"Actor: Georg"

• Great Composers - Vol. 3 - Mahler / Tchaikovsky / Puccini | DVD | (18/03/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  This three-hour compilation surveying the life and works of Tchaikovsky, Puccini and Mahler completes the BBC Great Composers series (the two previous releases contain the pairings of Bach/Mozart and Beethoven/Wagner). It's a splendid series, full of judiciously collected biographical information, lively and telling visuals, colourful anecdotes and excellent excerpted performances of the composers' best works. The directors' styles are very different, from Kriss Rusmanis' impressionistic approach (with an early chamber piece of Mahler's accompanied by shots of rippling brooks and dappled sunlight) to Chris Hunt's more forthright take on Puccini, but each is well tailored to the subject matter. There is a certain amount of psychological speculation in each case (Mahler may have inherited his sense of irony from watching nine of his siblings die while the jolly life of his father's tavern continued unabated, for example) but there's nothing outrageous. If you haven't hooked up your TV to some decent speakers the performances may sound a little pinched, but they are so good the quality shines through nonetheless; particularly noteworthy is Thomas Hampson's glorious reading of excerpts from Kindertotenlieder, and Georg Solti is on top form. On the DVD: Great Composers on disc comes with subtitles in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian, but no other special features. --Warwick Thompson

• Nosferatu | DVD | (16/11/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Nosferatu ... the name alone can chill the blood!". F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, released in 1922, was the first (albeit unofficial) screen adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Nearly 80 years on, it remains among the most potent and disturbing horror films ever made. The sight of Max Schreck's hollow-eyed, cadaverous vampire rising creakily from his coffin still has the ability to chill the blood. Nor has the film dated. Murnau's elision of sex and disease lends it a surprisingly contemporary resonance. The director and his screenwriter Henrik Gaalen are true to the source material, but where most subsequent screen Draculas (whether Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Frank Langella or Gary Oldman) were portrayed as cultured and aristocratic, Nosferatu is verminous and evil. (Whenever he appears, rats follow in his wake.)The film's full title--Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror)--reveals something of Murnau's intentions. Supremely stylised, it differs from Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919) or Ernst Lubitsch's films of the period in that it was not shot entirely in the studio. Murnau went out on location in his native Westphalia. As a counterpoint to the nightmarish world inhabited by Nosferatu, he used imagery of hills, clouds, trees and mountains (it is, after all, sunlight that destroys the vampire). It's not hard to spot the similarity between the gangsters in film noir hugging doorways or creeping up staircases with the image of Schreck's diabolic Nosferatu, bathed in shadow, sidling his way toward a new victim. Heavy chiaroscuro, oblique camera angles and jarring close-ups--the devices that crank up the tension in Val Lewton horror movies and edgy, urban thrillers such as Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice--were all to be found first in Murnau's chilling masterpiece. --Geoffrey Macnab

• M | DVD | (13/09/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Peter Lorre made film history with his startling performance as a psychotic murderer of children. Too elusive for the Berlin police, the killer is sought and marked by underworld criminals who are feeling the official fallout for his crimes. This riveting, 1931 German drama by Fritz Lang--an early talkie--unfolds against a breathtakingly expressionistic backdrop of shadows and clutter, an atmosphere of predestination that seems to be closing in on Lorre's terrified villain. M is an important piece of cinema's past along with a number of Lang's early German works, including Metropolis and Spies. (Lang eventually brought his influence directly to the American cinema in such films as Fury, They Clash by Night and The Big Heat.) M shouldn't be missed. This original 111-minute version is a little different from what most people have seen in the cinema. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• Bester Mann / Label Me | DVD | (29/06/2020) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• La Damnation De Faust - Berlioz | DVD | (03/01/2006) from £54.99   |  Saving you £-35.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Hector Berlioz's (1803-1869) legende dramatique about a man named Faust who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge. Recorded live at the Royal Albert Hall in 1989. Georg Solti conducts.

• Breathing | Blu Ray | (10/09/2012) from £9.59   |  Saving you £10.40 (108.45%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Roman Kogler (Thomas Schubert) is 19 years old and has lived all his life in institutions. Abandoned by his mother as a young child and raised in an orphanage, he is now serving time in a juvenile detention centre having accidentally killed a boy of his own age in a brawl. A solitary boy with an uncommunicative attitude, he has no friends, family or connections to turn to in the outside world. But when threatened with a life behind bars unless he finds a job and sticks to it, he eventually finds a probation job shifting dead bodies at the municipal morgue in Vienna. When Roman is one day faced with a dead woman who bears his family name, it occurs to him that this may be the mother who gave him up for adoption and he begins to explore his past.

• Kiri Te Kanawa - Dame Kiri Te Kanawa - A Portrait | DVD | (24/08/2001) from £21.58   |  Saving you £-1.59 (-8.00%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A portrait of one of the most famous sopranos of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries filmed over a year. The camera follows her on her trips to New Zealand and the San Francicsco Opera. The DVD also includes recordings of Arias by Handel Charpentier Puccini Cilea and Richard Strauss.

• Great Composers - Vol. 2 - Beethoven / Wagner | DVD | (25/02/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  The second volume of the BBC's excellent Great Composers series consists of two hour-long episodes devoted to Beethoven and Wagner respectively. The format in both cases is that of a standard "life and works" biography, but what makes these episodes so attractive is the high quality of the visual material and the engrossing nature of the insights offered from the contributors. For example, it's fascinating to hear the lead violin of the Lindsay Quartet discuss the personal significance of a certain Beethoven phrase just after Charles Rosen has drawn a parallel with the composer's use of form and the speeches of Robespierre. If this makes the whole project sound as wholesome and dull as dry muesli, everyone also seems alive to the human idiosyncrasies of the subjects: we learn, among other things, that the utterly humourless Cosima Wagner used to keep her husband's eyelashes and carry them around with her in a bag. The musical excerpts are both performed--by the Berlin State Opera Orchestra and other groups--and filmed with panache. Kenneth Branagh narrates. All in all, a good introduction to both composers.--Warwick Thompson

• 21 Hours At Munich | DVD | (23/01/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Based on the true story of terrorism striking at the 1972 Olympics in Germany this film does not spare viewers the violence and intensity of the real event. A Munich police chief learns that during the games a group of Palestinian extremists have kidnapped members of the Israeli team. With the help of a brave policewoman the cops negotiate with the terrorists in an attempt to buy time until the authorities can devise a rescue plan. As time ticks away the skirmishes escalate into gu

• 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance | DVD | (25/05/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Haneke's articulate critique of the isolating effects of western society the media and television in particular is composed of an intricate series of unrelated scenes culminating in an apparently motiveless act of violence. Perfectly paced and executed Haneke's skilful weaving of these tableaux into a coherent and compelling whole is mesmerising and strangely beautiful.

• Verdi - Un Ballo In Maschera - Verdi | DVD | (01/04/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  John Schlesinger directs Placido Domingo in Verdi's opera...

• Wagner: Die Meistersinger Von Nurn | Blu Ray | (28/07/2014) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Monteverdi: L'Orfeo (Teatro alla Scala di Milano 2009) | Blu Ray | (31/01/2011) from £26.81   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Orchestra! | DVD | (10/09/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Hosted by Sir Georg Solti and Hollywood star Dudley Moore Orchestra! is the landmark Channel 4 TV series from 1991 introducing the modern symphony orchestra. The 2-DVD set traces the development of the orchestra from the time of Bach and Handel to the present day. It includes all eight programmes originally broadcast on Channel 4: 1. Introduction to the Orchestra 2. Upper Strings 3. Woodwind 4. Lower Strings 5. Brass 6. Percussion 7. Piano 8. The Conductor Featuring young musicians from around the world this is an entertaining and educational celebration of the orchestra.

• Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 3 / Igor Stravinsky: Symphony In Three Movements | DVD | (25/02/2002) from £5.39   |  Saving you £15.86 (384.02%)   |  RRP £19.99

  This DVD consists of two live concerts given by Sir George Solti with the Baravian Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1993 at the Philharmonic am Gasteig in Munich.

• Wagner: Lohengrin (Bayreuth Festival 2011) (Opus Arte: OABD7103D) | Blu Ray | (28/05/2012) from £25.65   |  Saving you £4.34 (16.92%)   |  RRP £29.99

  OA 7103D; OPUS ARTE - BBC - Inghilterra; Classica Lirica

• Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 1 / Symphony No. 7 / Overture To Coriolan | DVD | (18/12/2000) from £22.19   |  Saving you £-2.20 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The London Symphony Orchestra, Solti and Perahia in an all-Beethoven performance could hardly be anything but first class. This concert, which took place in 1987 to mark the fifth anniversary of the opening of the Barbican Arts Centre in London, also benefits from Solti's astute programming. Asked that his choice of music should reflect the policy of the venue in offering "variety in unity", the conductor selected the brief but thickly textured Coriolan Overture (splendidly un-ponderous under Solti's baton), the sprightly First Piano Concerto (here handled with kid gloves by Perahia) and the ebullient Seventh Symphony. The latter is marred at the outset by a spot-the-downbeat domino effect from the orchestra but this is swept away after a few bars to allow Solti's usual bravura to carry the concept off superbly, although his energised and convulsive old-school podium style is infuriatingly distracting when exposed to the merciless scrutiny of the cameras. Musically, however, the results are a delight, with some immaculate section playing, notably from the woodwinds. The disc includes a trailer for two other Arthaus releases. --Roger Thomas

• Bach: Mass In B Minor BWV 232 | DVD | (02/05/2006) from £14.69   |  Saving you £3.30 (22.46%)   |  RRP £17.99

  A recording as pleasing to the ear as it is rich in atmosphere: Bach's B minor Mass the composer's final work is presented here by Georg Christoph Biller - like his illustrious predecessor Thomaskantor in Leipzig - conducting that very boys' choir Bach himself directed for twenty-seven years the world-famous. Thomanerchor. And even the convert's location is a guarantee of authenticity: the city's Thomaskirche for which Bach wrote most of his church music.Mass in B minor BWV232Recorded at the Thomaskirche Leipzig 28 July 2000.

• Solti - The Making Of A Maestro | DVD | (15/10/2001) from £25.90   |  Saving you £-5.91 (-29.60%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Making of a Maestro is a moving film of the life of conductor Sir Georg Solti, completed by producer/director Peter Maniura shortly before Solti's death in 1997. One of the most dynamic conductors of the 20th century, Solti gained something of a reputation as a tartar on the rostrum--"like playing for Mephisto," as one member of the Chicago Symphony puts it. Yet it's theatre director Sir Peter Hall's phrase, "a deeply lyrical soul", that comes to the fore watching this beautifully photographed film from the BBC's Omnibus series. Solti may have driven his orchestras and singers to a point where some of them felt cajoling became bullying, but it was always at the service of the music. This documentary sensibly does not take a view on Solti's ranking in the hierarchy of great conductors; instead Maniura wisely lets the conductor's words tell the story, making this film a very personal one. Over half the running time is devoted to Solti's upbringing and post-war years in Munich, where he built up the bombed-out opera house from scratch. Solti's friendship with Richard Strauss makes for a poignant interlude. His initial unpopularity at Covent Garden, where the opera posters were frequently daubed "Solti must go", his achievement at raising their orchestral standards, as well as his later starrier role as conductor of the Chicago Symphony, are also given their full due. Maniura handles the musical soundtrack with sensitivity, pointing up many striking images with music to create indelible impressions. The film concludes with Solti at his grandparents' grave reflecting without bitterness on those relatives--such as his father--who were never buried but disappeared in the Holocaust. The Making of a Maestro is an inspirational film from which the viewer cannot but help take heart. On the DVD: No special features to speak of, although the DVD trailer promotes other ArtHaus Musik productions, including their award-winning Damnation of Faust, the Penderecki choral work The Seven Gates of Jerusalem, Claudio Abbado conducting a New Year's Gala and Herbert Blomstedt a performance of Beethoven's Fifth.--Adrian Edwards

• Georg Solti - In Rehearsal | DVD | (24/10/2003) from £19.02   |  Saving you £0.97 (4.90%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A look at the conductor Georg Solti during his time as music director at Covent Garden. Rehearsals and performances include Wagner's Tannhauser and Berlioz's Hungarian March.