Home Brew — New Titles/Journal

Interstellar for Grand Pipe Organ. Music by Hans Zimmer (written originally for the soundtrack of the motion picture Interstellar) arranged by Antonino Buschiazzo. Performed by Antonino on July 27, 2021 at the organ of St. Paul’s church in Strasbourg, France. Video file shot by Mathilde Burille and Michael Bártek; sound by and Valérie Bajcsa and Ivan Bajcsa. Produced by Michael Bártek. Performance can be viewed on YouTube on PC in 2K resolution—screenshots below are 2K. These pictures are pretty enough. But the full impact of the video can only be seen on a 4K TV display connected to the Internet. Performance lasts 26 minutes. Grade A+

First we see Antonino heading to the church . . .

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.