Welcome again to our Newsletter. We've selected some interesting new releases for your attention.
We're often asked how do we keep up with the constant stream of new titles. It's our job, and passion to read about, and listen to, as many of these titles as possible, and present the pick of the crop.
We hope you find plenty to interest you.
We've also just unpacked a shipment of budget titles from the US, and a shipment of JAZZ on VINYL at $20 for single LP's - please come in and check them out.
The films of Tony Palmer
TONY PALMER's vast filmography of over one hundred films ranges from early works with The Beatles, Cream, Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa (200 Motels), to the famous portraits with and about Walton, Britten, Stravinsky, Maria Callas, John Osborne, Margot Fonteyn and Menuhin.
Below is a selection of these great films on DVD, for a limited time, at $25 each.
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| A stunning new film about composer Ralph Vaughan Williams challenges the myths that obscure his legacy - and exposes the darkness that permeates his work. $25 | This is a wonderful and emotionally charged biography of violinist Yehudi Menuhin. Filmmaker Tony Palmer has created something of a video biographical miracle. 'Menuhin: A Family Portrait' is a fascinatingly detailed portrait of the growth of an artist. $25 | Coming in at over two hours and featuring interviews with those who knew her best, Margot is never less than compelling, and the mass of archive footage of Fonteyn’s finest performances make it an absolute must-buy for any ballet lover, or indeed anyone who wishes to recall when celebrity was inexorably attached to a pure and elegant talent. $25 |
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| Rachmaninoff's passionate music is more popular today than it has ever been. This 100-minute documentary, filmed in Russia, Switzerland and America, made with the full participation of the composer's grandson, Alexander Rachmaninoff, celebrates the life and work of a remarkable musician and composer of genius who, forced into exile in 1917, became the greatest pianist of his day. $25 | Palmer has a rare gift for humanising distantly historical characters - the film touches some profound truths about the personalities behind the music. $25 | Tony Palmer has given us many remarkable films about composers, but this is probably the finest of them all...As an introduction to Stravinsky it would be hard to beat. The initiated too will learn plenty. |
    Available as 4 2DVD sets, at $50 each | ||
Watch a preview HERE “…this is the most exciting staging I've seen - slightly recalling Cirque du Soleil, perhaps, except that here the spectacle is wholly and intelligently at Wagner's service. Scenery combines dazzlingly mobile 3D computer projections on a towering cyclorama, with groups of acrobats. Inevitably some imagery works better than others; the harpyish Rhinemaidens, literally giving birth to the gold, are less compelling than the planetary descent to Nibelheim, or Walküre's opening wolf-chase and gleaming Tree, in which Wotan's ravens perch, and which scatters Siegmund's name like falling leaves. Against these amazing backgrounds the Gods, futuristically costumed, glide high above the stage on individual gantries propelled by 'invisible' stagehands... they're no barrier to keenly dramatic, involving performances from a fine cast, with some superb principals. ...it's all beautifully recorded on DVD - but on Blu-ray it's simply breathtaking, pin-sharp images and airy surround-sound drawing one into the Valencia stage with almost 3D effect. Wagner still responds best to Romantic imagery; but this redefines it on a cosmic scale. It's the finest Ring on video so far.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2010 ***** |
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| The finest Pavarotti boxed set on the market, an ideal gift for collectors! This beautifully presented 'signature' edition (in a matte-finish clamshell box with silver-embossed detail) features almost 150 superb tracks from the world's most beloved tenor, on 9 CDs with a bonus live concert DVD from the Gran Teatre Del Liceu in 1989. ONLY $55 |
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| The mercurial partnership of Angela Hewitt and Daniel Muller Schott brought 'overwhelming intensity and emotional gravitas’ to a first disc of Beethoven’s cello sonatas (CDA67633). Here in a second volume they present two more of these groundbreaking masterpieces, together with the composer’s homages to Mozart and Handel—works which are equally important additions to the cello repertoire. $35 | The performing team of Piers Lane and the Goldner String Quartet has won many plaudits for their enlightening interpretations of the obscurer piano quintet repertoire: Bloch (CDA67638) and Bridge (CDA67726). Now they turn to a composer who triumphed in the genre. Dvorak’s two piano quintets were written at different stages of the composer’s career: the first during a period of poverty and uncertainty, the second when the composer was approaching the zenith of his international fame. Performances of technical polish and expressive power, sensitively recorded, make this a chamber disc to treasure! $20 LIMITED TIME | 2 CDs for the price of 1! Bound to be considered a new definitive recording, this complete Swan Lake features star conductor Mikhail Pletnev and his Russian National Orchestra – an absolute masterpiece of Russian orchestral music. Swan Lake has come to be regarded as the very quintessence of Russian ballet. This CD marks the 20th anniversary of Pletnev's acclaimed RNO, listed by Gramophone as one of the top ten orchestras internationally. $35 |
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| Few composers can have boasted quite such a colourful life as the medieval poet Oswald von Wolkenstein. Raised in a Tyrolean castle, in a world ripped apart by the Black Death epidemic and by religious turmoil, Wolkenstein became something of a wandering knight with a complicated private life. If his travels enriched his writings, they also enriched the musical form, as he incorporated French songs into the German style. Andreas Scholl's creamy and communicative countertenor voice has greatly endeared him to critics and public alike. $35 | SUPER AUDIO CD ‘Rarely does a new recording supersede all before it, but that is the case with the London Symphony Orchestra's new performance of Prokofiev's ballet score, Romeo and Juliet…an indispensable release.’ (The Australian 5-star review). 'Most concert conductors only take bites out of Prokofiev's virile but lengthy ballet. Not Valery Gergiev. He knows that the complete score is a treasure chest of musical characterisation, orchestral colour, soaring melody and blasting drama: manna from heaven for himself and the London Symphony Orchestra' (The Times). $50 | Following his Gramophone Award-winning Debussy cycle, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet now embarks on the Haydn Piano Sonatas, and confirms that he should in no way be pigeon-holed in French repertoire. Few leading pianists have recorded these virtuosic Classical sonatas but Bavouzet felt he had something new to contribute. He plays a Yamaha grand, imported from France and beautifully suited to the timbre he wanted to achieve. The programme for Volume 1 contains the experimental and ambitious Sonata in A flat major No.31, the elegantly virtuosic Sonata in D major No.39l, the expressive Sonata in B minor No.47 and the almost Schubertian Sonata in C sharp minor No.49. $25 LIMITED TIME |
