James Galway-At the Waterfront (1999)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Featurette-South Bank Show Web Links
Rating
Year Of Production	1999
Running Time	90:24 (Case: 142)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Sonia Lovett Nigel Wattis
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	James Galway
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$39.95	Music	Various

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French German Spanish Italian	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, closing credits over curtain calls

    The following brief biography is abridged from his official web site: As a child, James Galway began playing the penny whistle before switching to the flute. He studied at various noted places including the Royal College of Music, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and the Paris Conservatory. He began his career at the Sadlers Wells Opera and the Royal Opera Covent Garden which led to positions with the BBC Symphony Orchestra where he played piccolo, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra where he was Principal Flute. In 1969 he was appointed Principal Flute of the prestigious Berlin Philharmonic under its principal conductor Herbert von Karajan. James subsequently left the orchestra in the 1970s to launch a successful career as a soloist. Since then, he has travelled extensively giving recitals, performing with the world's leading orchestras, participating in chamber music engagements, popular music concerts and giving master classes. In December 1997, James Galway was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the London Mozart Players.

    In this concert, James is accompanied by Phillip Moll on the piano. In two of the pieces - Andante et Rondo (Doppler) and Jeanne's Song (Overton), James is joined by his wife Jeanne (also an accomplished flautist in her own right).

    I have to admit that I am not a fan of the flute and am unfamiliar with the repertoire. I did not recognize any of the music pieces on this apart from the last two. To be honest, the first time I watched this concert I was bored. Then I watched the fascinating South Bank Show documentary in which James is interviewed by Melvyn Bragg and that really perked my interest as well as educated me on the intricacies of flute playing technique such as single/double tonguing ("No Virginia, these are not sexual techniques!"). After that, I had to rewatch the concert again and this time I enjoyed it a lot more. Needless to say, James' performance and technique in this concert is flawless and superb, but I didn't need to tell you that, did I?

Video

    The transfer is typical for a high quality video source in terms of sharpness, detail (just check out the individual whiskers on James' beard and even the hairs on his hand and fingers!) and colour saturation.

    However, I can detect evidence of low level video noise throughout the concert, particularly on the cloth on the suits of the performers. The video transfer has very little in terms of other artefacts, mainly limited to very occasionally aliasing and very minor ringing.

    There are a number of subtitle tracks on this disc. You are not allowed to select the subtitle tracks directly from the DVD player, only from the menu. Since the concert does not feature any spoken dialogue whatsoever, the subtitles only apply to the included documentary, which play immediately after the end of the concert. I turned on the English subtitles for the documentary and they were pretty accurate.

    This is a Dual Layered disc. There is no layer change in the middle of the programme - the layer change occurs after the end of the concert and prior to the documentary.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The audio is quite pleasant to listen to, and the soundstage features some depth, though not as much depth as an uncompressed PCM track might have had. I found the imaging quite poor, and in the pieces where James is playing alongside Jeanne I found it quite difficult to separate the sound of the two flutes or even pinpoint where the flutes were coming from.

    I also found that the timbre of the flutes seem to feature some high frequency harmonics that did not seem entirely realistic. This could be due to either the quality of the recording, or are artefacts introduced by the Dolby Digital encoding process (known for not being very accurate in the high frequencies).

    As far as I can tell, there are no audio synchronization issues with the disc. Needless to say, there is no surround presence nor subwoofer activity.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

Featurette - South Bank Show (49:32)

    The documentary starts with an introduction by Melvyn Bragg that features a really bad green halo all around him. Whether this is a video transfer artefact or present in the video source I cannot say.

    The documentary shows James walking around the streets of Belfast, meeting the locals and reminiscing about his childhood. We then switch over to James at home in Switzerland and get a brief summary of his education and career, his time with the Berlin Philharmonic (I was shocked to know that there was a culture of hard drinking and drug taking amongst the sedate looking members of the orchestra!), his solo career, the various flutes he has (including the 24-carat gold one!) and demonstration of various flute playing techniques. It even shows him playing pop and jazz music - which sounded suspiciously like muzak to me (trust me, James, stick with your day job!).

DVD-ROM - Web link

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall