Tonelli, and Katja Wünsche supported by corps dancers Nozomi Iijima, Tars Vandebeek, Francesca Dell’Aria, Jesse Fraser, Michelle Willems, Mark Geilings, Wei Chen, Andrei Cozlac, Jan Casier, Constanza Perotta Altube, Cristian Alex Assis, Irmina Kopaczynska, Danien Mulligan, Galina Mihaylova, Christopher Parker, Alba Sempere Torres, Dmitry Khamzin, Elizabeth Wisenberg, Dominik Slavkovsky, Mélanie Borel, Pornpim Karchai, Chinatsu Sugishima, Meiri Maeda, and Benoît Favre. Set design by Christian Schmidt; costume design by Emma Ryott; lighting design by Martin Gebhardt; dramaturgy by Michael Küster and Claus Spahn. There is also an excellent documentary on this disc called Stepping into the unknown—Christian Spuck's production of Verdi's Requiem. Ballet directed for TV by Michael Beyer; produced by Paul Smaczny. Sung in Latin. Released 2017, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: A

Verdi gets his “operatic” Mass produced here as grand theater with the introduction of 33 dancers performing modern abstract ballet in soft shoes.

Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 and Symphony No. 3 concert. Performed 2019 at the Concert Hall of KKL Luzern as part of the Lucerne Festival. Riccardo Chailly conducts the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. Features pianist Denis Matsuev. The full program, all by Rachmaninoff, is as follows:

• Piano Concerto No. 3

• Études-Tableaux

• Vocalise (Orchestral Version)

• Symphony No. 3

Directed for TV by Ute Feudel; produced by Paul Smaczny. Released 2020, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA

Tchaikovsky Symphonies box set with Symphonies 4, 5, and 6. Andris Nelsons conducts the Gewandhausorchester. You can get more details for each title by using the links provided:

• Symphony No. 4. 2020. (Grade: NA) Also features Weinberg Trumpet Concerto.

• Symphony No. 5. 2020. (Grade: NA). Also features Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto No. 1.

• Symphony No. 6. 2020. (Grade: NA). Also features Mozart Symphony No. 40.

Mahler Symphonies 1-2 and 4-9 Box Set. All of Mahler’s symphonies (except No. 3) performed at the Gewandhaus zu Leipzig by the Gewandhausorchester conducted by Riccardo Chailly. Grade for the box: D.

The musical performances of these symphonies are excellent as is the sound. If the price drops enough, this becomes competitive with CD boxes of these symphonies. Then the video aspects of the box would become irrelevant—just play the discs in pure audio mode.

But if you are interested in good video of classical music, all the titles in this box comprise a colossal disaster and utter waste of the human spirit.

Why such a harsh opinion? Well, to start, the box is missing Symphony No. 3. We did extensive reviews of 6 of the titles in this box. Two titles got a C+, and the rest graded lower. We found evidence of DVDitis in every title we reviewed . . .

Sunwook Kim plays a recital consisting of Beethoven piano sonatas No. 30, No. 31, and No. 32. Recorded 2020 at the Kunstkraftwerk, Leipzig. Directed for TV by Ute Feudel; produced by Paul Smaczny. Released 2021, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA

This seems to be a pricey offering for 74 minutes of music. It better be good!

Weinberg Trumpet Concerto and Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 concert. Performed 2019 with Andris Nelsons conducting the Gewandhausorchester at the Gewandhaus zu Leipzig. Features trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger. Directed for TV by Ute Feudel; produced by Paul Smaczny. Released 2020, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA

Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1 and Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5 concert. Performed 2019 at the Gewandhaus zu Leipzig. Features violinist Baiba Skride. Andris Nelsons conducts the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. Directed for TV by Ute Feudel; produced by Paul Smaczny. Released 2020, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA