Beethoven-Complete Violin Sonatas, The (Mutter) (1999) (NTSC)

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General		Extras
Category	Classical	Booklet Featurette-Anne-Sophie Mutter: A Life With Beethoven
Rating
Year Of Production	1999
Running Time	335:55
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL Dual Disc Set	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	David Stevens
Studio Distributor	RM Associates Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	Anne-Sophie Mutter Lambert Orkis
Case	Scanavo-Opaque-Dual
RPI	$34.95	Music	Ludwig Van Beethoven

Video (NTSC)		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Auto Pan & Scan Encoded	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	German French Chinese	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Beethoven - The Complete Violin Sonatas is a double DVD set containing famous violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter performing all ten of Ludwig van Beethoven's sonatas for piano and violin, accompanied by pianist Lambert Orkis. In addition, there is a 1 hour accompanying documentary included on the second DVD.

    The videos are taken from live performances where the two musicians perform the entire cycle of sonatas in chronological sequence over three nights. Both Anne-Sophie and Lambert embarked on a world tour to perform the sonatas in 1998, and this recording captures their performances held at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris, on October 1998. Given that it is a BBC co-production, I suspect these recordings may have been broadcast on various TV stations around the world in 1999, although I can't recall them being shown on Australian TV.

    Each sonata comes with its own opening and closing titles and credits, featuring an exterior shot of the River Seine with the evening traffic moving along a bridge. Anne-Sophie wears a ravishing blue satin dress on the first night (the first five sonatas), and a tight-fitting black dress with a floral motif on the second and third nights.

    Although Lambert does rely on sheet music during the performances, Anne-Sophie appears to be playing all ten sonatas from memory. Given that each sonata has a duration of approximately half an hour, this is certainly no easy task, as we talking about almost 5 hours of music packed onto two DVDs.

    These performances features a number of "role-reversals" from conventions prevalent during Beethoven's time. First of all, the violin in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was probably regarded as a "male" instrument - it was customary for the "master of the house" to take up his fiddle to play a tune (just think of Sherlock Holmes and you know what I mean), perhaps accompanied by his wife and daughter on the piano. Yet on this recording we have a woman playing the violin accompanied by a male on the piano.

    The second "role reversal" concerns the role of the instruments with respect to each other within the sonata. Traditionally, the piano was considered the "main" instrument given its polyphonic capabilities and the violin was mainly used to support or reinforce the melody. A gifted violinist may choose to improvise around the melody, but certainly the actual music notation for the violin part will reflect its status in terms of accompanying the piano rather than leading the music.

    Beethoven, being the rebel that he wa, soon began to rattle that convention and even by Sonata No. 3 (written fairly early in Beethoven's career and published in Vienna in 1799 dedicated to Antonio Salieri - remember him in the film Amadeus?) the violin part takes on a much more aggressive, leading role. As we progress down to the later sonatas, we increasingly find the violin leading the sonata in terms of introducing themes, exchanging themes with the piano, or even embarking on themes in its own right.

    What I found fascinating when listening to these sonatas one after another is that they trace the progression of Beethoven as a composer. The romantic notion of Beethoven is that of a tormented genius continually striving to expand and finally break away from the traditional musical structures of Mozart and Haydn, whilst at the same time fighting the personal tragedy of encroaching deafness. Even the most popular portrait of Beethoven shows him with wild, unkempt hair.

    It was interesting to actually be able to hear the revolution that went on within Beethoven in the actual musical style of his work. For example, even in the first three sonatas (Op. 12) we see this evolution cum revolution. The first two sonatas (No. 1 and No. 2) are almost a parody of Mozart in their rigid adherence to sonata rules and proves that Beethoven was never very good when he tried to imitate someone else (he wrote terrible fugues, for instance, even though he was a strong admirer of Bach). By Sonata No. 3, we start to see the real and more familiar Beethoven emerge - a bombastic and virtuosic first movement, an introspective and melancholic second movement concluded by a mischievous and playful third movement.

    The more famous sonatas, like No. 5 op. 24 ("Spring") and the "Kreutzer" (No. 9 op. 47) of course are familiar to most classical music lovers and need no elaboration (but why is it that the sonatas with name tags associated with them tend to be more famous than the ones without?). The "Kreutzer" in particular is a masterpiece of middle-period Beethoven, written in close collaboration with and intended for playback by Polish virtuoso violinist George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower. Due to the extraordinary falling out between the two men just before it was completed, Beethoven dedicated it to Rodolphe Kreutzer instead who in all probability never even played it.

    Anne-Sophie Mutter almost needs no introduction - she is one of the most well-known violinists of our time, ever since she was "discovered" by the late Herbert von Karajan (who was the chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic for many years and seems to have released more classical recordings than I can easily count). Since then she has gone from strength to strength. As well as being a superb violinist, she is also blessed with striking supermodel-like looks and I suspect she probably features in the fantasies of many a red-blooded classical music fan.

    I have not heard of Lambert Orkis before, and I must admit I initially thought he must be a French pianist. I was therefore surprised to find out in the accompanying documentary (entitled "A Life with Beethoven") that he has an American accent.

    Anne-Sophie is of course in top form in these performances, and her interpretation shows an emotional maturity layering on top of her technical mastery. She has certainly progressed from being a precocious protégé of Karajan to a master musician in her own right. Lambert's performances are delightful, imbuing a delicate, almost Mozartean touch to the music and yet he can perform the typically Beethovenian flourishes with aplomb.

Video

    This is an excellent transfer presented in NTSC widescreen 1.78:1 with 16x9 enhancement. There is automatic pan & scan information encoded to allow the feature to be viewed with no black bars on a standard TV, but I did not enable this.

    Given that this is a European production, I was surprised that we did not get a PAL version, but I suppose the DVD authors wanted to issue a global no-region coded release and NTSC was chosen as a "lowest common denominator" format.

    Nevertheless, the transfer is pleasing enough, with excellent sharpness (except for very occasional focus lapses) and revealing shadow detail (in some scenes, I can just make out the shadowy outline of the third cameraman backstage and I could also count the scratches on the stage floor). Colour saturation was likewise perfect.

    The video source is extremely clean with no instances of low level video noise at all. There are occasional minor video glitches which led me to suspect that the transfer may have been sourced from an analogue rather than a digital video master, but honestly I would never have suspected this if the glitches weren't present.

    There are no subtitles for the main feature but there are three subtitle tracks for the accompanying documentary.

    This is a two DVD set consisting of two single sided dual layered discs. Unfortunately, I was not able to determine where the layer changes occur as they have been placed in between sonatas and the DVD has been authored in such a way that I could not play all sonatas contiguously (each sonata has to be individually selected for playback from the menus).

Video Ratings Summary

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Shadow Detail
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Audio

    There is only one audio track on this disc: Linear PCM 48/16 2.0 (1536 Kb/s). Apart from a slight harshness in the timbre of the violin (which may be intentional) the audio track is basically CD quality and I certainly have no complaints.

    There is no dialogue apart from within the accompanying documentary. I did not detect any audio synchronisation issues.

    Needless to say, there is no surround or subwoofer activity in the stereo PCM track.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
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Surround Channel Use
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Overall

    Apart from an extensive accompanying booklet, the only extra on this DVD set is a documentary, but it is a fairly substantial one (nearly 1 hour long). As both the booklet and documentary are quite "weighty" and substantive, I will award a reasonably high rating for the extras.

Menu

    The menus are full frame and static, and available in two languages (English and Chinese). I would have preferred that the menus be 16x9 enhanced to match the content of the DVD.

Booklet

    This is a fairly thick (36 pages including front and back covers) booklet containing:

• Chapter titles and timings
• An article entitled Beethoven: The Violin Sonatas by Tully Porter
• A sidenote entitled Anne-Sophie Mutter: Beethoven's Violin Sonatas
• A sidenote entitled Anne-Sophie Mutter: A Life with Beethoven
• Black and white photos/prints of Ludwig van Beethoven, Anne-Sophie Mutter and Lambert Orkis
• Production credits

    The articles are provided in English, German and French.

Featurette-Anne-Sophie Mutter: A Life With Beethoven (59:01)

    This is a rather extensive documentary, presented in 1.78:1 with 16x9 enhancement and Linear PCM audio.

    Anne-Sophie Mutter does the narration, and talks about her development as a musician and the influence of Herbert von Karajan. Anne-Sophie and Lambert Orkis analyse the structure of several of the violin sonatas, including No. 1, 7 and 10 and we also get to see excerpts of a young Anne-Sophie performing Beethoven's Violin Concerto with Karajan.

    Anne-Sophie also visits the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn and the Museum Tinguely in Basle where she talks about Beethoven. In addition, we also get comments about Anne-Sophie's violin from violin maker Etienne Vatelot and additional comments by conductor Paul Sacher.

    The quality of the transfer matches the quality of the sonata performances, apart from the footage of the Violin Concerto which is taken from an old analogue video tape and show signs of video degradation (faded colours, softness, etc.)

    This is a non-region coded NTSC disc and is presumably the same around the world. Having said that though, I can't seem to find any evidence of this two disc set being available on US web sites. There is a single disc version (entitled A Life With Beethoven) available containing only the documentary plus two sonatas (the "Spring" and "Kreutzer"). I would prefer the two-disc version just for the sake of completeness.

    Beethoven: The Complete Violin Sonatas features excellent performances of all ten violin sonatas composed by Ludwig van Beethoven by violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and pianist Lambert Orkis. It is presented on a two DVD set containing excellent (though NTSC) 16x9 enhanced video transfers, as well as CD-quality PCM audio tracks. The extras include an extensive booklet containing articles and a 1-hour documentary featuring Anne-Sophie.

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