"Director: Christopher Nupen"

• Jacqueline Du Pre - In Portrait | DVD | (02/08/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  JACQUELINE DU PRE's extraordinary career was cut cruelly short by illness in 1973 when she was only 28 years old. When she died 14 years later she remained as vibrant a figure in the public mind as she had been at the pinnacle of her career. Award winning film-maker Christopher Nupen succeeded in capturing the spirit of one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century in his classic documentary JACQUELINE DU PRE and the Elgar Cello Concerto (here restored and digitally re-mastered). This DVD portrait also offers Nupen's film The Ghost featuring a performance of Beethoven's Piano Trio No. 5.Full Performances:Elgar: Cello Concerto in E minor Op. 85 - with Daniel Barenboim conducting the New Philharmonia Orchestra.Beethoven: Piano Trio No. 5 in D major Op. 70 No. 1 (The Ghost) - with Daniel Barenboim (piano) and Pinchas Zukerman (violin).

• Du Pre - a Celebration of Her Unique and Enduring Gift | DVD | (01/09/2007) from £19.66   |  Saving you £5.33 (21.30%)   |  RRP £24.99

  There cannot be too many films of our great performers provided they are made with an honest intention and true to the subject. Why? Because film remembers the artistic persona as nothing else can do in quite the same way.And so, with the technological advance of DVD and with television retreating from its commitment to the arts, DVD has become the best medium that we have today for keeping those astonishing gifts alive in the world.This is particularly true in the case of Jacqueline Du Pre where so many myths have been invented to explain the unexplainable.Happily, DVD does not need to explain, it can present the artist just as she was and in a way that was never possible before the invention of the first silent 16mm cameras in the 1960s - just in time for her.And so this DVD does not take issue with the myths. We have learned anyway that discussion of them tends only to perpetuate and elaborate them.. Neither is good for the reputation of an artist.Instead, this DVD sets out, first, to present Jacqueline Du Pre as seen through the eyes, the ears and the words of the people who knew her best (Who Was Jacqueline Du Pre?) and, second, to present her through her music (Remembering Jacqueline Du Pre).Between those two films the DVD contains a montage of images of Jacqueline Du Pre and Daniel Barenboim in action, taken from our archives and accompanied by an audio recording, made by us, of the first movement of the Brahms E minor cello sonata (Interlude With Johannes Brahms) and an Interview With Jacqueline Du Pre, shot in 1980, which has never been seen before: neither on television, nor on home video.

• Vladimir Ashkenazy: Master Musician | DVD | (29/09/2008) from £20.45   |  Saving you £4.54 (22.20%)   |  RRP £24.99

• Pollini - Piano Concertos (Bohm, Wiener Po) | DVD | (17/10/2005) from £16.59   |  Saving you £5.40 (24.60%)   |  RRP £21.99

  Here are Maurizio Pollini's compelling interpretations - paired with two now legendary conductors - of five piano masterworks performed with the Vienna Philharmonic at home the Musikverein's magnificent golden hall. In Mozart and Beethoven the camera captures the pianist's virtuosity as well as his empathy with Karl Bohm as they document the only two Mozart concertos that Pollini has ever released. For the Brahms concerto Pollini is joined by a young Claudio Abbado creating great music-making in which this essential repertoire is joyfully illuminated by two kindred spirits.

• Jean Sibelius - The Early Years, Maturity And Silence | DVD | (02/10/2006) from £20.55   |  Saving you £4.44 (21.61%)   |  RRP £24.99

  This DVD celebrates the musical quest of one of the great symphonists of the twentieth century; Jean Sibelius, as seen through his music, his letters and the words of his wife Aino, who was with him for more than sixty four years.His quest was not an easy one. Living through the great turning point in Western music, many of his concerns were strikingly similar to those of Schoenberg and Stravinsky but each chose a different path. Sibelius once said that while his colleagues were serving multicoloured cocktails, he offered only pure spring water.The metaphor is a good one but, as so often with artists who take an untrod path, critical opinion has fluctuated wildly. In 1935 Sibelius was voted the most popular composer of all time by the members of The New York Philharmonic Society, a view that was echoed by many of the leading critics and composers in England.By the 1950s critical opinion had relegated Sibelius to a position of minor importance.Views are changing again and the time seems right for an intimate look at what Sibelius himself felt that he was trying to achieve. The two films on this DVD are an attempt to do just that.

• Schubert: The Trout / The Greatest Love And The Greatest Sorrow | DVD | (27/06/2005) from £33.73   |  Saving you £-8.74 (-35.00%)   |  RRP £24.99

  The Trout is an exuberant explosion of youthful enjoyment in music: first from Schubert himself who wrote his famous Trout quintet when he was 22 years old and then from five young artists of the highest rank. They pick up the spirit of Schubert's music magnificently both in preparation and rehearsal and in their 1969 performance of the work which has become one of the most remembered ever given.The Greatest Love and the Greatest Sorrow is a film which sets out to bring the viewer closer not to the details of Schubert's life but to the spirit of what he was trying to express with what he called his creative gift and with which he tried to brighten the world. The film begins with the funeral of Beethoven at which Schubert was a torch-bearer and the story is told almost entirely in music that Schubert wrote in the twenty months that remained to him after that date together with quotations from his letters and diaries and the words that he chose to set in some of his songs.

• Itzhak Perlman - Virtuoso Violinist | DVD | (03/03/2008) from £20.65   |  Saving you £4.34 (21.02%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Itzhak Perlman: Virtuoso Violinist is a documentary DVD containing the following performances: I Know I Played Every Note The Trout Remembered Jacqueline Du Pr Remembered The E Major Bach Partita The D Minor Bach Partita (Including The Great Chaconne)

• Jacqueline Du Pre - Remembering Jacqueline Du Pre | DVD | (06/09/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Jacqueline Dr Pre was an artist with an exuberant personality and seemingly infinite talent who already in her youth was recognised as one of the finest cellists of the century. It is a tragedy that her career was cut short when she was 28 years old. She died in 1987 as the age of 42. This film directed by Christopher Nupen and now available on DVD for the first time contains previously unpublished footage that is at once inspiring and intimately revealing - you can see the musician her friends knew and how spontaneous and natural was her response to the music. The film also contains landmark performances of great music including an excerpt from her memorable performance of Elgar's Cello Concerto.

• Nathan Milstein - in Portrait | DVD | (26/02/2007) from £20.15   |  Saving you £4.84 (19.40%)   |  RRP £24.99

  This DVD portrait celebrates the miraculous gift of one of the finest violinists of the 20th century; Nathan Mironovich Milstein, universally respected by every international musician of his time and genuinely liked by almost all of them.His career spanned 73 years, one of the longest in Western music, and ended with his legendary last recital in Stockholm with Georges Pludermacher.Nathan Milstein was 82 at the time and still playing as the grandest of Grand Masters and as probably no other violinist has played at 82.The two hour portrait film is built around that historic event. The DVD also includes both the Kreutzer Sonata and the Bach Chaconne from that same recital which took place on the 17th of July 1986.

• Antonio Vivaldi - Vivaldi - The Four Seasons | DVD | (21/01/2008) from £22.98   |  Saving you £-6.99 (-43.70%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Tracklisting: Opening Credits / The Four Seasons / Kremer 1. Allegro 2. Largo 3. Allegro (Danza pastorale) 4. Allegro non molto - Allegro 5. Adagio - Presto - Adagio 6. Presto (Tempo impetuoso d'estate) 7. Allegro (Ballo e canto de' villanelli) 8. Adagio molto (Ubriachi dormienti) 9. Allegro (La caccia) 10. Allegro non molto 11. Largo 12. Allegro

• Evgeny Kissin: The Gift of Music | DVD | (04/04/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £7.65