Solti - A Maestro and a Mephisto

http://youtu.be/2O-ClNBcZF0 A musician has the privilege to kick ass if he is of the calibre of Solti. People romanticise about Beethoven; he would throw a chair or kick the teeth out of your mediocrity. There are few geniuses who have zero tolerance of mediocrity! Solti was born in Budapest in 1912. He studied piano, composition, and conducting with Bartok and Leo Weiner. He made his concert debut as a pianist. The Budapest Opera hired him as a conductor. In 1937, Toscanini selected him to assist at the Salzburg Festival. Before the Second World War broke out, Solti went as a refugee to Switzerland. He played piano again to earn. In 1942, he earned first prize in the Concours International in Geneva. After the war in 1946, the American military government invited him to conduct Beethoven’s Fidelio in Munich. The success of this performance led to his appointment as music director of the Bavarian State Opera. He carried forward the reputation of the Opera Company for the period of next six years. In 1952, Solti accepted took over as artistic and music director of the Frankfurt City Opera. He worked there for nine years. From 1961, he became music director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and stayed there for a decade. He recorded the entire Ring with the Vienna Philharmonic, a historic undertaking which required seven years to complete and was the first complete studio recording. I personally feel that this Ring recorded in the sixties and Mahler's `Symphony of a Thousand' remain as definitive recordings of these works. Solti received knighthood in 1972 for his outstanding contribution to music. He was also honoured with a lifetime achievement award in 1996, one year before his death from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Solti has won thirty one Grammy awards. This is probably more than any other popular or classical recording artist.

The Spy who came in from the Cold

The film holds you from the very first frame with the excellent music by Sol Kaplan and the strains of alto saxophone. The film is made on the exciting novel of John Le Carre. Richard Burton deserved an Oscar for his performance here as a disillusioned and dispirited British agent. He is made to act as an undercover agent behind the Iron Curtain - East Germany. His defection is staged but it goes sour as he is arrested and humiliated. He is actually used as a pawn to get a double agent reinstated in Berlin. The camera work by Oswald Morris creates an impact on the film in black and white. The film is very well directed by Martin Ritt. Claire Bloom plays a British communist who loves Alec Leamus (Burton)during the undercover operation phase. The double crosses are so well plotted by Le Carre who also wrote the screenplay for the film. Oskar Werner has played well as Fiedler and so has Peter Van Eyck as Hans Dieter Mundt.

Passions of Ralph Vaughan Williams

http://youtu.be/mUjWo-diK-Y ) This film was screened on the BBC Television in 2008 and a book has also been published describing the passion of Ralph Vaughan Williams with women that he was connected with during his life and the influence it had on his creative compositions and the ideas that were translated into musical thoughts. This is a brilliant documentary done by John Bridcut, giving details about Vaughan Williams' marriage to his disabled wife Adeline and his affair with the woman who became his second wife, Ursula. Bridcut neatly explains the effect these relationships had on the music and demonstrates this by playing some performances of his choral and orchestral works. The film was sot at Cadogan Hall in London and the music is covered by the Philharmonia Orchestra of London, directed by Richard Hickox. The singers are of the Schola Cantorum of Oxford. Among the contributors to this film is the (late) Ursula Vaughan Williams, who was interviewed shortly before she died at the age of 96 in 2008. Once you are through with the film, listen to his Pastoral Symphony. Here is his Third Symphony (called Pastoral) http://youtu.be/cd3nWm2PitI

Anne of the Thousand Days

I was only eleven when I first saw this film in Regal Cinema in Bombay and the film left a spell on me. I could not forget the mesmerising beauty of Genevieve Bujold who plays Anne Boleyn and the majestic performance of Richard Burton who plays Henry VIII. The film is another version of `A Man for All Seasons' but it concentrates more on the King and Anne than on Sir Thomas More, the Chancellor of the Realm. Excellent Music by Georges Dolorue. http://putlocker.bz/watch-anne-of-the-thousand-days-online-free-putlocker.html

An Unexpected Journey

What a trilogy to look forward to!... It has been fifteen years since the drama started with the Fellowship of the Ring and there is still one more to be completed in the Hobbit Tale ...

http://youtu.be/gjASGHl4Q-k This is a visual spectacle which is not easy to beat; and the same can be said about the other four mighty creations by Jackson on the Tolkien sagas of the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit.

Wagner Tannhauser Colin Davis

http://youtu.be/8du71AE0h6o I have always wanted to hear Colin Davis perform a wagner opera. I definitely did not look forward to anyone interpreting Der Ring Des Nibelungen trilogy because, try as anyone might, they will be insipid when compared with Solti. Tannhauser is one opera I wanted to try out Colin Davis and I was not disappointed. It was electrifying from the very first strains of the overture. Colin Davis has the definitive performance on record for Berlioz's Les Troyens and for Mozart's Die Zauberflote. No conductor has done a better job than him on these two operas. This is the Paris Version which was revised fifteen years after the Dresden original. The Venusberg music is soul stirring. Davis is superb in his reading. My personal favourite is Zubin Mehta and the Munchen Oper. When I saw it on the DVD, the Venusberg scenes look supernatural. The singers have also done a great job. Spas Wenkoff has done admirably as Tannhauser. He is dramatic and also has a good voice. Bernd Weikl is also an excellent Wolfram. Gwyneth Jones is the scene stealer as both Elizabeth and Venus. She looks like an accomplished film actress when going through her parts. After Zubin Mehta, this may be the Tannhauser to listen to.

A Man for All Seasons

Highly recommended 1966 masterpiece for Scofield's brilliant portrayal of Sir Thomas More. Excellent music by Georges Dolorue and capable support by Robert Shaw as Henry VIII and Leo McKern as Thomas Cromwell. Zinnemann's masterpiece covers how More stood up to the monarchy and against it during the marriage of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.. alienation with the Roman Church and the pursuit of false loyalty..the film also drives home the importance of what an oath means to a believer.