Customer Rating:
Summary: Remarkable insight into a dying art
Comment: This wonderful 2-hour documentary opens the door into a world which the general music listener probably never even knew existed, and for those who had a vague idea, many more exciting revelations and deeper insight will be gained from this tape. In this modern high-tech age where music is artificially reconstructed in the studio, a conductor seems almost superfluous, but it is evident from this documentary that the price we pay for technical progress is a genuine form of art. It is the art of shaping sounds like a sculptor shapes his clay, or like a painter adding colours to create depth, contrast, highlights and perspective. Where a complex piece of music and large orchestra are concerned, it is not good enough for each musician to simply play the notes written down by the composer, especially when the music is meant to express the vast gamut of human feelings, sentiments, moods and thoughts. And just like each person has individual personality, so each conductor has his own concept of how a certain piece of music should sound. This is the aspect which first struck and impressed me when viewing this tape, namely how each of the dozen or so conductors featured here are all uniquely different in character, personality and style. Each one moves his baton differently, while Stokowski conducts very effectively only with his hands, and Herbert Von Karajan always conducts with his eyes closed. Some are intensely passionate and vibrant, others create a smoother, romantic sound, all of which can result in the same famous symphony sounding quite different depending on who conducts it. Not only this, but even the entire orchestra can adopt a certain sound or style that is characteristic of its conductor, as if it has been imprinted with his personality and way of interpreting music.

Although this is only a VHS, the sound quality of the music is extremely good, even of rather old film footage of conductors directing various famous orchestras from the early 1930s onwards. There is no actual narration, but enough is said by various people ranging from well-known musicians to other experts commenting on the conductors they knew. There are many good, lengthy film clips, mostly black and white, to demonstrate the conductor's techniques and style as they direct a variety of classical music from famous to less well-known pieces. An excellent 18-page booklet accompanies this tape, and concise, studious notes provide all the information on each conductor that the novice and also more knowledgeable music lover would like to know about these great conductors of the past. Having seen and heard the many fascinating and even mysterious ways in which conductors have created a musical work of art, listening to classical music will never be the same again: it becomes a much more spiritual, artistic and emotionally rewarding experience for the enlightened listener!

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: A sampler, not a history
Comment: Is it fair to the musical greats of the past to subject them to television's talking head/archival footage/talking head presentations of today? If it helps rescue some unjustly forgotten conductor, maybe so. If the sound byte + 45 second film clip leads a viewer to think that there is nothing more than that to a conductor's story, then that's wrong.

Take Leopold Stokowski, for example. In the early 20th century, he put the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra on the map and then took the Philadelphia Orchestra to the top. He premiered a lot of American music as well as a lot of difficult new music, at a time when most audiences only wanted Romantic warhorses. He was a pioneer in many ways, and he took a lot of arrows for it early in his career. Yet in this documentary, the Stokowski segment presents a familiar cliché. We see the long-haired ham producing his luscious, dowager-pleasing strings sound, and hear some chin-tugging by the guest expert about how, in its own way, maybe it wasn't so bad.

Or take Toscanini. We don't see his charitable wartime work, his defiance of Hitler and Mussolini, his whipping of the lazy Bayreuth festival orchestra into shape, or his triumphs with the Met. However, we do see one of his famous temper tantrums.

So, since the television medium sometimes forces unjust brevity onto its subjects, it's best to regard this program as a sampler. All of the people included could have been the subject of documentaries equalling this show's length.

As for the "art" part of The Art of Conducting, the program delivers. It is fascinating to watch Sir John Barbirolli ironing out a bassline, or Bruno Walter, with his light but firm touch, getting his violins to "sing", or Sir Thomas Beecham playing the maestro role semi-tongue-in-cheek. And the concert footage is generous and usually free of annoying voice-overs. So get this video, certainly-but don't let it be the final word for you.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: Rare, Priceless Films of Famous Conductors at Work!
Comment: The BBC television network came up with a real gem when someone in their heirarchy had the ingenious idea to compile a visual perspective of the great conductors of the 20th century. This is truly a magnificent video! All classical music fans have a favorite, and most everyone who obtains this video should find their favorite contained therein. A fleeting thought that has probably occurred to those of us who like and collect classical music recordings know how their favorite Golden Era conductor made a particular masterwork sound; but WHAT DID HE LOOK LIKE DOING IT? This video is certain to provide that answer. Contemporary big-name musicians and associates such as Isaac Stern, John Eliot Gardner, and Richard Mohr, who worked with the featured conductors, provide reminiscences and impressions of what it was like to work with them.

My favorite (Fritz Reiner) is featured in this video. In the 1961 performance of excerpts from the first movement of the Beethoven Seventh with the Chicago Symphony, it is most interesting to compare how he conducts the work with an earlier 1954 complete performance with the same ensemble. The 1954 performance is available in the "Historic Telecasts" series. The 1961 performance featured here presents Reiner conducting with his legendary "vest pocket", small-gesture beat, virtually void of motion. The 1954 complete performance shows a much more lively Reiner, clearly conducting from his baton and occasionally using the free hand to signal to his players. Eye contact with his players is more evident in the 1954 than the 1961 performance. In the years between 1954 and 1961, Reiner had had two heart attacks, and suffered also from extreme neck pain, the latter likely a result of his rigid conducting. I believe his change in style was the result of his decline in health.

The follow-up companion to this video looks at other famous conductors, filling important gaps left with this volume. Despite that, there are still important names left out, such as Karl Boehm, Hermann Scherchen, Dimitri Mitropoulos, and Igor Markevitch. Meanwhile, until these and other gaps are filled, buy both videos as important reference additions to your library of regular recorded music!

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: A real treasure for any music-lover
Comment: In this video the director Sue Knussen painstakingly assembles a great variety of materials (concerts, vintage and contemporary interviews, rehearsal sessions) so creating ,at the same time, a tribute to the golden-age conductors and a panoramic view of this much-debated artistic figure (demi-gods or show-biz stars as according to N. Lebrecht's infamous book "The maestro myth"?). The authors of the video don't take an explicit position, because they let the music and the people talk (in the best BBC-style), but I can't avoid thinking that there was (still there is?) something really special about these artists: it comes out pretty clearly that conducting is just that what the title says , an art, and as such it's not so easy to explain rationally: it seems to be more about personal charisma, iron will and conductor/orchestra chemistry than pure technique or knowledge of the scores. Isaac Stern says, about Koussevitzky, "He was wonderful, but his technique was, at best, difficult to determine"! The highlights of the video are countless: we see an aged, almost petrified Reiner dominating the Chicago Symphony with a simple look of his eyes, Stokowski literally shaping the sound with the most elegant gestures, Szell being not only a wonderful "scientist" of the orchestra, but also a marvelously civilized conversationalist ( his anecdotes about Strauss' way of conducting are humorous! ), Beecham joking with the musicians, that clearly adore him, and so on..... And Bernstein! He was really unique in his complete "communion" with the music and, as a proof, we see/hear electrifying excerpts of Shostakovich's 5th on rehearsal and in concert: he really seems to recreate the music from deep inside. If some stereotypes (Toscanini's bad temper or Klemperer's cragginess) are confirmed, I also had a few surprises, like the cold , business-like nature of the relationship between Karajan and the Berliners in stark contrast to the sheer love they had for Furtwangler. Some of the contemporary interviews are absolutely fascinating : I could listen to people like Yehudi Menuhin or Isaac Stern for hours! The sound/picture quality is generally very good, even in the oldest footage. All in all, an endless (I've watched it many, many times) source of entertaining knowledge and a towering tribute to some of the greatest artists in the history of recorded and performed music.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: a wonderful video that every musician must own
Comment: I think that this video is perhaps the best music documentary in existence. Not only did i learn a lot about the various great leaders of orchestras of the past, but i found the video truely entertaining. I must have seen the video at least 100 times and I am still not tired of it. I think that this is a gem that belongs on every musicians video shelf.

---