David
Benoit: This Side Up
(2013/24K Gold CD/Top Music)/The
Beethoven Symphonies: Mariss Jansons
(ArtHaus Blu-ray box set)/Rihm's
Dionysos: 2010 Salzburg Festival
(Nietzsche/Ingo Metzmacher/EuroArts/Unitel Classica)/Tchaikovsky:
The Classic Ballets (Swan
Lake/Sleeping
Beauty/Nutcracker/Royal
Opera House/Opus Arte/Naxos Blu-ray Set)
Picture:
B- (CD has no image) Sound: B/B+/B/B Extras: D/C+/B-/B-
Music: B/A-/B-/B
PLEASE
NOTE:
This
24K Gold Compact Disc is only available from our friends at Top Music
International and can be ordered at the link below. The Naxos
Blu-rays are available at through Naxos at their website or via
Amazon.com on ours.
Here
are some recent Classical Blu-ray presentations and a new 24K Gold
Jazz CD that has some interesting moments, and that album is David
Benoit: This Side Up
(2013) has eight music pieces on it, six originally written by Mr.
Benoit (Stingray
is one of them, not to be confused with the TV adventure show theme,
though I would like to hear what he would do with that based on the
content of this disc) and Land
Of The Loving
even has a female vocal by Dianne Reeves in classical Jazz form that
fits well.
Then
there are the covers, the Bill Evans/Gene Lee composition Waltz For
Debbie and most interesting of all, a Jazz heavy version of Vince
Guaraldi's Peanuts
comic strip classic Linus
& Lucy
with a touch of Funk that works much better than I expected. It
could be easy to butcher and ruin such a famous, beloved, recognized,
enduring and fun classic, but Benoit (who also does the arrangements
here) loves the piece and his band brings out new possibilities in
the composition that shows its strength. A slid album worth checking
out.
The
Beethoven Symphonies: Mariss Jansons
actually the second Blu-ray box set of Ludwig van's nine massively
vital symphonies after an amazing box we recently covered by the
great Claudio Abbado, who we are big fans of the site, which you can
read more about here at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/12213/The+Beach+Boys:+Good+Vibrations+Tour+(1976/
A
strong box with a strong showing of a uber-familiar work where any
wrong note or move could meet with serious criticism, Abbado does a
spectacular job and it remains one of the best Classical Blu-ray sets
we have covered to date. So how do you compete with that? It's not
easy, but Mariss Jansons is one of the only conductors who likely
could and in Tokyo at Suntory Hall with the Bayerischen Rundfunks
Orchestra & Choir, he not only matches and amazing work by Abbado
and company, but I liked the sonic presentation just a little bit
more, which means if I had to choose between the two (not as easy as
it sounds), I would lean towards this amazing box, but serious fans
of the classic work will probably want to buy both!
Rihm's
Dionysos: 2010 Salzburg Festival
is an Opera based on the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and is
conducted by Ingo Metzmacher. We follow a figure named 'N' ( a
hybrid of the philosopher, title character and Marsyas) taking a
journey through the mysterious and unknown throughout its 122
minutes-long odyssey. It is new, interesting, based on a later poem
by Nietzsche and might not be to everyone's tastes, but it is
different, ambitious and worth a look if you like the famous (and
infamous) philosopher, but others might not be as impressed and I do
not know if this one always justifies its length.
Others
might find it takes the man's writings and might twist them into
directions that may not gel with the work he is best known for.
Still, it is nice to see something ambitious, even if it is a little
uneven and sure to spark controversy somewhere down the line. This
will not be the last we've heard of this one, so you might want to
see it early.
Finally
we have a compilation collection in Tchaikovsky:
The Classic Ballets
which includes three classics as performed by The Royal Opera House:
Swan
Lake,
Sleeping
Beauty
and Nutcracker.
We actually already reviewed the Swan
Lake
as a Blu-ray single release a few years ago at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/9314/Wagner+%E2%80%93+Tannhauser/Shostakovich
It
is still one of the best of several versions we have covered since
and deserves a second round of release in this set, which is in a
space-saving DigiPak booklet accompanied by a thicker-than-usual
booklet. New to us is
Sleeping
Beauty
which (besides the obvious non-ballet by Disney) we have not covered
as a ballet in the 10+ years of this site. This version has Valeriy
Ovsyanikov again conducting as he did on Swan
Lake
and the two version are not only very well made and compatible, but
has the same heart, soul and energy. I have seen versions of this
work before, but never looking or sounding this good and this is as
good as any of the previous version I have been exposed to.
That
leaves us with The
Nutcracker,
which we have covered in a different version on Blu-ray from The San
Francisco Ballet that is so old it has a PCM 5.0 mix ironically as
its best soundtrack:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/9307/Humperdinck%E2%80%99s+Hansel+&+Gretel/Bare
I have to admit that
this is one I only want to see during the Christmas season, but I
though that version was a really strong release and this version
conducted this time by Koen Kessels is as well-done, energetic and
through an all around performance as the former version, though I
liked the extras on that one a bit more, but we get as much of a draw
here as we just did on those two Beethoven Blu-ray boxes above, so
you might want both versions of this release as well if you are that
much of a fan of the work and the holiday season.
The
1080i 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers on the three
Blu-rays have the usual minor detail issues (staircasing, some
haloing), but look pretty good for the type of live recording they
are and color is often decent.
As
for sound, everything has PCM 2.0 Stereo tracks (including the
16/44.1 Stereo on the Benoit
Gold CD, its only track, which are transferred at 192/32 and sound
fine), but the multi-channel presentations vary more. Beethoven
has a DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.0 lossless mix throughout all
programs, but is the best recording here with the best dynamic range
throughout, pleasantly surprising throughout. Dionysos
is also a DTS-MA 5.0 mix and sounds fine, but cannot match the full
fidelity of the other set. The Tchaikovsky set reissues previous
releases as noted, with Lake
& Beauty
offering rarely used PCM 5.1 mixes used early on in the format before
DTS-MA and Dolby lossless became common, leaving Nutcracker
with the only DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix (ironically)
on the whole list, but all sound fine if not up to that Beethoven
set.
The
Gold CD has no extras, but the Blu-rays all come with nicely
illustrated booklets on their respective performances. Beethoven
adds trailers and Behind
The Scenes
with Jansons (44 minutes performing Eroica)
on the first disc of the 3-disc set, Dionysos
adds trailers and a 53-minutes-long documentary on the subject by
Bettina Ehrhardt entitled I
Am My Labyrinth
worth seeing after the main opera and the Tchaikovsky
set adds Cast Galleries, Illustrated Synopses for Lake
& Beauty,
plus Documentaries & Interviews on Lake
& Nutcracker.
To
find out more about ordering the David
Benoit
24K Gold CD, start with this link, then go to the ORDER icon at the
top of the page on the right-hand side under the logo:
http://www.topmusic.com/tm-gcd9802.htm
- Nicholas Sheffo