Dvorak-Symphony No. 9: The Water Goblin (Harnoncourt) (DVD-Audio) (1999) (NTSC)

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General		Extras
Category	Classical	Booklet Gallery Notes-Chronology Audio-Only Track-Also Available Notes-Credits
Rating
Year Of Production	1999
Running Time	64:11
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Friedemann Engelbrecht
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Nikolaus Harnoncourt Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Case	DVD-Audio Jewel
RPI	$32.95	Music	Antonin Dvorak

    It's nice to see well known works such as Dvorák's Ninth Symphony being made available on DVD Audio as it gives us the opportunity to evaluate a familiar musical piece on a new medium.

    In terms of symphonic classical works, Symphony No.9 ‘From the New World’ in E minor Op. 95 – sometimes called ‘The New World Symphony’ – is pretty much a staple item on many concert programmes.

    The title of the symphony comes from the fact that it was written when Antonín Dvorák was residing in America as the professor of composition and artistic director at the National Conservatory in New York. In teaching young composers, he was encouraged to translate his success in creating a musical style inspired from Slavic folk songs by nurturing his students into an idiom for "national American music." Soon he was studying the music of American Negroes and native Americans. Symphony No.9 was conceived and written entirely in America in early 1893 and premiered in New York in December the same year.

    Many have commented on how peculiarly "American" the symphony sounds, and bits of the symphony seem to evocate Negro spirituals, plantation songs or the songs of Stephen Foster. However, Dvorák denies that he was consciously striving for an "American" sound. Even the title was a last minute addition, and intended to mean "Impressions and Greetings from the New World" rather than a homage to America. Perhaps the reverse may be more true - that the symphony may have inspired a whole generation of American composers and Dvorák may have inadvertently shaped the "American" style.

    The second movement is familiar to many people who have never heard the symphony because the melody was attached to lyrics and sung by Paul Robeson as a song entitled "Goin' Home." Indeed some people now mistakenly believe that "Goin' Home" is an American folk song that Dvorák adapted into the symphony!

    This is a "live" performance (recorded in October 1999 at the Concertgebouw Hall in Amsterdam) conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. The audience is surprisingly quiet and I did not notice any coughs or other audience noises during the performance, although I did hear audience murmuring in between movements.

    The interpretation itself is fairly conventional and "mainstream." Harnoncourt was one of the early pioneers of the use of authentic instruments in the performance of early classical music through his ensemble Concentus musicus Wien, but this recording is performed by a conventional orchestra using modern instruments.

    It would be unkind to call the performance "bland" or "mediocre", perhaps "middle of the road" might be a better description. The performance does not have the thrill and excitement of say István Kertész's famous 1963 recording with the London Symphony Orchestra. However, it is a very competent and listenable rendition (apart from one or two passages which sounded a bit "strange" to my ears), and certainly welcomed in my living room.

    The second piece on the disc is a symphonic poem entitled ‘Vodnik’, or ‘The Water Goblin.’ It is not familiar to me, but was very listenable and is a good companion piece to the symphony.

Video

    Like most of Warner DVD-Audio discs released to date, the video content on this disc is in full frame NTSC and consists of a number of stills - textual and photographic.

    Incidentally, I noted that the disc will not play on my Pioneer DV-626D DVD player nor on PowerDVD 4.0 XP (it displays an error code 80070057 - the parameter is incorrect) but will play on Windows Media Player. This could be an authoring error.

Video Ratings Summary

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Film Artefacts
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Audio

    There are two audio tracks on this disc: MLP 96/24 5.1 on the DVD-Audio portion of the disc and Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 Kb/s) on the DVD-Video portion of the disc. The back cover of the disc mentions that it can be played as "Advanced Resolution Stereo" but neglects to mention that this is done by the player down-mixing the multi-channel track. I was somewhat disappointed that Warner has chosen not to include a high resolution stereo track on this disc - so those of you who prefer listening to music in stereo be warned.

    I listened to both tracks in their entirety. I was not able to source a CD (stereo) version for comparison purposes.

    This is an astounding and "realistic" recording on DVD Audio - I felt like I was transported directly into the concert hall and if I closed my eyes I can imagine sitting in the best concert seat in the hall with the orchestra directly in front of me. Timbre, micro-dynamics, reverberation/decay - everything sounded "perfect." The rear channels were used extend the soundstage into three dimensions and thankfully the engineer has opted for an "immersive but front focused" mix rather than position the listener right in the middle of the orchestra.

    The subwoofer track is used discreetly to enhance the "thump" of the percussion and the centre channel is actively used to supplement the front left and right speakers.

    In comparison, the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track still sounds quite good, but the whole illusion of "being there" disappeared. This is a good recording to demonstrate that there is an audible difference between a high resolution audio track and a compressed version.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    As is typical for other Warner DVD-Audio discs, the extras are mainly a set of textual and photographic stills with the exception of the inclusion of the tracks/excerpts from other Warner/Teldec DVD Audio discs.

Menu

    Full frame and static. The navigation to the surround music track follows standard Warner principles (the disc starts up at the Main menu (after displaying several logos), and pressing Enter twice will commence playback).

Booklet

    This is a 24 page booklet containing a picture of Antonín Dvorák, track listing, an essay by Klaus Döge, programme notes from the first performance of Vodnik, a short biography of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, production credits and two pages on DVD Audio. The essay, programme notes and biography are provided in English, German and French.

Notes-Chronology

    This consists of eight stills (available in English, German and French) containing text that chronicles the major events in Dvorák's life from his arrival in America (1892) until his death in Prague (1901).

Audio-Only Track-Also Available

    This contains a number of stills of other DVD Audios available from the WEA/Teldec catalogue. In a DVD Audio player, you can also hear an excerpt from the disc in MLP 5.1 96/24. On DVD Video all you get is the cover picture:

• Nikolaus Harnoncourt/Berlin Philharmoniker: Johann Strauß in Berlin
• Zubin Mehta/London Philharmonic: Carl Orff Carmina Burana
• Zubin Mehta/Israel Philharmonic Orchestra/Prague Philharmonic Choir: Mahler Symphony No. 2 ("Resurrection")
• Ton Koopman: Bach Organ Spectacular
• Messiaen: Vingt Regards
• Baremboim/Berliner Staatskapelle: Beethoven Symphonies Nos 1 & 2
• Baremboim/Berliner Staatskapelle: Beethoven Symphonies No. 3
• Baremboim/Berliner Staatskapelle: Beethoven Symphonies Nos 4 & 5
• Baremboim/Berliner Staatskapelle: Beethoven Symphonies No. 6
• Baremboim/Berliner Staatskapelle: Beethoven Symphonies Nos 7 & 8
• Baremboim/Berliner Staatskapelle: Beethoven Symphonies No. 9

Notes-Credits

    This consists of three stills displayed in sequence crediting those involved in the recording and the production of the DVD Audio. This information is also available in the accompanying booklet.

    This disc appears to be identically featured across all regions.

    Nikolaus Harnoncourt/Royal Concertegebouw Orchestra: Dvorák Symphony No. 9 'From The New World'/The Water Goblin is a DVD-Audio containing a superb reference quality multi-channel recording of a live performance of one of the composer's most well know works, together with a symphonic poem as a "filler." This disc is eminently suitable to convince classical music lovers why listening to their favourite works in high resolution multi-channel is a Good Thing. It's a pity there is no stereo only track to compare against.

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