5/5 Elucidating two classic works in a highly entertaining format
  by Christopher Culver
The Juxtapositions series of DVDs is a dream for fans of contemporary art music. It has already provided documentaries on Pierre Boulez, Gyorgy Kurtag, Luciano Berio, and Tan Dun. I got into the modern-classical scene through the Darmstadt generation and afterward, and so I was very glad to find this installment featuring the joint fathers of 20th-century innovation: Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg. The man behind the documentaries is Frank Schaeffer, who has produced some of the best of the Juxtapositions series.

"The Final Chorale" describes Stravinsky's "Symphonies of Wind Instruments". Composed in memory of Debussy, this 1920 piece ushers in a curious new style where blocks of sound replace traditional Romantic development. Olivier Messiaen ("Chronochromie"), Harrison Birtwistle, and Magnus Lindberg ("Gran Duo") are a few composers who have worked in this vein, and it is interesting indeed to see the beginnings of it all. The documentary consists of two intermixed strains. One is the history of the piece. Here we find interviews with Robert Craft and much archival footage of Stravinsky. The second strain is a rehearsal of the "Symphonies" by the Netherlands Wind Ensemble conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw. Oddly, de Leeuw initially doesn't speak in front of the camera. Instead, his commentary is dubbed by an Englishman over scenes of Leeuw studying the score. Later, as de Leeuw leads the ensemble, we finally hear something from him. The documentary closes with a full performance of the piece.

The second film covers Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces op. 16. These were written in 1909 and mark the composer's leap into free atonality. Again the documentary is split into two strains. In discussing the history and nature of the work, two commentators are especially prominent. One is the pianist and teacher Charles Rosen, who makes the thought-provoking assertion that far from being overly intellectual and meaningless, Schoenberg's music is in fact the most intensely emotional that he has encountered. Reference to Schoenberg's visceral paintings of the same era underscores this theme. Rosen even plays some of Schoenberg's music at the piano to show the specific musical innovations within these vast orchestral movements. The other major commentators is conductor Michael Gielen. The second part of the documentary has Gielen rehearsing the piece with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic. At the end, we are treated to a full performance of the piece.

This DVD proved an entertaining and convenient way to discover the music of two influential 20th-century composers I've always heard much about, but whom I never seemed to get the chance to engage. I'd recommend the entire Juxtapositions series, but this DVD is all the more highly recommended to people with tastes similar to mine.

5/5 two seminal classics of modernity
  by scarecrow (Chicago, Illinois United States)
with the new crop of DVDs on contemporary music I guess we cannot complain, be greatful for whatever we get. But here such an important seminal figure as Schoenberg, we come away with some only minor surface understanding of his "Five Orchestral Pieces" mostly from Gielen's fragmented comments. The actual rehearsal spots are nothing really,not of how the work was put together, the problem areas, the balance, the phrasings, the timbral differences, the dynamics,the typical problems of bottom-heavy orchestrations in the Schoenberg as in Berg, well early mostly. If you are a student of conducting or contemporary expression this is only a beginning, compared with other rehearsals you may encounter as Boulez's Berg "Three Pieces" with Vienna Phil.
And the Schoenberg is a work well worth exploring. It represents the beginnings of modernity,his first important work for orchestra with a newly found language; the idea of "fragments" of timbres, yet shaped without a need to proceed. Even the last piece where the entrances of the woodwinds is to be un-noticed imperceptible as electronic music to come. Gielen is admirable in his explanations, and without it there is not much here.There is also some vintage footage of the slim,lean Schoenberg and students on an apartment roof in what looks like Berlin. Along side this there are wonderful "cinematic visits" to Schoenberg's work place, his working deeply varnished desk,quite small and cluttered, but not un-interestingly so where he had invented many handheld contraptions is the only word for them; game-like objects,scales, slide-rule-like 12 tone rulers to help comprehend the the possibilities of the 12, almost Kaballah like in its vision. Also Schoenberg was an accomplished painter, so we get ample reviews of the expressionist surfaces of these paintings, a self-portrait with deeply tortured red eyes.Then the music overlaid.Scheffer seems to hook into Schoenberg the artist not through the implications of his music which he doesn't really come to understand from the content not developed here,but more the visual world of what Schoenberg must have experienced.(I found this also exists in his Mahler DVDs one with Berio where Riccardo Chailly is given the burden of explaining all that exists in Mahler) That's legitimate.

Schoenberg during this time lived in Berlin I beleive, what was the East in Prenzlauer-Berg, where the November 1989 revolution occurred(in a Church walking distance near Danziger Strasse). A little bit of explanation of these 12 Tone objects would have helped.Also an explanation of how Schoenberg might have utilized these "objects d'aide" would have been helpful; Instead their mystery and opaque-ness is sustained forever in Scheffer's film here. We then get a full performance of the "Five Orchestral Pieces" with Gielen.
Charles Rosen is included in the proceedings, long a Schoenberg enthusiast with one slim book.We see him sitting at the piano commenting on the groundbreaking Opus 11. He should have played the entire work, I don't think that would have slowed down the quick momentum of the editing.Also Rosen should have made a few comments on the structure of Opus 11 on how Schoenberg had come to exploit the piano's resonances,how he voiced a chord, are made textures ring, or dull penumbrality as in the Second Movement of Opus 11 this creation from someone who really was not a pianist,yet the resulting piano writing has an eternal fascination.

The Stravinsky then we get a full rehearsal with overdubbing translations from the Dutch of conductor de Leeuw, an accomplished interpreter of the new. Momente form was what Stravinsky had in mind with also these reoccuring fragments, of his typical spiked and reedy,plaintive at times woodwind timbres, exposed with a brass choral, hence the title as like a spine or a block that is the minimal buttress of the work dedicated to Claude Debussy. Both works here still have not lost their power of suggestion,of pointing toward a future, the Badiou-ian Event I suppose in many respects.

5/5 Two Masterful Music Documentaries by Frank Scheffer
  by J Scott Morrison (Middlebury VT, USA)
This DVD combines two marvelous documentaries done by the expert classical music documentarian, Frank Scheffer. The first, called 'Igor Stravinsky: The Finale Chorale,' concerns itself with the 'Symphonies of Wind Instruments' from 1920. 'Symphonies' was written in memory of Stravinsky's friend and colleague, Claude Debussy -- one remembers that the first private performance of 'Sacre de Printemps' was a four-hand version prepared by Stravinsky and with Debussy sight-reading the bass part, reportedly without making any mistakes! -- and it is a paradigm of Stravinsky's mosaic or block style of formal organization. Interviews with Stravinsky's acolyte, Robert Craft, as well as the conductor of a performance of the piece, Reinbert de Leeuw, form the main spoken parts of the documentary. One sees various musicians of the acclaimed Netherlands Wind Ensemble as they rehearse, make reeds, practice by themselves, talk about their experience with the piece. Included is much archival film of the composer at work. The connecting narrative is beautifully written as is the filming and editing of the documentary. 'The Final Chorale' is a masterpiece of documentary film. It dates from 1992 but I had never seen it before and am very grateful now to have done so.

The second film, from 1994, is about Schönberg's 'Five Orchestral Pieces' with much discussion of its meaning to the composer, technical comments about its construction given by both conductor Michael Gielen, who is seen rehearsing and then conducting the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic in a beautiful performance of these path-breaking pieces, and by pianist/musicologist Charles Rosen who makes pithily informed comments about the work and also plays the third piece of Schönberg's Opus 11 'Three Piano Pieces.' The discussion and illustration of Klangfarbenmelodie (Sound-Color Melody), invented for 'Five Orchestral Pieces', is not only communicative in the extreme but beautifully illustrated by musical examples from the third of the pieces. There is much archival film of Schönberg and many closeups of his quite beautiful expressionist paintings.

As an extra, there is also included a brief documentary based primarily on Wagner's 'Ring' that I found confusing but exhilarating, too, largely because of the quick intercutting of scenes and music from a vast array of modern musics. And there are brief trailers of other classical music documentaries from Scheffer, including those on Mahler.

Subtitles in English, French, German, Dutch, and Spanish; most of the spoken narrative and interviews are in spoken English. Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0. TT=104mins

I have always been fascinated -- from many years of assiduously attending rehearsals, masterclasses, and seminars -- watching musicians at work. For anyone who, like I, is mesmerized by the process and who is interested in the music of Stravinsky and Schönberg, these two films are must-haves.

Scott Morrison