Beethoven-Complete Piano Concertos (Staatskapelle Berlin/Barenboim) (2007) (NTSC)

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General		Extras
Category	Classical	Main Menu Audio & Animation Booklet Trailer-4
Rating
Year Of Production	2007
Running Time	197:42
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (54:52) Dual Disc Set	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Michael Beyer
Studio Distributor	Euroarts Select Audio-Visual Distrib	Starring	Daniel Barenboim
Case	Custom Packaging
RPI	$89.95	Music	Ludwig Van Beethoven

Video (NTSC)		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	Audio Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Audio dts 5.1 (768Kb/s) Audio Linear PCM 48/16 2.0 (1536Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	480i (NTSC)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Beethoven's five concertos for piano and orchestra span his early and middle years. The Second was written when he was still a teenager, though it wasn't published until after he wrote his First Concerto ten years later, hence the out-of-sequence numbering. The Fifth was completed when he was forty.

    The first two concertos are less distinctive than the remainder, as if in between the Second and the Third Beethoven found his voice and his way of constructing a work. The Fifth, which subsequently became known as the Emperor, is one of the most popular of all concertos.

    This disc contains a series of performances from the Klavier-Festival Ruhr in May 2007, with the concertos played by Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin. Barenboim not only plays the piano part but conducts as well. This is no barrier to successful performances and the earlier piano concertos come off without any hitches. In the Fourth Concerto there are some unusual variations in tempo during the last movement which I found disconcerting, and the Fifth is also affected in a similar fashion. Nonetheless these are good performances and are well recorded, perhaps too well recorded in some ways.

    The hall is somewhat unusual. The Jahrhunderthalle in the city of Bochum used to be part of a gasworks. Designed in the early 1900s, it was a striking building as a factory, with designs similar to that of a cathedral. After the gasworks closed it lay idle until it was refurbished as a concert hall. There are visible internal steel arches, bare walls and glass skylights and windows. This makes for a striking-looking concert hall, but in respect of video compression it does lead to some problems.

Video

    I watched these two NTSC discs upscaled to 1280x720p. The 16x9 enhanced video is in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, which appears to be the original aspect ratio.

    The concerts appear to have been held in daylight hours, but internally there is additional lighting which is quite bright, so everything is clear. Detail is reasonable, and colour is good.

    Shadow detail is particularly fine. Although Barenboim chooses to wear a black suit with a black shirt, all of the folds and seams are clearly defined. One can even see the black stitching on the hems of his sleeves.

    Video artefacts are rampant. There is plenty of aliasing, on the strings of the piano and the orchestra's implements, on the structure of the hall and even in the audience in wider shots. There is also a lot of Gibb Effect. Some chroma noise can be seen in two or three instances in the background.

    There are no subtitles. Both discs are RSDL-formatted. On Disc One which contains the first three concertos the layer break occurs at 54:52 in the break between the second and third movements of the Second Concerto. On Disc Two the break is at 38:35, between the two works.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    As seems always to be the case with Euroarts, there are three audio tracks to choose from. I listened to the DTS 5.1 tracks in full and sampled the others, which are Dolby Digital 5.1 and Linear PCM 2.0.

    The audio is generally excellent, with a full range of dynamics for the piano and plenty of detail in the orchestra. The mix is very much towards the front channels, the piano across all three (Barenboim sits with his back to the audience). The rear channels are used for concert hall ambience and audience noise. The low frequency effects channel gets a lot of use, resulting in a rich and often loud bass.

    This bass reinforcement overemphasizes one quibble I have with the audio, in that the sound of the pianist's pedalling comes across as loud thumps. I found this a little distracting. This effect can be heard in all three audio tracks.

    The Dolby Digital track is not much different to the DTS, though perhaps the overall sound is less rich by a small margin. The Linear PCM track is excellent, given a much more rounded and three-dimensional sound to the piano.

    I heard no issues with audio sync.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    The two-disc set comes in a digipack inside a cardboard slipcase.

Main Menu Audio and Animation

    As usual, the audio disappears when returning to the main menu after watching the programme or navigating to another menu.

Booklet

    The booklet contains essays about the works, pianist/conductor and orchestra, as well as a tracklist and some photos. The essays appear in several languages.

Trailers (10:52)

    There are four trailers on Disc Two for other Euroarts releases.

    This release is available internationally, and appears to be the same everywhere.

    Good performances of these wonderful concertos.

    The video quality is problematic on a large screen.

    The audio quality is very good apart from the thumping of the pedals.

    No significant extra material.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall