Art of Conducting - Legendary Conductors of a Golden Era

STOP RIGHT HERE. If you haven;t already, please go back and read, instead, my review of the companion DVD to this issue, The Art of Conducting - Great Conductors of the Past.

This second DVD follows on from that historical survey of the magical alchemy which is conducting. Instead of focusing on the historical development of modern conducting, it looks closely at the style of six very different conductors of the 20th century - Sergiu Celibidache, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Erich Kleiber, Evgeny Mravinsky, Charles Munch and Willem Mengelberg - and what made each of them so distinctive.

It is a fascinating document - but the general viewer will be best served by starting with Great Conductors of the Past, and only then deciding if more is wanted.

Warner Vision has made as good a job as could be possible from a wide variety of black-and-white and colour film-stock and video sources.

Audio is well treated, with most harshness eliminated from this mostly historical footage.

This second disc in the series offers the single choice of English for the Hearing Impaired - with the subtitles staying on relentlessly and intensely annoyingly.

The included booklet has a 15-page essay with biographical details on each composer.

Consider purchase only after viewing the first DVD in this series. I think the two are both indispensable - but not everyone is quite as fanatical!