Martha Argerich & Friends

Great music; fair photography
The music and the playing of Argerich and her friends are first-rate. The complexity of 2 piano music or 4 hand piano music is wonderful to hear and to behold. The hearing was wonderful; the beholding was not.

Too much time was spent looking at the backs of performers, the nose and prominent wave of Ar gerich hair, the beard of Freire. Admittedly, closeups of performers can be very rewarding, but when more than one or two features consumes the entire screen.

I believe that music lovers who buy DVD per- formances of classical music want to see the musicians plying their virtuosity. That means for pianists the hands should be featured. That's where the music is being made. Certainly, camera views can be arranged to accommodate both the upper body, arms, hands, and keyboard.

In music utilizing two pianos it seems that a split-sreen technique could have been used to capture the total performance from the two players at the same time so that the listener

could see...
Too many faces / So few hands
This video is an excelent performance. In fact, Argerich was in a peak! Somethings that are not so good:

The Schumann's Fatasie is a very nice piece and the sound is really good. But, I don't know why, the cameras seems to treat Mr. Maisky as a kind of soloist, and Argerich's hands its almost never seen.

The cameras shows the faces of the musicians for a long time, more than necessary. When she was playing with Nelson Freire, there is a camera that shows a frontal vision of the two pianos, you see the "body" of the pianos instead of the hands. The hands appears too, but it could appear more.

Some positive points are:

The sound quality is very, very good. The selection is very special. The last two pieces are very strong. The performance is perfect!

There is some program extras, like biographies and music titles. One of them is a feature called music analisys. It's really interesting. You can listen to the music and see a legend explaining the parts of the music...
A wonder to behold
Argerich's rhythm is impeccable. Although I am not crazy about Freire, he seems to be among the few who can keep up with her! As another reviewer stated, I expected to see the performer's hands a lot more often. AND...I thought the camera spent too much time on Friere and his hands and not on Argerich. After all, it is called MARTHA ARGERICH and Friends. But thankfully, the sound and quality of this DVD made me forget about it for a while. I sorely miss Economou! He and Argerich were made for each other. Their recording of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker is a gem. This Mozart 1-piano 4-hands sonata is a favorite of mine and it was a real treat to see. Maisky's performance of Schumann was something else. I had forgotten how beautiful this work was.
All in all, this DVD is a must for all Argerich fans.
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Wagner: Das Rheingold [Blu-ray]

You must be kidding
With a cast like this and Daniel Barenboim conducting, I wanted to go for the whole Ring cycle from La Scala. But if this is the Rheingold that I saw in 2010, I decided to stop right there.
Yes, the singing is fine and the projections effective. But although the beginning of Rheingold is "watery" indeed, having all the singers standing ankle-deep in water throughout the whole opera, incl. the ballet - with wet trousers and dresses up unto their knees - was to say the least totally distracting and disgusting.
After that, I really was't in the mood for more.
Actually, and unfortunately, this otherwise very substantial Rheingold was just another of the European Regietheater - you haven't "lived" until you have seen Il Trovatore with Jonas Kaufmann no less, from the Bavarian Staatsoper!! - that I find totally obnoxious. These director seem to use operas as background music for their weird concepts instead of respecting and adjusting their ideas to "come scritto" by the...
Solid opening to the La Scala Ring
The true musical merit and the importance of Das Rheingold is often underestimated or at least overlooked on account of its designation as merely the Prologue to the three parts proper of Wagner's epic Ring saga but it's essential to establish a precise balance and a vision that will propel the audience compellingly into this unique musical journey. The first part of the new Teatro alla Scala Ring, created in 2010, fulfils that remit well, with Daniel Barenboim managing proceedings with precision and drive from the orchestra pit and director Guy Cassiers fulfilling all the requirements to establish a suitable tone that fully supports the work.

I don't know what Wagner would have made of ballet being incorporated into Das Rheingold, but choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's work does help to draw out those deeper premonitory resonances within the work. In addition to the fine performance of the work on the surface level of the stage direction and the singing, the greater...

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