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Category:    Home > Reviews > Jazz > Pop > Standards > Classical > Opera > Ballet > 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/U

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


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