Six great composers, six landmark symphonies, a top orchestra and its
star conductor Kent Nagano - these are the components of an extraordinary
classical-music television event. Shot in High Definition, it takes a
bold and innovative approach to the recording of classical music. Boom
and tracking shots, quick cuts, remote-controlled cameras - stylistic
means previously used chiefly for pop music recordings give the programs
an up-to-the-minute look and feel. A team of more than 30 specialists
makes sure that viewers enjoy a truly cinematic experience. The programs
also go new ways by featuring entertaining, historically founded animated
sequences illustrating episodes from the lives of the composers.
Backstage interviews with the musicians and excerpts from their rehearsals
let us share in the spirit of their music-making. Conductor Kent Nagano
also relates what is of special importance to him in each work, and offers
fascinating insights on the origin and context of the work in question.
The main element of each episode is the live recording of a concert from
the Berlin Philharmonie. Kent Nagano is one of the most successful and
high-profile conductors of today. He has led all the major orchestras of
New York, London, Berlin, Vienna, Paris... In 2000 he was named artistic
director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. In fall 2006 he
succeeded Zubin Mehta as General Music Director of the Bavarian State
Opera.
Composed during the summer months of the years 1884 and 1885 in
Mürzzuschlag, southwest of Vienna, the Fourth Symphony tended to
disconcert the public at first and had to prove itself in the concert
circuit before gaining recognition as a masterwork of epoch-making
stature. What Brahms's contemporaries regarded as difficult and
bewildering were above all the extreme constructive density of the score,
the unusual layout, especially of the third and fourth movements, a number
of archaic elements pointing back to the formulae and techniques of "early
music" (the passacaglia in the fourth movement) and the austere, elegiac
mood that permeates the entire work. The premiere of the Fourth Symphony
performed by the Meiningen Court Orchestra in Meiningen under Brahms's
direction on 25 October 1885 was a great success. The work became the
chief feature of the orchestra's ensuing tour, with Brahms conducting it
in nine cities.
The DVD is also released within the complete "Kent Nagano conducts classical masterpieces" DVD package which is available in selected stores worldwide and through Amazon or JPC.