COMPOSERS: Beethoven,Boito and Wagner
LABELS: Warner/NVC Arts
WORKS: Film documentaries
CATALOGUE NO: 0927-42871-2
Beethoven and Wagner make natural bedfellows in this pair of instalments from the BBC's Great Composers series, produced in 1997. Both documentaries touch on the composers' deviant personal characters — resulting respectively from Beethoven's tragic deafness, his struggle against fate; and from Wagner's anti-Semitism and obsession with artistic grandeur.
Excellent and well-paced contributions from leading academics — compellingly from William Kinderman and John Deathridge in the respective programmes - are complemented by 'celebrity' observers John Suchet (former newsreader turned Beethoven-writer) and Stephen Hawking.
There's even a New York cabbie ('When my nerves arc at an end, that's when Wagner comes to the rescue'), contrasting with a luxury contingent of performer-interviews featuring Ashkenazy, Harnoncourt, Tilson Thomas (Beethoven), Barenboim, Solti and Norrington (Wagnet).
Location filming- Beethoven's birthplace, Wagner's Bayreuth Festspiclhatis and Ludwig Us Hohenschwangau castle - ate especially revealing. Subtitles are accessible from the main menu, though none of the contributors is credited on screen (George Sterner might be another enthusiastic cabbie for all we know).
Still, the range and authority of the main content - not forgetting the specially filmed musical performances - and Kenneth Branagh's quietly sensitive narration contribute to an impressive and involving sweep to these productions. Edward Bhesania