# Berlin Philharmonic DVD Series



## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Since I ordered the Furtwangler set from the BPO, I figured I'd try out one of their video box sets. I received the 25 years of Europakonzert set yesterday. Last night, I watched two of the concerts- a program of Wagner and Brahms with Rattle playing in some sort of factory building, and an all Mozart program with Barenboim shot in a beautiful theater in Prague.

I'm not the biggest fan of Rattle, but I got through most of his concert. (I bailed in the Brahms symphony.) The Parsifal overture was decent and the cellist in the double concerto was very good. Enjoyed that one. But I'm glad I jumped to the Mozart, because that concert was fantastic. The program was Haffner, PC22 Horn Concerto 1 and Linz, with Barenboim conducting from the piano in the concerto. Barenboim was fantastic here, both playing and conducting. I'll definitely come back to that disc.

I was expecting to have to make allowances for live sound, but the image and sound quality on these discs is gorgeous. It almost looks like a blu-ray and the 5.1 sound is as good as a studio recording. There were a few odd noises of chairs bumping, but other than that it was perfectly balanced and clean sounding. The video work tends to focus on details, but they're well chosen. You're always looking at something relevant. The packaging sucks though. The box is way too big for the discs and nowhere on the set are all of the performers and works listed. The discs just say the performers and composers. The book scatters the info throughout the whole book. Very frustrating when you are looking to pick one to watch.

At a little over $100 shipped for 25 concerts, the price is right. I might pick up another of these boxes when I get deeper into this one.


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## Otological Epicurean (Feb 11, 2020)

I feel that anyone who doesn't like Rattle is obviously trapped in the dark ages or is very old and equipped with cloth ears or maybe is just elderly and tone deaf BUT luckily you are a fan of Rattle albeit not his biggest so we'll leave that there. Oh, I'm a multistore independent HiFi retailer and magazine reviewer so Rattle is king in my book though ,,,


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

I've been attending, listening to and watching Rattle concerts since he was in his early 30s and the principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Some of the times he 'nails' it, sometime, sometimes he doesn't, and sometimes it's good but not outstanding, in other words he is no different from any other human, i.e. occasionally great but also fallible. While clearly I don't think that everything he does is dispensable, neither is the 'dark ages' idea espoused above.

Incidentally, a number of the blind comparison threads which I have done have include Rattle performances and the listener opinions when they didn't know who was conducting have been about what one would expect, some great, some not so great.


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