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A Celebration of Leonard Bernstein: Carnegie Hall Opening Night 2008 (DVD) See details
A Celebration of Leonard Bernstein: Carnegie Hall Opening Night 2008 (DVD)
Limited time offer!
Price: $28.75  $14.98 
 
The San Francisco Symphony conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas celebrates the music of Leonard Bernstein in a very special Opening Night gala at Carnegie Hall.
 
The Orchestra’s sold-out Carnegie Hall concert kicked off a New York City-wide tribute to composer Leonard Bernstein, who would have celebrated his 90th birthday this year. The 90-minute DVD, recorded in high definition and 5.1 surround sound, features music from a wide variety of Bernstein’s stage works, from such early triumphs as West Side Story and On the Town to later works Mass and A Quiet Place.
Our price: $14.98
Keeping Score: Beethoven's Eroica (DVD) See details
Keeping Score: Beethoven's Eroica (DVD)
SKU: 6219
 
Herbert Blomstedt conducted Beethoven's Eroica at Davies Symphony Hall from April 11th to 14th.
  
Not all revolutions are political. Some overturn artistic conventions. Beethoven's Eroica challenged accepted artistic notions of music as a kind of decorative background and brought the listener along on a gripping voyage into the unconscious.
 
Beethoven spent three years writing the Eroica, which was an intimate and unflinching journal of his personal crises. The piece marked his emergence as an original master. In this DVD Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony invite you to discover the music of the Eroica and the circumstances surrounding its creation.
 
Retracing Beethoven's steps through Vienna's aristocratic ballrooms and Austria's rustic villages, MTT explores how Beethoven channeled hs fears of deafness, his admiration for Napoleon, and his obsession to prove himself the greatest composer of his time and to write a piece that forever changed what a symphony would be.
 
Bonus Features
  • Live performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, Eroica by the San Francisco Symphony and MTT shot in high definition, presented in 16:9 widescreen and 5.1 surround sound
  • Documentary includes optional closed-caption English subtitles
  • Subtitles in German, French, Spanish, and Chinese
Our price: $24.99
Keeping Score: Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique (DVD or Blu-ray) See details
Keeping Score: Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique (DVD or Blu-ray)
Available Now! in DVD or Blu-ray
 
With the unprecedented outpouring of emotion in his Symphonie fantastique Berlioz almost overpowered Paris. This orchestral sonic spectacular, written to win the heart of a beautiful actress, demanded sacrifice from its author and his audience. From romantic daydreams to deadly displays of devotion, the symphony relates an “episode in the life of an artist,” that artist being the love-obsessed composer himself. This symphony encapsulates the inner drama – and trauma – that made Berlioz one of the masters.
Our price: $24.99
Keeping Score: Copland and the American Sound (DVD) See details
Keeping Score: Copland and the American Sound (DVD)
 SKU: 6220
 
Aaron Copland's music reflects the transformation of the American experience that took place during his lifetime. Born in 1900 in Brooklyn, he witnessed the wild confidence of the Jazz Age, the fears of the Great Depression, and the rallying of the nation as it entered World War II. His ideal was to write music that would express how it felt to live those experiences.

Copland wrote classical music in his own special way. He transformed it to capture the energy of American's bustling cities and the vast quiet of its empty plains. He created a musical style that evoked the diversity of the American people. The sounds of Jewish music, African-American jazz, folk songs, cowboy ballads, and Latin American dances all played their parts in his compositions, which he hoped would bring people together in times of crises.

Today, Copland's music seems comforting and celebratory. Sixty years ago it was a wake-up call that gave Americans a critical sense of their own identity.

Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony explore the music of Copland and the cityscapes, landscapes, and social and political developments that shaped it.

For more information please visit keepingscore.org.

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    Our price: $24.99
    Keeping Score: Ives Holidays Symphony (DVD or Blu-ray) See details
    Keeping Score: Ives Holidays Symphony (DVD or Blu-ray)

    Available Now! in DVD or Blu-ray

    Ranging from tender sentiment to savage chaos, the music of early 20th-century composer Charles Ives explores an essentially American riddle: how can we survive the relentless assault of our own success? It was an enigma Ives embodied himself. He believed that we should all be brave enough to go it alone – yet he earned his living in insurance!

     
    In this Keeping Score program, available on DVD or Blu-ray, Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony unwrap the layers of Ives’ Holidays Symphony to reveal a surprising musical portrait of New England. The symphony’s four movements journey across the terrain of the seasons. From the intimacy of the winter hearth to the explosive concussion of the 4th of July, discover the insights Ives liberates in his music’s confrontational crunch.
    Our price: $24.99
    Keeping Score: MTT on Music - Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony (DVD) See details
    Keeping Score: MTT on Music - Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony (DVD)
    SKU: 4046
      
    Deep in the vaults of San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall is an archive of more than 3600 scores—virtually the entire classical music repertoire. These scores are more than just collections of notes. They're codebooks, packed with messages from the great composers about their experiences with life.

    As keeper and interpreter of the great surge of passions each score represents, Michael Tilson Thomas breathes life into dreams and visions that may go back hundreds of years.

    In this DVD, MTT delves into the notes and symbols that make up Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony, and unlocks the drama, pathos, elation and despair within.

    MTT takes you behind the scenes to experience the preparation behind every performance—the solitary practice sessions, the group rehearsals, the efforts of each musician to grasp the composer's ultimate message—"This is how life is."

    Bonus Features:

    • Narrated Graphic History of Tchaikovsky
    • Live performance of the complete Tchaikovsky 4th by the San Francisco Symphony and MTT recorded in 5.1 surround sound audio and presented in widescreen format
    • Subtitles in German, French, Spanish, Italian and Chinese
    Our price: $24.99
    Keeping Score: Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 (DVD or Blu-ray) See details
    Keeping Score: Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 (DVD or Blu-ray)

    Available Now! in DVD or Blu-ray

    Shostakovich may have secreted a subversive cipher beneath the surface of his life-saving Symphony No. 5.. This is all the more shocking since another bad review from Stalin’s totalitarian forces could have meant a sentence to the Gulag or worse. This Keeping Score program, available on DVD or Blu-ray investigates the arresting symphony that would either redeem Shostakovich or doom him. Did he dare hide a kernel of musical criticism in what appears to be a paean to the Motherland? Join Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony as they explore the hidden language of this masterwork. What Shostakovich has to say might depend on what you’re brave enough to hear.

    Our price: $24.99
    Keeping Score: Stravinsky's Rite of Spring (DVD or Blu-ray) See details
    Keeping Score: Stravinsky's Rite of Spring (DVD or Blu-ray)
    Now Available on Blu-ray!     Relea
     
     
    MIchael Tilson Thomas will conduct Stravinsky's Rite of Spring at Davies Symphony Hall on June 19th and 20th.
     
    In 1913, with Europe on the brink of war, a fashionable Parisian audience reacted with hostile frenzy to the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's new work, The Rite of Spring. The ballet's shocking music and dance provoked a riot that evening and soon afterwards was recognized as perhaps the most revolutionary piece of the 20th century. It still has that reputation today.

    In this DVD, Michael Tilson Thomas and the musicians of the San Francisco Symphony take you from the salons of St. Petersburg to the villages where Stravinsky found inspiration in the earthly power of Russian folk music and dance. MTT then retraces Stravinsky's journey to the cultural crossroads of pre-war Paris. There, in collaboration with the great impresario Diaghilev and his star dancer Nijinsky, Stravinsky developed the shocking, erotic, and violent evocation of pagan Russia that became The Rite of Spring.

    Nearly a century after this wild rainforest of sound was performed, The Rite of Spring remains as exhilarating and liberating as music can be. MTT and the San Francisco Symphony show you why.

    For more information please visit keepingscore.org.

    Bonus Features:

    • Live Performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and music from The Firebird by the San Francisco Symphony and MTT shot in high definition, presented in 16:9 widescreen and 5.1 surround sound.
    • Documentary includes optional closed-caption English subtitles
    • Subtitles in German, French, Spanish and Chinese
    Our price: $24.99
    San Francisco Symphony at 100 (DVD or Blu-ray) See details
    San Francisco Symphony at 100 (DVD or Blu-ray)

    New Release! Now Available! 

    In September, the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas launched the Orchestra’s milestone Centennial Season with a celebratory gala concert dubbed “Fanfare for a New Century” at Davies Symphony Hall. The gala concert is presented here on DVD and Blu-ray as the Emmy® Award-Winning San Francisco Symphony at 100.*
     
    MTT is joined by legendary violinist Itzhak Perlman to perform Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor.
     
    The concert opens with Aaron Copland’s vivid portrayal of American prairie life, the Billy the Kid Ballet Suite and concludes with Britten’s orchestral showpiece The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra of which the San Francisco Chronicle said: “…as Thomas led his colleagues, section by section and soloist by soloist… the listener could only marvel at the level of individual excellence and communal artistry on display.” Capping off the concert is an encore of Bay Area composer John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine featuring moving images of San Francisco projected throughout Davies Symphony Hall.
     
    The gala concert is hosted by author Amy Tan and is directed by Gary Halvorson.
     
    Woven into the concert, San Francisco Symphony at 100 includes historical documentary segments narrated by Amy Tan highlighting the Orchestra's early beginnings, its rich history of touring, and its innovations in media.
     
    Gala Feature: 88 minutes
    Bonus Features: 58 minutes of documentary vignettes chronicling the past 100 Years of the San Francisco Symphony
     

    The Gala Feature is presented in High Definition 16:9 widescreen and 2.0 Stereo Dolby Digital, 96/24 Dolby Stereo, 5.1 Surround Dolby Tru HD

    Bonus Features are Stereo only.

    Subtitles are in English, Spanish (North American), and Chinese (traditional and simplified).
     
    Region: 0 (works worldwide)
     
     
    *The DVD and Blu-ray do not feature the televised performance by Lang Lang.
    Our price: $24.99
    Keeping Score: Mahler (2-Disc DVD or Blu-ray) See details
    Keeping Score: Mahler (2-Disc DVD or Blu-ray)
     Now Available on 2-Disc DVD and Blu-ray
     
    From the sounds outside his bedroom window—a kind of sonic goulash of military marches, ethnic dance bands, church bells, ritual prayer, and nature itself—Gustav Mahler created an entire universe of emotion in music. In an astonishingly productive twenty-five years, he fashioned ten symphonies and 45 songs of cosmic scale, great beauty, and jarring emotional twists and turns. And he did it all in the brief moments he could spare from his day job as one of Europe’s preeminent conductors. In Gustav Mahler: Origins and Legacy, Michael Tilson Thomas returns to the provincial Austro-Hungarian city of Mahler’s childhood, and bears witness to his grand achievements, great sorrows, and daring musical explorations into the depths of the human soul. Join MTT and the San Francisco Symphony as they trace Mahler’s rise as a young conductor, his career-crowning appointments in Vienna and New York, his turbulent marriage and the sudden, tragic death of his daughter—and show how his stormy inner life inspired new and ever-more heartbreaking heights of creativity.
     
    This two-DVD set features one disc containing two concert performances, with Tilson Thomas leading the San Francisco Symphony in Mahler Symphony No. 1 and “A Mahler Journey,” and one disc with the 1 hour, 53-minute theatrical version of the documentary, which encompasses both the Origins and Legacy segments. Both the documentary and the concert performances are captured in full High Definition.
     
    Disc 1
    Gustav Mahler: Origins
    The first of two episodes explores the roots of Gustav Mahler’s music. SFS Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas journeys to rural Bohemia to rediscover the inspirations of Mahler’s music, and traces Mahler’s life through the premiere of his first symphony in 1888. It shocked the contemporary audience, but as MTT and the San Francisco Symphony reveal, on location and in performance, this ground-breaking symphony contains elements of everything else that Mahler composed. Shot on location in the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, and in performance in San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall.
     
    Gustav Mahler: Legacy
    In part two of Keeping Score: Mahler, MTT examines Mahler’s creative growth, from the 1890s to his death at the age of 51 on May 18, 1911, including his symphonies, the Rückert songs and Das Lied von der Erde. The show charts Mahler’s mercurial career as a conductor, from the Vienna Opera to Carnegie Hall in New York, as well as his tempestuous relationship with his wife Alma. At Mahler’s simple grave in a Grinzing cemetery, MTT explains why Mahler has so profoundly affected his own life. Shot on location in the Czech Republic, Austria, New York, and in performance in San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall.
     
    Disc 2
    Mahler: Symphony No. 1 in D Major in Concert
    Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony perform Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, Titan. The program was taped as part of the SFS’s Mahler Festival in Davies Symphony Hall in September and October of 2009.
     
    "A Mahler Journey"
    This concert includes the pivotal repertoire explored in "Gustav Mahler: Legacy." World-renowned baritone Thomas Hampson, a noted interpreter of Mahler’s songs, is featured performing Songs of a Wayfarer. The program also includes Mahler’s famous and poignant love song, Adagietto from Symphony No. 5, the Scherzo from Symphony No. 7 in E minor and the Rondo Burleske from Symphony No. 9 in D major. The program was taped as part of the SFS’s Mahler Festival in Davies Symphony Hall in September and October of 2009.
     
    Presented in High Definition 16:9 widescreen and 5.1 surround sound or 7.1 Dolby TrueHD.
    Our price: $34.99
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