Manfred

The artistic vision carries this performance of little performed work
Robert Schumann had been exposed to Lord Byron's epic poem "Manfred" when the composer was a teenager and the implicit angst and call to self discovery within the story appealed to the young Schumann. When Schumann was older, as an adult in his early thirties, it is known that he met and was intrigued by Franz Liszt who, in turn, was taken with the works of Byron and other literary giants of the time. Schumann's 'gesamtkunstwerk' (a "complete" art work) has never received many performances in its original guise, as a nearly evening long music drama for actors, chorus and orchestra. This new DVD of a 2010 performance from the Tonhalle Dusseldorf is visually stunning and gives us a very contemporized glimpse at what Schumann intended. The "staging" here is minimalist but effective in the ultra-modern confines of the Tonhalle. Film director and visualist Johannes Deutsch creates what is basically a slide show with computer generated castle mounts, mountain scenery and cathedral-like...

Schumann's Other Faust
Schumann's magnificent overture and interesting incidental pieces to a reading of Byron's closet drama MANFRED is given a very effective and interesting production here directed by Johannes Deutsch, with the Dusseldorf Symphony conducted by Andrey Boreyko, and with Johann von Bulow as Manfred. Filmed in 2010, in the Tonhalle in Dusseldorf, the town where Schumann lived at the time of the composition of this and many of his other late pieces, this production was part of the celebration of the composer's 200th birthday. The orchestra may not be world class, and the overture alone, which is familiar to most listeners, is available in several other great performances, such as that by George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra, available on Sony, but Andery Boreyko gets generally very fine playing from his Dusseldorfers of all the music, making this the one to get for the complete score. It's far superior to either of the two cd versions, and is more complete, because it's an attempt to...

For Schumann Lovers
Being an avid lover of Schumann's music I was very happy to add this DVD to my collection. The video quality is not
great and the audio is decent. The performance of the German actor playing Manfred is excellent. The orchestral
playing is quite good, not the Berlin Philharmonic. The conductor is no Beecham or Szell. Still I am happy to add this DVD to my collection as it helps one to have a better appreciation of Byron's epic work.

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