Royal Stockholm: Nobel Prize Concert - 2009

Marvelous Martha!! More, More!! She could play chopsticks and Avery Fischer Hall concert hall would be sold out in 15 minutes! She gets better all the time. This is a great DVD with the Ravel concerto spellbinding.

Excellent. as all the concerts of this talented pianist.Magnificent technic and creative interpretation justify her good fame around the world.

CD's that plain American equipment can not read should not be sold on Amazon.This is a gorgeous concert-watch on UTube. I so looked forward to having the cd. Martha Argerich playing Ravel in G major.

I purchased this recording at the same time as the simultaneously released Helene Grimaud/Jurowski/Chamber Orchestra of Europe DVD recording.They could not be more different, especially the central adagio. Grimaud nails this movement in my opinion.It is simply magical. The first movement belongs to Argerich (much more jazzy) and the last movement is a tie. The Stockholm orchestra is much more "vulgar" and the recording is more "in your face" than the COOE with Grimaud. But both are worth owning. I disagree with Scott Morrison (whose views I usually agree with) on the CD/DVD comparisons. If ever a DVD is worth it's weight, it's watching a great pianist in action.I also liked the Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet selection. The slightly slower tempi work well here, I think.The only other version of this is on a 4 disc set with Abbado/BPO (European Concerts).Picture and sound just OK, performance good.Just let me confess that as a classical music nut for 50 years, the joy of watching the individual musicians play their parts is an absolute revelation, so maybe I'm a little more forgiving about imperfection in performance.Buy this DVD!!

Every year the Nobel Prize committee makes arrangements for a gala concert in the Stockholm Concert Hall, the same hall where the prizes are awarded. In 2009 the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic (New York Philharmonic conductor Alan Gilbert's old orchestra of which he is now 'Conductor Laureate') was led by Yuri Temirkanov in a concert that featured the Ravel G Major Piano Concerto with Martha Argerich as soloist. The concert opens with Shostakovich's Festive Overture, in a performance that, although it glittered (that's Shostakovich's orchestration, no doubt), never quite caught fire. Then Ms Argerich came on to play that quintessentially French concerto, the two-handed one by Ravel. Argerich was her usual scintillating self, but there were some oddities. For instance, in the very beginning of the Adagio middle movement, when the right hand comes in, its first note sounds well before the presumably simultaneous left hand bass note is played. And then in that gloriously long lyrical opening passage for the solo piano there are tempo irregularities that, for me, are pointless and irritating. I simply cannot get the sound of Arturo Benedetto Michelangeli's classic recording out of my head; he played that middle movement with absolute tempo regularity and yet brought to it a plaintive emotionality that Argerich does not manage. In the outer movements, though, Argerich is appropriately flashy and, interestingly, metrically correct. The Royal Stockholm Philharmonic's winds, so important in this concerto, are stellar. So are the important percussion bits.Argerich ends the first half of the concert ends with a tiny encore -- Chopin's Mazurka in C, Op. 24, 2 -- played with wit and the right kind of rhythmic swagger.The all-orchestral second half is given over to excerpts from two of Prokofiev's Suites from the Romeo and Juliet ballet: Suite I -- I Montagues and Capulets; II The young Juliet; III Friar Laurence; IV Dance; V Romeo and Juliet before parting; VII Romeo at Juliet's Grave, and Suite II - II Scene; V Masks; VII Death of Tybalt. As you can see no attempt is made to followed the arc of the story of the ballet. I found it to be a little ponderous overall. As a performance I much prefer the CD containing all three Romeo and Juliet suites conducted by Neeme Järvi Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet Suites Nos. 1-3. All of which brings up the whole question of whether a DVD of a orchestral performance is something that has value above an audio-only CD. I have my doubts, although I do love to see really great conductors leading really great orchestras; that is, I fear, not the case here.A lukewarm recommendation, primarily for those who love to watch (and hear) Argerich play.Scott Morrison

Good product at a good price.

I thought there would be more with Argerich, but the whole DVD was great.